Ben Hope 05 - The Shadow Project

by Scott Mariani

  ?Come back here, you little fucker,? the guy yelled out. His head felt ready to explode as he staggered to his feet and over towards the hatch, stumbling over the length of iron pipe that the prisoner had hit him with. He tore the .45 auto from his belt and went for the phone in his pocket to alert the others.

  It was gone.

  Rory?s heart was pounding in his throat as he half-ran, half-clambered up a clanking metal stair and sprinted along a railed walkway. He glanced frantically up and down the length of the ship and over the side at the heaving grey-green ocean and shivered in the cold, wondering where on earth he was. Gulls and cormorants were swooping and circling overhead; he could see dark islands on the horizon. His mind was working so fast that he was tripping over his thoughts, but he knew he?d already made two mistakes.

  First mistake: when he?d taken the kidnapper?s phone he?d seen the black butt of a pistol sticking out of his belt. He should have taken it, even if he didn?t know how to work a gun.

  Second mistake: in his haste to get away, he hadn?t shut the hatch behind him. They?d soon be searching the ship for him. He ran on, his footsteps ringing on the walkway.

  A riveted door swung open a few yards ahead, and Rory ducked behind a girder. The two men who came out of the doorway were wearing oil-stained overalls and talking in some language he didn?t understand. They were rough-looking, dirt on their hands and faces unshaven. It sounded like they were sharing a joke. One of them was lighting up a cigarette, and Rory caught a whiff of the smoke as they came past. For a moment he thought he was going to cough, but he clamped it in tight and held his breath. His heart was thudding so hard that he was convinced they would hear it over the rumble of the ship. He shrank behind the girder, trying to make himself as small as possible.

  They walked on by. Rory let his breath out very slowly, waited until they were around a corner and out of sight. Then he darted out from behind the girder and made for the lifeboats up ahead. He dropped down on his hands and knees and crawled under their rusty mountings, where a tattered piece of tarpaulin dangled down to offer some cover. Crammed as deep into the space as he could get, he reached into his jeans and took out the phone he?d stolen from the man. It was switched on, and there was a tiny flicker of reception.

  Rory hesitated. Police or home? Home first. He suddenly wanted to hear his father?s voice so badly. He quickly punched out the number.

  Sabrina was sitting outside on the patio finishing a breakfast of coffee and croissants and gazing out across the lake with Cassini on her lap when she heard the phone ring from inside the house. She twisted her head towards the open sliding glass door. Two rings, three. Adam didn?t come to pick up.

  Of course not, she thought. Her dear brother was too busy bustling about in a panic getting ready for his stupid last-minute conference to think of such things as attending to his visitor or answering his phone. What the hell was wrong with him? He was definitely acting jumpy. He hadn?t wanted breakfast, either, and looked like he hadn?t slept a wink all night.

  She shooed the cat away irritably, jumped up from the deck chair and trotted over to the house. Maybe her big bro wasn?t cut out to be a businessman after all.

  She picked up the phone on the seventh ring. ?Hello, Slaves ?R? Us. How may I help you??

  ?Sabrina??

  ?Rory?? She brightened momentarily. But then the tone of her nephew?s voice made her frown. He sounded scared. No, he didn?t. He sounded utterly terrorised. ?What?s wrong, honey??

  ?Is Dad there??

  ?He?s not around. You sound upset. What is it??

  ?I?m in trouble. I mean really bad trouble. I?ve been kidnapped.?

  Sabrina froze. ?What?? ?I said??

  ?Where are you??

  ?I don?t know. I?m on a boat. No, a ship, in the sea. There are islands.?

  ?Rory??

  ?I?m scared. I?m scared.? He started sobbing. ?Where?s my dad??

  Sabrina gripped the phone in horror. ?Tell me where you are.?

  ?Oh, shit. They?re coming. I??

  There were scraping and scuffling sounds, and then the phone went dead.

  ?Rory? Rory??

