The Mozart Conspiracy: A Novel bh-2

by Scott Mariani

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Ben’s eyes were on the blood trail as he sprinted up another flight of stairs. His left hand grasped the polished banister rail as he climbed, his right holding the pistol ready.

  The splashes of bright blood on the stairs were frequent. Glass was badly hurt, but he was running like a maniac and he was still extremely dangerous. He was heading for the top floor.

  Ben cleared the final flight, his heart hammering in his chest. The blood trail led onwards down the corridor. He followed it, sweeping the gun left and right.

  At the end of the long passage, a door was banging open. Through the doorway he could see curtains fluttering in the cold wind and snow blowing in through an open French window. He went into the room. All his senses were blazing. Over the thudding of his heart he heard an unmistakable sound. As he crept into the room it got louder.

  It was the high-pitched whine of a powerful engine, revs building to a roar. It was coming from outside, on the roof. Someone was firing up the helicopter. He moved towards the window.

  His vision exploded white and suddenly he was on his face. The gun slid away across the bare floorboards. He felt fingers curl around his collar and he was yanked to his feet with brutal force. He had a glimpse of a broad forehead and two small, fierce eyes staring down at him, and then a massive fist slammed into his jaw and sent him reeling backwards as though he weighed nothing. He crashed into a desk, sprawling over the top of it and sending papers and files, an ashtray and a telephone flying.

  One of the biggest men he’d ever seen walked calmly towards him around the edge of the desk. ‘You are dead,’ the giant said simply. His English was heavily accented. In his hand was a stainless-steel Ruger .44 Redhawk with an eight-inch barrel. He tucked it into the back of his belt. ‘I no need this,’ he said. He raised his fists.

  Ben staggered to his feet. The whine of the helicopter outside was getting louder. There was blood on his lips from the punch. His head was spinning. But even the biggest bastard could be brought down. He moved in fast and aimed a heavy blow at the solar plexus. He put all his strength into it and pain lanced up his arm as it impacted. It was a good punch. It would have crippled most men.

  The giant barely seemed to feel it. A fist the size of a pineapple flew at Ben’s head and only just missed. If it had landed, it would have killed him.

  This was getting serious. Ben aimed a kick to the groin. The giant blocked it. He jabbed at the throat. Another block. Ben retreated, aware that he was running out of space in the room. Through the open window he heard another sound, the high, keening, terrified sound of a child’s scream. He followed the sound with his eyes. The windows opened out onto a wide, flat expanse of rooftop. The helipad was surrounded by sloping gables and towering chimneys. Snow flurried on the rising wind. Thirty yards away, the lights of the Bell chopper cut a white beam through the drifting snowflakes, its rotors turning faster now. Jack Glass had Clara by the arm and was trying to bundle her into the open door of the helicopter. She was struggling and kicking. His teeth were gritted in pain and the front of his shirt was dark and clinging with blood.

  Ben looked a fraction of a second too long. A heavy boot caught his ribs and he felt something crack. He cried out, rolled to the floor, clutched his side. He crawled under the desk. The giant grabbed the edge of the desk with one hand and hurled it over. He ripped out a drawer and crashed it down over Ben’s head. It shattered into pieces, showering him with bits of office equipment. Something glinted on the carpet. It was a letter-opener in the shape of a dagger. His fingers closed over it, and as the giant came on again Ben plunged the blade downwards into the man’s boot.

  It was a solid heavy-grain leather boot. The blade was blunt. But Ben stabbed it so hard that it went through the leather into the foot inside. Through the foot into the sole. Through the sole into the wooden floor. It pinned him like an insect to a board.

  The big man threw his head back and howled in pain. Ben struggled to his feet and lashed a foot into his groin. That had an effect. The man doubled up. Ben grabbed the giant’s tiny ears and slammed a knee into his face.

  Outside, Clara broke away from Glass. Her hair streaming in the blast from the spinning rotor blades, she ran towards the windows. She slipped on the snow and fell, then scrabbled back to her feet. Glass went after her and grabbed her by the hair. He yanked her back and she screamed.

