The chanting of the crowd went on rising in pitch and intensity, the same incomprehensible phrases being repeated over and over like some hypnotic religious catechism that had taken hold of their minds. More flames illuminated the billows of smoke rising above the treetops.
That was when Wolf should have left. Should have just turned and run, got the hell out of there and kept running and not looked back. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Transfixed by the spectacle, almost willing to believe he was being gripped by some nightmarish hallucination, he couldn’t help but keep watching.
Then it got worse. And it became too late for Wolf to turn away.
There were people on the island. Still filming the scene with the zoom of his phone lens wound up to maximum magnification, he saw the figures appear as if out of nowhere through the smoke. Two of them wore the same robes and masks as the chanting crowd watching from across the lake, and carried flaming torches. But the third was something entirely different. It was a female figure, a blonde, clad in a plain white smock dress. From this distance and in the smoke and flicker of the flames Wolf couldn’t make out her features clearly, but enough to tell that she was young, perhaps still in her teens, more a girl than a woman.
But what was instantly obvious to Wolf was that she wasn’t there by choice. The two hooded, bird-headed men who accompanied her were clutching her by the arms and drawing her towards the base of the statue, which appeared to be some kind of altar. She was struggling, but weakly, and her head lolled limply from side to side as though she was inebriated – or drugged. The hooded men thrust her against the altar, pulled her arms out wide and tethered her wrists to what Wolf supposed must be iron rings set into the stone. She hung there as though crucified, her long blond hair obscuring her face. As the hooded men who’d tethered her stepped away, another appeared from the smoke.
He was robed in crimson with some kind of gold hieroglyph symbol emblazoned on his chest. His mask was more elaborate than the others’, like a ceremonial headdress or a bishop’s mitre. Except that a bishop’s mitre didn’t have horns. They were curly like those of a ram, rising into points that gleamed in the firelight. In his left hand he held a staff or sceptre. The right hand clutched a long, glittering dagger.
The masked crowd at the lakeside were going wild, baying and howling like a pack of bloodhounds. The horned figure in the red robe stepped dramatically in front of the tethered captive, raised his hands above his head and addressed the assembly from across the water, speaking more words that Wolf couldn’t understand. His head was spinning and he felt sick as he began to understand what he was witnessing, and what was about to happen. The figure in red was some kind of High Priest presiding over the twisted ceremony. And the crowd of lunatics who’d gathered here tonight on this spring equinox were his worshippers.
Wolf had seen many terrible things in his life. Some of them, he’d caused to happen personally. He thought he’d seen everything. Thought that he was too hardened and jaded for anything to get to him any longer. But the scene he was witnessing now made his mouth go dry and his hands shake. He steadied his grip on the phone and kept watching and filming, despite himself.
Solemnly, gravely, the High Priest handed his staff to one of the other men. Then he turned to face the girl, reached out to her and ripped away the white smock with a single violent jerk. The crowd screamed. She was naked underneath. The incomprehensible chanting of the crowd became even wilder.
Now the High Priest stepped closer. He raised the dagger to show the crowd, its long curved blade glittering in the firelight; then in a fast left-to-right movement that made Wolf flinch, he nicked the girl’s neck with the edge of the blade. The blood trickled down her throat and chest. The High Priest bent in front of her, and for a few moments Wolf couldn’t tell what he was doing. Then he stepped aside, and Wolf saw the five-pointed Pentacle drawn in blood on the girl’s stomach.
This was no theatre show. This was real.
Wolf had witnessed enough. He finally averted his eyes and turned away. But he didn’t turn away fast enough to avoid seeing the final stroke of the High Priest’s dagger that sliced deep into the sacrificial victim’s throat and ended her life. Fire and explosions lit up the whole lake island as the chanting of the crowd reached its climax and became a roar of delight and satisfaction.
