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 c
arrying 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.
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 expens
ive 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.
The Nemesis Program_Ben Hope Page 24