  The giant was teetering, moaning, trying to stagger away from his pinned foot. Ben tore a fire-extinguisher off the wall and rammed the heavy metal cylinder down on his head. The man crashed to the floor and rolled on his back. Ben brought the base of the extinguisher down on his face and almost vomited as the man’s skull caved in. The giant convulsed and twitched for a second and then lay still.

  Bloody and hurt, Ben ripped the .44 Ruger from the dead man’s belt. The cylinder was loaded with six fat magnum cartridges. He staggered towards the open French window. Glass was dragging Clara back towards the helicopter. He picked her up and stuck her under his arm. Her little legs kicked wildly.

  Ben ran out onto the roof, ignoring the pain from his cracked rib. He aimed the heavy revolver and yelled Glass’s name over the roar.

  Glass jerked Clara’s body round in front of his. He pressed something against her neck. His thumb was on the plunger of the syringe. ‘I’ll kill her,’ he screamed. ‘Put the gun down.’

  Ben dropped the revolver and kicked it away from him. Glass grinned through his pain and dragged the child inside the helicopter. Still holding the syringe to her neck, he handcuffed her to the frame of the seat. Ben watched helplessly. Glass slid behind the controls. He’d learnt to fly in Africa and he was a good pilot. Crazy enough to take off in the snow, but then Jack Glass had always been crazy. He was proud of that.

  The helicopter began to lift off. Ben could see Clara’s pallid face through the perspex window. Her mouth was open in a scream that was drowned out by the huge noise and the wind.

  He ran across the helipad. The chopper was in the air, driving the snow into a storm of flakes that stung Ben’s eyes. He picked up the fallen .44 but didn’t dare to fire.

  He looked around him in desperation as the hovering chopper spun slowly round on itself. Along the edge of the roof was a stone parapet, about four feet high. He ran to it and leapt up on top of it. He shoved the long barrel of the revolver through his belt and steadied himself with his hands. It was a long way down. The chopper dipped its nose as Glass hit the throttle.

  Ben launched himself. For an instant he was weightless. The floodlit grounds of the mansion were below him. He saw the flashing lights of police cars swarming down the driveway. The party was in chaos.

  He began to fall. Then his flailing hand clasped the cold metal of one of the chopper’s skids. The craft veered to the right, moving away from the house. The thudding wind tore at Ben’s hair and clothes as he dangled in space. He reached up and clapped his other hand onto the skid, kicking with his legs to haul himself up. Below him, the ground spun dizzily.

  Glass felt the chopper unbalanced with Ben’s weight. From the cockpit he could see him hanging there, desperately trying to climb up to the side door. He smiled and turned the chopper towards the house. He couldn’t shake him off, but he could scrape the bastard off.

  In the darkness a chimney stack loomed large. Glass banked hard towards it. Ben had a glimpse of brickwork rushing towards him. He raised his legs clear and the chopper roared over the roof. Glass brought it round again, the G-forces stretching Ben’s arms as he hung on to the skid.

  Glass headed for the roofs again. Ben’s flailing legs raked violently up an incline of tiles, some of them coming loose and tumbling down to the ground below. Glass banked the chopper another time, laughing. One more pass and he’d leave Hope smeared like a bug across twenty feet of stonework.

  But he banked too early. The tail rotor caught the side of the roof with a crashing shower of sparks and twisted metal. The helicopter juddered. The controls went crazy as the craft b
egan to spin away from the house and towards the trees.

  Ben had a foot on the skid now. Reaching out with an effort he clasped the handle of the side door and ripped it open. He threw himself inside the cockpit as the chopper gyrated out of control over the treetops, its lights tracing a wild circle over the snowy green pines and the naked branches of oaks and beeches.

  Glass lunged at him with the lethal syringe. Ben dodged the stab and drove Glass’s wrist against the controls. The needle clattered to the floor. The two men wrestled over the seats, gouging and punching. Ben dug his fingers into Glass’s cropped hair and slammed his face against the dials, and again, and again, until Glass’s forehead was streaming with blood.

  The helicopter was going down, spinning faster and faster. Glass’s fingers clawed at his face. Ben hammered him against the door, punched him in the teeth, slammed his head against the controls again. Glass flopped limply in his seat as the chopper banked violently to one side and twisted downwards towards the treetops.

