The Nemesis Program (Ben Hope) (36 page)

Roberta looked at Ben in consternation. ‘You knew? That long ago?’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,’ Ben said to her. ‘I couldn’t afford for our friend here to suspect anything.’

‘That’s why you wanted me to stay in Germany, isn’t it?’ she asked.

Ben nodded. ‘I didn’t like you being anywhere near this treacherous maggot.’ He turned back to Daniel. ‘See, you’re not the only one who can play-act. It was all I could do to restrain myself from throwing you into the deepest part of the Arabian Sea to amuse the tiger sharks.’

Some of the colour had drained from Daniel’s face, but he still managed to pull an uncomfortable smirk. ‘So you knew all along, huh? Guess you think that makes you pretty smart.’

‘Not as smart as your bosses,’ Ben said. ‘They think of everything, don’t they? Like bringing a blank firing pistol to a gunfight to protect the identity of a valuable agent like you. Now
that’s
clever.’

Daniel’s face paled for real at Ben’s words, his composure slipping visibly away. ‘What are you talking about?’ he stammered. His eyes darted nervously as his brain was set racing. The awful connections began to form in his mind. He glanced down at the pistol in his hand.

‘I’m surprised it took you this long to cotton on,’ Ben said. ‘It was McGrath’s pistol I gave you. The one I took from his body. The one he fired at you as you were running towards the woods. You probably don’t remember. You were too busy trying to save your skin.’

‘I … I …’

‘It was their contingency plan,’ Ben went on. ‘Just in case the attack went wrong and either I or Roberta got away. They needed to make it look like you were one of their targets and make sure we got a good look at them shooting at you, to save your cover from being blown. Of course, you couldn’t know about it. You had to look believably shit scared. And you did. Just like you do now, Daniel.’

‘Bull. You’re just trying to rattle me.’

‘It’s the truth,’ Ben said. ‘Just like you were telling the truth when you said you didn’t know much about weapons. One of the only honest things you’ve said. And bad news for you. They should have given you a better training.’

Daniel’s brow twitched. ‘No way. Fuck you, if you think you can fool me so easily.’ He took a step back and raised the gun higher in a white-knuckle grip, aiming it first at Ben’s head, then at Roberta’s, then back at Ben.

‘You could check for yourself,’ Ben said, pointing calmly at the weapon, ‘If you knew how. It’s loaded with 38-calibre blanks. Standard primer. Normal powder load. But the cartridge case mouth is just crimped shut where the bullet ought to be. The gun needs a special modification to be able to cycle the rounds, so it can’t even handle regular ammunition. It’s noisy enough, but nothing comes out of the barrel except burning gas.’

‘You’re lying!’

Ben took a step towards him. ‘Come on, Daniel. Do you really think I’d have given you a live firearm to tote about with you, knowing you were lying, knowing you were one of them? But don’t take my word for it. Go ahead and squeeze the trigger. Maybe I’ll be wrong.’

Daniel backed away another two paces across the dusty floor. His Adam’s apple heaved as he gave a swallow. The gun was shaking in his hand.

‘Go for it, Daniel,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t you want to kill us? Or are you waiting for us to starve to death?’

‘I … don’t want to kill you. The boss said …’

‘Look around you,’ Ben said. ‘No boss anywhere to be seen. He must be running late, which means you’re on your own. It’s time to stand up and defend yourself, and right now pulling that trigger is the best chance you’ve got. Because if you don’t kill me, I’m going to kill you, and soon.’

Daniel’s face contorted into a wild look of loathing and terror. He thrust the gun out, took aim at Ben and squeezed the trigger.

A halo of yellow-white flame spat from the muzzle. The sharp report of the shot resonated all around the empty building.

Roberta started at the sound.

Ben didn’t even flinch.

Daniel fired again. Another spit of flame from the barrel. Another ear-splitting
boom
that reverberated off the walls and echoed up to the roof.

‘Oh, God,’ he moaned when he saw what had happened.

Because nothing had happened. There was no blood. No injured opponent rolling on the floor screaming in agony. Ben was still standing. Not just standing. Walking slowly, purposefully towards him. Daniel gaped at the weapon in horror.

‘Kind of changes things, doesn’t it?’ Roberta said.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Ben said to Daniel. ‘Maybe he’s lying about the blanks and I just missed, because I’m such a crappy shot. Or maybe it’s true, but by some miracle the next round in the magazine will be live. Well, there’s only one way to find out.’

