The Martyr’s Curse (Ben Hope, Book 11)

by Scott Mariani

  Ben’s hands were shaking a little and he was breathing hard as he replaced the gold bar in his bag. It had been a long time since he’d been in a real fight. The adrenalin was still rushing through his system. His right trouser knee was wet with blood from Slayer’s mashed nose, and inside his right boot the toes were tingling from the hard kicks and would feel tender later. No other damage, but he’d risked serious hurt for nothing by coming here. He’d wasted time and he was annoyed with himself.

  He stepped behind the desk to the big steel safe that Rollo had abandoned in his haste to get away. Opened the door wider. There was a lot of cash in there, bundled bricks of well-worn hundred-euro notes. Fifty to a brick. Five thousand euros. Forty bricks, in four columns of ten each. In total, something approaching the value of the gold bar. Ben lifted out half the cash and crammed it into his bag. Call it expenses money. At least his visit to Club Paradis hadn’t been entirely pointless.

  He left the place the way he’d come in, through the crowd and past the girls, with the heavy, bulging bag on his shoulder. Nobody paid any attention. He stepped outside into the night, took a deep breath of the sultry air and raised his face towards the churning clouds. The electricity in the atmosphere was reaching its peak, voltage mounting for the storm. He felt the first splat of warm rain on his face. As he started walking back towards the Hummer, it was followed by another, then another; then the murky sky let go and the deluge came down. It soaked his clothes and trickled through his hair. Within moments the pavements were slick and glistening, neon lights reflected under his feet as he walked. Thunder growled and boomed high above. He didn’t try to hurry out of the rain. He had no idea where to go next.

  That was when he felt the buzzing vibration of the phone going off inside his pocket.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  He reached for the phone, thinking at first that it was Rollo calling Eriq to find out what was happening and whether it was safe to come crawling back to Club Paradis. But it wasn’t Eriq’s phone that was ringing. It was the one Ben had taken from the dead man at the monastery.

  Ben hit the reply button and pressed the phone to his ear, standing still in the pouring rain. This had to be the call he’d been hoping for from Luc Simon at Interpol. It was nearly midnight, but Luc worked crazy hours. He’d sacrificed his marriage for it.

  The caller wasn’t Luc Simon.

  Instead Ben heard a woman’s voice, speaking English with the typical transatlantic accent of a bilingual European, as if she’d learned most of the language from watching American movies. She sounded anxious and relieved, both at once. Talking low, like someone afraid of being overheard. ‘Dexter? It’s … it’s Michelle. Are you okay? Thank Christ. I was so scared, then when you called … Dexter? Talk to me.’

  Ben hesitated, realising that his mystery caller must be one of the contacts he’d tried on the dead man’s phone before, returning the call. His pulse quickened as his mind flashed through the possibilities. It could be someone trying to find out who’d taken the phone. Alternatively, it could be someone who didn’t know the guy was dead. Or it could just be the guy’s wife or girlfriend calling him. But then, what did she have to sound so nervous about?

  He thought hard, knowing he had to make some kind of reply. Seconds counted. The name Dexter could be a first name or a surname. Either way, it wasn’t French. It could be British, or American. He cupped his hand over his mouth. Put on a hoarse voice and an accent that was as neutral as he could make it. It was going to be tricky. One slip, and he’d lose her.

  ‘Yeah, it’s me,’ he said.

  There was a long pause on the line. Ben held his breath. Then the woman’s voice said, ‘Where are you? What happened back there? They said you got hit in the crossfire. They said it was an accident.’

  Which told Ben very clearly this wasn’t a call from a wife or girlfriend. She was one of them. He had one chance, one tiny fragile candle-flame of a chance, to find out more. He cupped his hand more tightly over his mouth and held the phone a little distance away. ‘I’m okay, Michelle,’ he muttered hoarsely.

  ‘You sound strange.’

  ‘I’m hurt,’ he muttered. ‘I got out. But I need help.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  Ben’s mind raced. She seemed to believe he was this Dexter. The fish was tentatively hooked. Now, very gently, he had to try to reel it in. He tried to imagine a wounded man, running and desperate. He’d been that man himself, more than once in his time. How far could he have got from the scene in a few hours? Where might he have run for shelter? He thought about the spot from where he’d tried Michelle’s number the first time. The place he’d abandoned the truck.

  He spoke in monosyllabic bursts, covering it with spasms of coughing, like someone would if they’d been shot in the ribs. ‘There’s … kind of a picnic area … Clearing in the woods … Down the mountain, maybe fifteen minutes’ drive, south-east. I … hitched a ride. Got to … get help. Bleeding bad.’

  The story was full of holes. Ben couldn’t imagine anyone giving a ride to a guy in bloody tactical clothes with a bullet in him, any more than he could imagine a badly injured man getting his bearings so right. But it was the best he could do. And the woman called Michelle seemed to buy it. ‘Fifteen minutes south-east of the monastery?’ she repeated anxiously. ‘Is that right? Is that where you are?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he coughed hoarsely. ‘I’m really hurt.’