  Ben heaved on the controls but there was nothing he could do. The chopper spun wildly for another hundred yards before it hit. The rotors disintegrated and flew apart as they sliced into the treetops. They tumbled down, snapping branches raking and tearing at the fuselage, engine stalled, pieces of twisted rotor crashing down with them. Ben was hurled against the floor and the roof as the craft flipped over and over.

  Thirty feet from the ground, the Bell tore free of the lower branches. Through shattered perspex Ben glimpsed the snowy forest floor rushing up to meet them. The impact flung him hard against the instruments. The chopper buried its nose in a snowdrift. Splintered branches and pieces of aircraft rained down.

  Glass was lying slumped across the control console. Sparks crackled from somewhere behind the dials and the strong scent of aviation fuel reached Ben’s nostrils.

  He hauled himself painfully upwards through the dark, smashed cockpit. Above him, Clara was wedged on the back of the front seats. Her lip was bleeding. She desperately tugged at the chain that connected her wrist to the steel tubing of her seat.

  Ben heard the crackle and whoomph and looked over his shoulder. Flames licked at the inside of the glass, searing across the controls and the front seats. In seconds the helicopter was going to blow.

  He yanked at the handcuff chain, glinting in the flames. It held fast. Clara’s eyes were bulging, her hair plastered over her face. She strained to tear her little wrist out of the steel bracelet, but it was tight against the skin.

  The flames were catching. Ben clambered down towards Glass’s slumped body and felt in the pocket of his bloody tuxedo for the key to the cuffs. It wasn’t there. The heat was unbearable. A tongue of fire licked Ben’s back, scorching his jacket. There wasn’t time. The chopper was going to explode.

  Over his pain and fear he remembered. The gun. He jerked it out of his belt and pressed the muzzle against the handcuff bracelet that was locked around the seat tube. Fire seared his sleeve. He squeezed the trigger.

  The stunning noise of the .44 revolver cut away all sound. For an instant Ben was disorientated, lost in a surreal world of silence with the high-pitched whine in his ears filling his head.

  Another rolling wave of liquid flame poured across the blackened interior of the chopper and he came to his senses. Clara was free, the broken chain dangling from the cuff around her wrist. They struggled across the cockpit. Ben kicked against the door with all his remaining strength. The door buckled open and he grasped the little girl’s arm and somehow they crawled through the gap just before the fire engulfed the whole cockpit.

  He dragged her stumbling across the snow. Before they’d staggered twenty yards, the forest behind them was suddenly filled with white light. Ben dived behind the trunk of an oak tree, shielding Clara’s little body with his as the fuel tanks ruptured with the heat and the chopper exploded into a massive ball of searing flame. The whole night sky was lit up. Trees burst alight. Burning wreckage spewed in all directions. Clara screamed and he held her tight.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  The Bristol Hotel, Vienna

  Three days later

  Ben walked in off the Kärtner Ring and entered the lobby of the luxury hotel. His clothes felt too new and stiff, and every time he moved a stab of pain jolted his side.

  The place was milling with journalists and photographers. He already knew that Philippe Aragon and a small army of his people had occupied a whole floor as their base for the series of press conferences that the media were screaming for everywhere. The police raid on the von Adler mansion was the biggest news event for years and Aragon was right in the centre of the frenzy. Ben had deliberately avoided TV and radio for three days but even he hadn’t been able to escape it.

  Behind the scenes, Aragon had been pulling more strings in those last three days than most politicians pulled in a lifetime. He had the kind of high-level influence that enabled certain details to be smudged for the media. The deaths at the mansion had been attributed to Kroll’s own people. As for Ben and his team, they had never been there.

  It had taken forty-eight hours to clear up the carnage. Nothing remained of the burnt-out helicopter except blackened fragments scattered across the forest floor by the explosion.

  No trace remained of Jack Glass, either. At the kind of temperature generated by blazing aviation fuel, human tissue, even teeth and bones, would be reduced to fine ash. Ben had seen it before.