  He was gone. Sabrina wanted to scream for Adam, but her throat was so dry and constricted no sound came out. Still clutching the phone, she went running through the house to find her brother. He was in the hallway, carrying a travel bag and a briefcase out to the car.

  ?There you are. Oh my God, Adam.?

  He stopped and stared at her. His face was pale, dark rings around his eyes.

  ?Something?s happened to Rory,? she blurted. ?He?s been kidnapped.?

  ?What? Say that again.?

  ?I?ve just had a call from him. He?s been taken, Adam. Said he was on board a ship or something.? Tears prickled her eyes. ?What?s happening??

  He stared at her a second longer, then broke into a twisted grin. ?Sabrina, that?s not possible. I talked to him just a few minutes ago.?

  Sabrina looked at him incredulously.

  ?This is something he?s been doing lately. Playing practical jokes. You?re not the first person he?s tricked this way. Last time it was he?d been taken up into an alien spacecraft.?

  ?But ? it sounded real. He was terrified.?

  Adam?s grin widened an inch. ?He could be an actor one day, that one. Anyway, he called on his mobile to say hi to you and that he?s sorry he missed you. He?s having a great time at tennis camp.?

  She scanned his face carefully, trying to read his expression. The smile was steady, but there was something in his eyes that made her wonder. ?What the hell?s going on, Adam??

  He shrugged. ?Like I said. Consider yourself Rory?s latest victim.?

  ?I don?t know. It doesn?t sound right.?

  ?Anyway, listen, I?m all ready to go.?

  ?You?re leaving? Now??

  ?I did say I had to go.?

  ?But the call??

  ?Don?t worry about it. Trust me.?

  She sighed loudly. ?I still can?t believe you?re leaving me here alone like this.?

  ?I?ll make it up to you next time, I promise.? He put down his bags and hugged her tightly the way he?d done when she?d arrived, and she could feel the tension in his body. It was almost as if he thought he was never going to see her again.

  Chapter Ten

  Within twenty-four hours of Rupert Shannon?s admission to hospital, Ben?s idea had become a detailed plan, and the plan had quickly developed into a reality. The two-day training course had been cancelled, and Shannon?s close protection team had returned to London to gather their equipment and be picked up at Heathrow by a private jet belonging to Maximilian Steiner. Meanwhile, Ben was making his own way to Switzerland. He didn?t know when he?d be back.

  He hated the idea, but it was the only way to resolve the situation. After his conversation with Jeff, he?d called Shannon?s lawyer in London to suggest the only course of action he could see: to take the injured man?s place as team leader, unpaid, until the damaged arm was healed and Shannon was able to resume his role.

  After letting Ben stew a little, the lawyer had called back to say that his client had agreed to the deal, and that the new arrangement had been squared with Steiner?s people. In practice, it meant that the team would arrive in Switzerland a day earlier than planned, giving them time to settle in before meeting their billionaire employer.

  So it was done. Ben was on his way to a new job. Jeff had been ready to drive him to the airport at Cherbourg, but he?d wanted to take the Mini Cooper. Sitting on a plane with nothing to do except stare out of the window and brood over his situation wasn?t his idea of a good time. Driving to Switzerland to do a job he didn?t want to do wasn?t much better, but at least it would give him something to occupy his mind.

  It was a long drive across France. He left early and stuck to the fast roads, cutting eastwards as directly as he could. By the time he bypassed Paris the traffic was building up, and it stayed busy until he hit the countryside beyond the city. He let the CD player loop the same Stefano
Bollani jazz piano album round and round at high volume and kept his foot down at a steady eighty, stopping only for fuel and tolls. The concentration of driving helped, but it didn?t completely silence the voices in his head that asked him over and over again: Why? Why?

  When the voices reached a fever pitch he just gritted his teeth, gripped the wheel tightly in his fists and stared fixedly ahead as the white lines in the road zipped towards him and waited for his mind to go numb. It never really did.