Wolf staggered to his feet and stumbled away through the trees, twigs whipping at his face as he beat his retreat. To hell with the job. To hell with the agency, the money, the whole damn thing. He didn’t care any more. He was out of here. Done with all of it, forever. He already knew where he would run to: a special place in which nobody would ever find him.
Too late, Wolf spotted the gleam of something smooth and glassy, small and round, pointing down at him from the ivied trunk of a tree.
It was a camera. And he’d been caught right on it.
Chapter 1
Five days later
Somewhere over the south of England en route for France, Ben Hope eased back in his window seat, gazed out at the fluffy clouds drifting by and wondered whether this was the fifth, or the sixth, such trip he’d made in the months since late December. Or maybe it was the seventh. He was losing track, much to the amusement of his associate Jeff Dekker, who never tired of teasing him about his unlikely developing relationship with, of all people, a female police officer from the Scottish Highlands. Ben would have to privately admit that the romance had taken him by surprise, too. Her name was Grace Kirk, and it seemed that he couldn’t get enough of her.
His most recent visit to Grace’s tiny, remote village of Kinlochardaich had lasted three days, which was about as long as Ben felt he could stay away from his home and workplace in northern France before he started to feel he was neglecting his obligations there. The tactical training centre he co-ran with his fellow ex-military associates, called Le Val, was tucked away in a quiet corner of the Normandy countryside and over the years had grown into a thriving little concern whose specialist services were in demand from all over Europe and beyond.
Ben loved the place and wasn’t ready to quit his job, while Grace felt the same way about her own home and career; and so for the moment at least, their relationship would be a long-distance one. It was a convoluted thirteen-hour flight that usually involved stop-offs in London or Manchester, as well as Paris or Lyon or sometimes even Amsterdam. Grace had been still fast asleep when he’d left her at 4.30 a.m. to catch the 6.33 flight from Inverness. He’d called from the airport to let his business partners know he was en route and would be home by that evening.
Now, six hours later, with the time-wasting tedium of Heathrow behind him, his next stop was Paris before he’d finally embark on the final leg of his journey home. He was looking forward to seeing Jeff (who’d be full of the usual piss-taking humour, but Jeff was like that), their colleague Tuesday Fletcher (who owed his colourful first name, as well as his eternally laid-back manner, to his Jamaican heritage), and to enjoying a nice glass or two of his favourite scotch whisky before tucking in for an early night.
Bliss. Ben was in little danger of ever succumbing to the soft life, but the temptation did present itself now and then.
The London-to-Paris flight was unusually empty that day; entire rows of seats across the aisle as well as those behind and in front were vacant. In fact, he virtually had this entire section of the plane to himself. A luxury he’d never encountered before on a commercial flight, but one that suited him fine, allowing him to spread out a little. His old brown leather jacket and military olive-green canvas knapsack occupied the seat next to him, along with the crumpled newspaper he’d been idly leafing through earlier before losing interest. Ben didn’t really care much for following world affairs. He was relaxed into the steady thrum of the plane, still watching the sky drift by and thinking about nothing much in particular when a fellow passenger who was strolling down the aisle from the rear of the plane stopped by Ben’s row, gestured at the unoccupied seat next to him and asked courteously, ‘Please,
may I?’
Ben studied him for a moment. He had an excellent memory for faces, but he couldn’t remember having ever seen this man before. The stranger appeared to be in his mid-sixties, though it was hard to tell. He wasn’t tall, wasn’t short, wasn’t fat, wasn’t thin. His grey hair was receding from a high forehead, but was otherwise thick and somewhat unkempt. Sticking-out ears and a large, thread-veined nose with a prominent wart to one side. He wore glasses with a heavy black frame and thick lenses that magnified his eyes like a lemur’s. His suit was dark and his shoes were shiny. Generally respectable-looking and unthreatening in his manner. He seemed to have some particular reason for wanting to talk, though Ben had no idea what it could be.