  He pushed through the throng filling the hotel lobby and was met by a man in a pinstriped suit. He was around the same age as Ben, but balding and on the scraggy end of thin. He offered his hand. ‘I’m Adrien Lacan,’ he said over the buzz. ‘Philippe Aragon’s personal assistant. Glad you could make it, Monsieur Hope.’

  Lacan escorted Ben through the lobby to the lift. Some cameras flashed as they walked. Ben kept his face turned away. Security men pushed back the journalists who had started crowding them, and they stepped into the lift alone. Lacan punched the button for the top floor and the lift whooshed quietly upwards. ‘It’s insane,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ve never known it like this before.’

  Aragon’s plush rooms were bustling noisily with his staff, people coming and going, talking into headsets, the sound of more phones ringing in the background. TV screens were set up on desks playing different news channels while people clustered around to watch. A tall stack of newspapers sat piled on a table, two women sifting through them and scrutinizing the front pages. Ben walked into the busy room and felt several pairs of eyes on him wondering who he was.

  In the middle of it all, Aragon was perched casually on the edge of a desk, flipping through some papers while talking to someone on a mobile. His shirt was open at the neck and he looked fresh and energetic even with the plaster over his eyebrow covering up his stitches. He smiled broadly as Ben approached, ended his call and snapped his phone shut. He laid the sheaf of papers down on the desk and greeted Ben warmly.

  ‘Don’t forget you have a press interview at quarter past,’ Lacan warned him. Aragon waved him away and took Ben’s elbow.

  ‘I’m sorry for all this chaos,’ he said. ‘It’s quieter in here.’ He guided Ben through the milling crowd of staff and into a smaller room to one side. He closed the door, shutting out the noise. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said.

  Ben watched the politician. He’d bounced back like a fighter. He looked relaxed and confident but there was an edge to him now, a competitive fierceness Ben hadn’t seen in him before. He looked primed and ready for battle.

  ‘You said it was important,’ Ben replied.

  ‘It is. A matter I need to clear up with you before you leave. Your flight’s today?’

  Ben nodded. ‘In a few hours.’

  ‘Ireland,’ Aragon said. ‘I’ve never been. What’s it like?’

  ‘Green,’ Ben said. ‘Empty. Quiet.’

  ‘There’s a part of me that would love to be able to retreat to a tranquil place,’ Aragon said, nodding towards the door and the crazy bustle
on the other side. ‘Right now, I’d probably never want to come back. You’re a lucky man.’

  Ben didn’t feel much like a lucky man. ‘You could always just give it all up, Philippe,’ he said. ‘Go back to your old career. Architects don’t attract the wrong kind of attention. They don’t get kidnapped or executed.’

  ‘You talk like Colette, my wife.’

  ‘Sounds like a sensible lady,’ Ben said.

  ‘You like to live on the edge yourself, though.’

  ‘I do what I do.’

  ‘You’ve been a big help to me,’ Aragon said. ‘I won’t forget it.’

  Ben smiled. ‘I didn’t do it for you.’

  ‘I appreciate your candour. But I’m grateful to you nonetheless.’ The politician reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and drew out a small white envelope. ‘Which brings me to the reason I asked you to meet me here,’ he said. ‘I wanted to give you this.’

  Ben took the envelope from Aragon’s outstretched hand. His name was printed in neat writing on the front.

  Aragon waggled a finger at it. ‘Open it.’ He leaned on the back of a chair with a look of amused anticipation as Ben tore it open.

  There wasn’t much inside, just a slip of paper. Ben took it out. It was a signed cheque from Aragon’s personal account, and it was made out to Mr Benedict Hope. He ran his eye along the figure. A one with a whole line of zeros after it. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, looking up. ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘I never told you about the reward I was offering,’ Aragon said. ‘One million euros for whoever helped me to find Roger’s killers.’ He smiled. ‘You helped me. We got them. It’s yours. Enjoy it.’

  Ben stared at the cheque. ‘Thanks, Philippe,’ he said.

  Aragon smiled. ‘That’s settled then. Have a pleasant journey home. I expect we’ll meet again.’

  ‘But no thanks,’ Ben finished. He handed the cheque back to Aragon.

  ‘You won’t accept?’

  Ben shook his head.