  Sometime in the afternoon he started seeing the first signs for Switzerland, and a little while after that he passed over the border. Most of the traffic was bound for Bern and Lausanne, and thinned out as he followed the winding route upwards into alpine country. The road carved through rolling valleys and pine forests, green fields criss-crossed with country lanes and dotted with farms and villages. He passed through golden acres of sunflowers under a vivid azure sky. Watched the sunlight glitter off the blue-white mountains that hovered over the landscape like distant mirages. The shimmering reflection of the trees was mirrored in the surface of a vast lake. A wooded island rose up out of the water, the grey stone towers of an old monastery peeping through the foliage.

  It was the kind of scenery that could take a person?s breath away. But Ben could leave it until another time to appreciate things like the majestic splendour of nature. He kept moving on hard, following the directions he?d been given, and, as the sun turned from gold to red and sank down to kiss the mountaintops, he found himself approaching the secluded Steiner residence.

  The estate wall seemed to go on forever. Then, arriving at a set of high iron gates, Ben was stopped by uniformed guards who questioned him and scrutinised the photo on his ID very carefully before waving him inside.

  The gates whirred open to let him pass. Cameras mounted on the gateposts and the pretty stone gatehouse swivelled to watch him as he drove on through. Then there was another mile or so of private road, winding through a wood so neat that it looked as if every tree had been placed there by a designer. Ben came to a second set of gates and more guards with radios who waved him on without a word. He drove through a high stone archway and down a broad gravel path, and the trees parted and he caught his first view of the great Maximilian Steiner?s home.

  Even with all the troubles on his mind, he whistled to himself at the sight of it. He?d been in some moneyed environments in his time, but this was the kind of property that mere millionaires could only dream of.

  You couldn?t call this a house, nor even a mansion. The alpine ch?teau was a thing of fantasy. The sun?s dying rays glimmered off towers and turrets, columns and arches. It could have been the home of a Bavarian monarch from three centuries ago, but the gleaming white stonework looked as though it had been built yesterday. Around it, acre after endless acre of sweeping lawns and gardens that looked like they?d need an army of groundskeepers to maintain them. Ben wondered at the size of the staff that Steiner must keep on site.

  Now he was one of them. Great. Just great.

  He ran back through what he knew about his new employer. He?d dug up plenty of information online to explain how the Steiner billions were generated: pharmaceutical companies, oil refineries, heavy industry and aviation, with one of Europe?s largest fleets of corporate jets. By contrast, virtually nothing was revealed about the man himself that could have shed more light on the kidnap threat against him.

  But even without knowing the full details, Ben could imagine the scenario pretty well. The kidnap business was just like any other. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, barring the occasional revenge job or sex abductions, it came down to money, pure and simple. And he?d seen enough of that world to know the kind of people who would be drawn to the idea of grabbing a guy of Steiner?s extreme wealth, whisking him away to some dingy basement somewhere nobody could ever find him, keeping him chained and starving with a pair of bolt-croppers on standby in case the family needed persuasion of their serious intentions. A finger in the mail was a highly effective means of getting the ransom paid. Ben had seen it all before. And had kind of hoped he wasn?t going to see it again.

  The ch?teau loomed like a sculpted quartz mountain as he approached, and he felt ridiculously dwarfed by it. He pulled the Mini up on the gravel at the bottom of a flight of polished white stone steps that were maybe not quite wide enough to accommodate the wingspan of a Boeing 747 and climbed out, stretching his legs after the long drive.

  Someone was coming down the steps to meet him. A man in a beige suit, around fifty, a little shorter than Ben and lightly built with the delicate frame of a lifelong desk guy. As the man walked closer, Ben could see his eyes were sharp and his face lean, the thin hair neatly parted and combed. He put out his hand and greeted Ben in English, which he spoke with only a trace of an accent. The warmth of his smile seemed genuine.

  ?Mr Hope? So pleased to meet you. My name is Heinrich Dorenkamp. I am Herr Steiner?s PA. I trust you had a pleasant journey??

  Ben wasn?t in the mood for niceties, but he returned the smile as Dorenkamp seemed to warrant it. ?Very pleasant, thank you.?