Experience had taught Ben to be a careful person, sometimes to the point of being cagey and suspicious. But his natural tendency, especially at a moment like this when he was at ease, relatively carefree and fresh from three very pleasant days spent with someone he was extremely fond of, was to be open and friendly. Maybe the fellow had stopped to ask if he could borrow the newspaper. Maybe his watch had stopped and he wanted to know the right time. Maybe all kinds of things.
Ben hesitated a moment longer, then cleared his stuff from the seat, dumped it on the floor at his feet and replied, ‘Be my guest.’
The stranger plucked at his trouser legs the way dapper Englishmen do before sitting down, then settled in the empty seat and peered curiously at Ben through the thick glasses.
‘Enjoying your trip, Mr Hope?’ He spoke softly, but there was no misunderstanding his words.
And now Ben felt the familiar old sense of suspiciousness come flooding back, and he regretted his initial response. He had spent years travelling all over the world under a variety of fake identities, both during and after his time in British Special Forces. Nowadays he was just an ordinary citizen, or as ordinary as a man like him could ever be, and he seldom had cause to travel using any identity other than his own. But he still didn’t like being recognised like this. And whoever the well-dressed stranger was, he obviously hadn’t come to ask the time.
Ben replied tersely, ‘I’m sorry, I think you got the wrong person. I don’t know any Mr Hope.’
The stranger’s face crinkled into a polite smile. But there was a falseness to it, a coldness behind his eyes that made the curl of his lips seem unpleasantly knowing, almost mocking. ‘I do beg your pardon. What I should have said was “Enjoying your trip, Major Hope?” Because, you see, I do happen to know exactly who I’m speaking to. I might add that it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. By all accounts you’re really quite a remarkable fellow.’
Ben stared at the stranger for a very long time. He said, ‘There are plenty of other free seats on this plane. You might want to go and sit in one of those instead.’
The mock-polite smile again. ‘Don’t be coy, Major. A man with your record, which, by the way, makes fascinating reading, should be proud of his achievements. More than a dozen years serving your country in our most elite military force, responsible for countless successful missions in theatres of war all over the world, involving some quite outstanding displays of strategic brilliance and courage. I’m sure I needn’t run through a whole summary of your exemplary career, though.’
The stranger couldn’t be bluffing. He seemed to know too much for that. But if he really had read Ben’s military file, that meant he had access to high-level classified information. Which in turn meant he wasn’t just anybody. He was also talking far too openly about matters that were not meant to be public knowledge.
Ben glanced around him at all the vacant seats, and wondered whether it was just a coincidence that he’d been seated in an almost empty section. Whoever had arranged this cosy meeting could easily have made ghost reservations for half the plane, ensuring that the conversation would not be overheard. And Ben had let himself be caught right in their trap. He felt angry and powerless.
‘All right,’ he said to the stranger. ‘You’ve seen my record, and you know who I am. Which means you’re obviously bothering me for a reason.’
‘You’re quite correct. I thought we could have a little chat before you got home. Easier this way.’
‘You got me,’ Ben said. ‘I’m your captive audience. So is this the part where you cut the crap and tell me what you want?’
‘To retain your services,’ the stranger replied, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘What else?’
Ben shook his head. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re wasting your time there. I’m self-employed. Meaning that I get to choose who I work for. Me.’
‘Of course. Of course. And I hope you can forgive me for intruding on your privacy like this. But I think perhaps you’ll feel more amenable to speaking to me once you’ve seen what I have to show you.’
‘Show me?’
‘Indeed.’ The stranger reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small, slender tablet phone that he offered to Ben.
‘No, thanks. I’m not interested.’
The stranger didn’t take the tablet away. ‘Please. I insist.’
Ben reluctantly took it. The tablet was black and glossy and looked brand new. The screen was displaying what he immediately realised was a paused video file.
The stranger said, ‘Watch.’
Ben tapped the screen, and the video began to play. For the first few moments it could have been a still photo image, as nothing was moving on the screen. It showed the inside of a dark room. Ben had to peer closely to make anything out. He still had no idea what this was about.