Daniel fired again. The look of desperation on his face was turning to panic. Roberta wasn’t flinching at the sound any more, but looked on with her hands over her ears and a fierce light in her eyes.

‘Keep going,’ Ben said to Daniel, nodding at the smoking pistol. ‘Empty it. The worst you’re going to do is give us tinnitus for a day or two.’ He kept on walking towards him. For every step he advanced, Daniel was backing a step away.

‘Wait,’ Daniel said. ‘I can explain everything.’

‘Didn’t you just do that?’ Roberta said.

‘Please! Listen, I told you, I’m just an assessor. I had no choice but to let Claudine go. If I’d told her who I really was—’

‘Then you’d have put yourself in danger too,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe the handyman would’ve paid you a little social call. And we couldn’t have that, could we?’

As though suddenly repulsed by its touch, Daniel flung the gun away. ‘All right. Look! I’m not armed, okay? I surrender.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Daniel. We’re past that stage. You’re in too deep.’

‘W-what are you going to do to me?’ Daniel quavered.

‘What I said,’ Ben replied quietly. ‘I never really liked you anyway, right from the start. Now I like you a lot less. So I’m going to break your neck.’

Daniel had retreated all the way to the far wall and couldn’t back away any further. Ben was almost on him.

Daniel fell to his knees. ‘I’m begging you!’ he wailed, his cheeks suddenly wet. ‘Listen, I have over four hundred thousand dollars in a checking account. It’s supposed to be my expenses money. Let me go and it’s yours, every cent of it, I promise. We’ll get out of here together before the others arrive. I know where we can hide. We’ll get the cash transferred to you within a day – hell, within the hour. Just let me … aggh!’

Ben had grabbed hold of him and hauled him roughly to his feet. ‘It’s just like you said,’ Ben told him. ‘The more you struggle, the more this will hurt.’

Daniel fought and thrashed and kicked and tried to bite as Ben held him in a clinch. He grasped Daniel by the jaw. Pushed, twisted, pulled, pushed again. There was a muted crunch and Daniel’s scream was cut short. Ben held him a moment longer, then let the lifeless body slip to the floor.

Roberta stared wide-eyed at the corpse.

‘I’m sorry you had to witness that,’ Ben said to her, mistaking her look for one of shock.

‘He had it coming,’ she replied. ‘Actually, I thought you went too easy on the rat.’

‘He won’t get any deader than this, Roberta.’

‘I can see that. But it was over a little quicker than what I had in mind for him.’

‘You can tell me all about it later,’ Ben said. ‘For now, I think we should get out of here before his friends arrive.’

But even as he finished saying it, the rapidly approaching throb of a helicopter told him they were too late.

Chapter Fifty-Four

There was still a tiny, rapidly dwindling chance they could escape the building before the helicopter touched down. Ben snatched up his bag and hurried after Roberta as she sprinted towards the entrance.

Just two strides behind her, he caught a glimpse of the descending chopper and the man in the tactical vest leaning out of the hatchway. He saw the compact black object in the man’s gloved hands.

As if in slow motion, he watched Roberta run into the sunlight. He yelled ‘Stop! Wait!’ But she was moving too fast. Her momentum carried her out into the open.

And then the machine gunner on board the aircraft opened fire.

Bullets punched into the concrete, sent chips of masonry bursting from the wall around the doorway. Ben skidded to a halt. Roberta had sprawled to the ground right in front of him and he couldn’t tell if she’d been hit. He reached out and grabbed her arm and yanked her violently back towards the doorway as the black Jet Ranger hovered closer with its nose raking the ground, its tail angled upwards and the shooter still firing from its open side hatch.

Ben dragged Roberta inside the building, his heart at a dead stop not just from the suddenness of the attack but from his own paralysing terror that she’d been shot. It began to beat again when she twisted to her feet and pressed against him in the shelter of the doorway.

‘Jesus,’ she gasped. ‘Another close one.’

‘Don’t ever do that again,’ he warned her, relief flooding through him.

There was little time for ceremony, though. The dust was billowing up from the floor as the chopper came in to land just a few metres from the building. Its skids were barely in contact with the ground before the shooter jumped from the hatch, effecting a rapid reload of his MP7 submachine gun as he dashed across the cracked concrete.