  ?Herr Steiner is very much looking forward to making your acquaintance. Regrettably it will not be today. He is tied up in meetings for the rest of the evening.?

  ?A busy man,? Ben commented.

  Dorenkamp flashed a grin and chuckled. ?You have no idea.?

  A guy in his early twenties who looked like a valet emerged from a side entrance and walked over to them.

  ?Dieter will take your car and have your luggage sent on to your quarters,? Dorenkamp told Ben. ?The garage blocks are situated to the rear of the east wing. All fully secure, naturally.?

  Ben handed the Mini?s key to Dieter, and watched as his little car was driven off across the gravel and round the side of the ch?teau. He wondered how anyone was ever going to find it again among the Rolls-Royces, Aston Martins and Bugattis that he imagined filled the garages of a man like Maximilian Steiner.

  Dorenkamp smiled again. ?Now, please allow me to escort you to the guest accommodation, where the rest of your team are waiting for you. They arrived here late this afternoon.?

  My team, Ben thought, and cursed himself one more time for good measure. From the opposite direction another member of staff came rolling up in a white golf buggy. Dorenkamp motioned to the back seats. ?We generally use these for getting around. It is a big place.?

  Ben didn?t reply as he climbed into the open buggy. Dorenkamp settled in beside him and the electric vehicle darted off through the grounds with surprising speed. As the sunlight faded, concealed floodlamps were beginning to burn brighter, lighting up the house and grounds. Around the side of the ch?teau, the view opened up to show more panoramic acres of perfectly clipped lawns, so green that they looked unreal. Ben said nothing, taking in his surroundings as they cut across the estate. In the distance he could see the little flags of a golf course waving in the light breeze.

  ?You play, Mr Hope?? Dorenkamp asked.

  Ben shook his head and was about to reply when the buggy rounded another gigantic column and the PA said, ?And here are your quarters.?

  The accommodation was no ch?teau, but it was still spectacular enough to make Le Val look like a rustic hovel. The ultra-modern building was built into the side of a hill, its roof grassed over and dotted with wildflowers. Its white facade was smooth and undulating, a post-modern complex of caves with huge oval windows. Stylistically it was completely at odds with the ch?teau itself, but Ben had never seen a building so organically blended into its natural environment.

  Dorenkamp noted his reaction with approval. ?Designed by the architect Peter Vetsch. The inside is extremely well appointed. I don?t think you will be unhappy here.?

  The inside was as white as the outside, the lines clean and elegant. The floors were granite tile that had been polished to a mirrored sheen, and the furniture was gleaming oak and white leather. Kandinsky and Paul Klee adorned the walls, and Ben would have bet they weren?t copies. A giant TV and sound
system nestled discreetly in an oval wall alcove.

  The worst thing about the place was the other occupants. Shannon?s guys had already got comfortable, slouching on the leather armchairs with their feet up on tables and bags, cases, clothing, shoes and magazines scattered about the main sitting area. Their laughter and conversation died down abruptly as Ben and Dorenkamp walked in. Ben met the six pairs of hostile eyes and his first thought was to ask himself why he wanted to cringe with embarrassment on behalf of someone else?s team. Shannon really could pick them.

  If Dorenkamp noticed the change in the atmosphere or was shocked by the mess, he didn?t show it. Peeling back the sleeve of his jacket, he looked at his watch.

  ?I?m pleased to see you are making yourselves at home, gentlemen. I must return to Herr Steiner?s meeting. Dinner will be brought to you at seven thirty.?

  He was about to leave, then seemed to remember something. ?One other point I should make clear to you all,? he said with an apologetic smile. ?I am unaware whether there are any smokers among you, but I should make it clear that smoking is strictly disallowed anywhere within the estate.? He pointed up at the ceiling, and Ben saw there was an alarm discreetly blended into the plasterwork. ?It is very sensitive, and it makes quite a noise, believe me.? Dorenkamp smiled again. ?Now, gentlemen, I shall leave you to settle in.?