But as he began to make sense of what he was looking at, he felt every muscle in his body tighten with alarm.
Chapter 2
Because the scene in the video clip was a bedroom. A bedroom he recognised and had got to know well over the course of the last three months. The same bedroom he’d last slept in himself, before getting up early to catch the plane from Inverness.
In the dim, grainy image on the screen he could see the curve of Grace’s shape beneath the bed covers, turned on her side, gently rising and falling to the rhythm of her breathing, her black hair spread out across the whiteness of the pillow and both hands clasped under her cheek, the way she often slept. Like she was praying in her dreams. Praying for what, Ben had often mused as he lay there watching her.
The video had not been filmed from a static hidden camera. That would have been bad enough – but the slight tremor and sway of the frame told him that it had been captured on a phone or other device by someone inside Grace’s bedroom. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be there.
‘In case you were wondering,’ the stranger said, ‘this was taken this morning, just minutes after you left. Looks peaceful, doesn’t she? Like Sleeping Beauty.’
Ben said nothing. He couldn’t speak. He just wanted to cram the tablet sideways between the stranger’s teeth and pound it in until it disappeared down his throat. But before he could react either way, a movement on the screen made him tense up even more. Because whoever had slipped unnoticed into Grace’s bedroom to film her hadn’t come alone. The second man who stepped out of the shadows the other side of the bed was clad all in black, head to toe, apart from the three pale ovals of the eye and mouth apertures of his balaclava. His hands were gloved. One of them held a semiautomatic pistol. That was black, too, like the long, tubular sound suppressor fitted to the end of its barrel.
The second man stepped up to the edge of the bed. Raised the muzzle of the silenced handgun a few inches from the back of Grace’s head, almost close enough to brush against her hair. He held it there for a few seconds as she went on sleeping, oblivious, as serene as a dormant child. Then he lowered the weapon, stepped away and melted back into the graininess of the shadows as though he’d never been there. With that, the video clip ended and the screen went black.
Ben knew how this game was played. What he’d just been shown was a classic textbook warning. A display of power. Telling him, See, this is what we can do. We can do it easily.
We can do it any time. And nobody will even see us coming.
The stranger said, ‘Needless to say, she had no idea of what was happening. Around the time you were boarding your flight at Inverness, she was getting up and preparing to go off to work. That’s where she is now. Going about her police duties without the faintest clue that her every move is being monitored around the clock by a team of operatives ready to move in on command and execute their orders. Nor does she ever need to know, so long as you play your cards right and cooperate with me and my colleagues. I expect I have your attention now, don’t I?’
The trap had just sprung shut, with Ben neatly snared inside it. He said nothing.
The stranger went on: ‘Oh, you can play it cool if you like. But I’m sure you must be full of questions. For example, you’re probably wondering who I am. For the purposes of this conversation, you can call me Saunders. As to the rest, such as whom I work for and what interests I represent, that’s not your concern. You can simply rest assured that this is not a bluff, and that you need to take what I’m telling you with the utmost seriousness. Am I making myself clear?’
‘I think you’ve made your point,’ Ben said.
There is a special kind of anger that goes beyond all possible limits of normal furious, burning rage. It starts deep in the pit of your stomach and gradually spreads to the extremities of the whole body, turning the blood to ice water, boosting adrenal output and focusing the mind more sharply than a combat fighter pilot’s. The hindbrain becomes hyper-aware, the physical senses are greatly amplified, and time seems to move in slow motion.
That was the kind of anger Ben was experiencing at this moment.
The man calling himself Saunders said, ‘Good. Now, here are the ground rules. You are about to receive a set of mission instructions, which you will follow very carefully and exactly. If you refuse to take the mission or comply with said instructions, the team of men who will be watching over Miss Kirk day and night are under orders to dispatch her. A task they will carry out in the most professional, quick and humane manner, but even so I’m sure you prefer to avoid that outcome. Once your mission is complete, the team will stand down and she will never know they were even there.’
The Demon Club Page 2