Ben ducked out of sight from the doorway and looked around him for a weapon. Any kind of weapon, anything that would give him an edge. Through the dust storm whipped up by the rotors he could see the fallen pistol lying a little way from Daniel’s inert body. He made a flying leap for it: snatched it up, rolled in the dust and sprang back to his feet with the weapon brought to aim as the gunman burst into the building.

‘Drop it!’ Ben yelled over the din of the helicopter turbine. The modified pistol was as good to him as a child’s toy and he was up against someone who clearly knew their business. He was all too aware that only the conviction in his voice and in his eyes could pull the bluff off.

And as the man took his finger off the trigger and lowered his weapon, for a short moment Ben thought his trick had worked. Another moment later, he realised the shooter had stood down for another reason entirely.

A man walked into the building. He was short, no more than five and a half feet tall, and from his thin white hair and heavily lined, yellowed face he looked at least seventy-five years old. A finely-cut suit that might once have been tailored to fit him hung oversized from his shrivelled form. He walked with a pronounced limp and leaned heavily on two walking sticks, one white, the other black, for support. He barely seemed to acknowledge the man clutching the submachine gun, as though the presence of armed bodyguards was something he’d been so thoroughly used to for so many years that it no longer made any impression on him. Behind him came the rest of his retinue. Six men. The two thirty-somethings in plain dark suits and dark glasses had the aura of FBI agents, though Ben was pretty sure they were anything but. The other four looked like ex-Special Forces, expert guns for hire: hard faces, hard eyes, shorn hair, all wearing the same combat armour as the guy with the submachine gun and all carrying black AR-15 rifles like the one Ben didn’t have any more.

Ben sighed and tossed away the useless pistol. Roberta slowly stepped closer to him, keeping a wary eye on the old man and his following.

The scrape and tap of the old man’s sticks on the concrete floor echoed through the building as he limped up to them. He passed Daniel Lund’s body without the slightest glance. Five feet away from Ben and Roberta, he stopped and peered at them. Much more striking than the wizened parchment skin of his face was the stone deadness in his eyes. They were the eyes of someone who’d seen things more terrible than most people could ever imagine. Someone utterly inured to the evils of this world.

‘Benedict Hope and Roberta Ryder,’ he said. His voice was as dry as sand. ‘In your separate ways, your reputations precede you. My name is Victor Craine. The few people who know me at all, know me simply as the Director. You’ve led me a merry dance the last few days. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last.’

‘The pleasure’s all yours, Craine,’ Ben said. ‘We didn’t particularly want to be here.’

The Director gazed up at Ben’s face with a strange kind of detached curiosity. For all their lifelessness, his hooded eyes were intensely penetrating. ‘I see our Indonesian friends handled you a little roughly. Be assured, that order didn’t come from me. If they felt the need to subdue you, it was only because they were afraid of you.’

‘They have an interesting way of showing fear,’ Ben said.

‘They were briefed on who you are shortly after you were apprehended,’ the Director said. ‘Little wonder that your real identity terrified them so much. Your background is as impressive as your skill in evading us this far. You’ve cost the project a great deal of resources and robbed me of several of my most capable agents. Men not easily killed. Yet you dealt with them with almost embarrassing ease.’ His lips wrinkled into a smile.

‘You mean McGrath?’ Ben said. ‘I’m afraid he went all to pieces.’

‘So it would seem. And now it appears you’ve disposed of Mr Lund just as efficiently, albeit without as much mess.’ The old man shook his head. ‘I don’t know how I’ll replace him. It’s so hard to find personnel of calibre these days.’

‘Have you tried Scumbags R Us?’ Ben said. ‘I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for.’

‘It could have been you, you know. We pay handsome rewards to men with the right attributes.’

‘I have other plans, thanks.’

‘I’m afraid whatever plans you have are now cancelled, Major Hope. Your little chase is over now. You really only have yourselves to blame for this outcome.’

‘I guess we should be flattered that you came all the way out here to tell us that,’ Roberta said.

The Director turned to gaze at her. ‘You and Major Hope weren’t the principal reason for my coming to Indonesia, my dear.’ For an instant he looked almost benign, grandfatherly, before the dead coldness returned to his eyes. ‘My main purpose is to oversee the exercise that is about to begin in … how long do we have, Friedkin?’ he asked calmly, without looking back.