  ‘I’ll come for you. I’ll help. Hold tight, okay? Give me … oh, Jesus. It’s a long way. Two hours. No, better make that three. Quick as I can, I’ll be there. I’ll find you. You hear me?’

  ‘Hurry,’ Ben croaked. ‘I don’t know if I can … urgghhh …’

  A young couple scurried past in the rain. The girl gave him a very strange look.

  ‘Hold on,’ Michelle said on the phone. ‘Hang in there. Three hours. On my way.’ She ended the call.

  Ben put the phone away and started walking faster towards where he’d left the Hummer. The call had left him totally baffled. Two things he knew for sure: firstly, he’d been following a complete blind alley with the Russians. People with names like Michelle and Dexter were about as Russian as he was. Forget the cigarette. Forget Rollo. So far he couldn’t have been more wrong. He shouldn’t even be in Marseille. Secondly, he had three hours to get back to the clearing. Less, if he wanted to get there ahead of her in time to lie in wait. It had taken him three hours from Briançon, and the clearing was a good way further. But he could make it. He’d just have to speed like a madman.

  She wouldn’t come alone, he knew that. The set-up screamed trap. What she’d said about this Dexter being hurt in the crossfire struck Ben as obvious bullshit. She was trying to trick the man into trusting her. She wasn’t going to help him. She and the others were going to finish the job they’d started, and kill him. Which was fine by Ben. If he could have resurrected the real Dexter for the occasion, he’d have happily watched while they did it. And then the rest of them would be his.

  The sudden twist in events was bewildering. But it was infinitely more than Ben had had just a few moments earlier. His fast walk elongated into a slow run, and then he was sprinting down the slick, shiny pavements with the driving rain stinging his face, until he reached the Hummer and unlocked it and threw his bag inside and himself behind the wheel. Fired up the engine with a roar and squealed the tyres on the wet road as he floored the pedal. He twisted the wheel and slewed the massive vehicle around in the road to point the way he’d come. Less than three hours to retrace his steps all the way back to the first stop he’d made after leaving the monastery.

  Full circle. But now he had something to show for it.

  Ben sped out of Marseille as fast as he dared. Hitting the open road, he was glad of the Hummer’s battery of lights. He let them blaze mercilessly in the face of oncoming traffic. People flashed and honked at him. He was in too big a rush to care. The wipers worked double-time to slap the rain off the screen as his instrument panel glowed like
a fighter pilot’s cockpit. His speed crept up to a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, a hundred and sixty, a hundred and seventy on the long empty straights.

  Fatigue was creeping up on him, too. It had been a hell of a long day, and he faced a long night. Music was the best way to stay awake on a fast night drive. Omar’s on-board CD collection was mostly Motown stuff: a lot of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, some Jackson Five. Ben hunted through radio stations until he found a late-night concert from the summer jazz festival in Juan-les-Pins. It was jazz the way he liked it: wild and frenetic. He cranked up the volume until the Hummer’s cab was vibrating to the sound of wailing tenor saxes and crashing drums while he kept piling relentlessly through the night with his eyes glued to the road speeding by and his mind set on reaching his destination in time. He’d make it.

  And he did. The Hummer’s clock was coming up on 2.45 a.m. as he descended the twisting route beyond Briançon and found the little track leading off-road through the trees. The rain had stopped and the night had cleared, the Milky Way shimmering above the mountains. He killed the lights and engine and let the vehicle coast down the track, peering into the starlit darkness. The clearing was empty, apart from the burned-out wreck of the Belphégor, still sitting there undiscovered since Ben had left it the previous morning. There was no sign of the woman called Michelle.

  Ben let the Hummer trundle on through the clearing and deeper into the trees, until he was confident that it couldn’t be spotted. He climbed out and crept back towards the edge of the clearing. A clump of ferns made a hiding place where he could watch and wait, unseen, for whoever might come down the track. He settled down on the damp, rich-smelling forest floor and made himself as comfortable as he could with his back resting against a tree and the FAMAS rifle across his lap. The glowing hands of his watch read 2.51. He closed his eyes and let himself slip into a half-doze while his senses remained on standby. One hand on the pistol grip of the rifle. Finger lightly resting near the trigger.

  Three o’clock came, and nobody turned up.

  Three-thirty. Still nobody. Nothing but the busy silence of the forest around him. The call of an owl from somewhere in the dark trees. The tiny scuttle of insects among the greenery. The sound of things growing.

  Twenty-five to four in the morning. Ben opened his eyes and wondered if anyone was coming at all.

  Five minutes later he saw the first flash of vehicle lights glimmering through the trees. Heard the purr of a powerful engine and the creak of suspension, the rumble of big tyres rolling down the rutted track. Slowly, silently, he lowered himself deeper behind the ferns and watched.

  The vehicle’s lights swept above his head, across the burned-out shell of the Belphégor, the little toilet block and the empty picnic table. From its silhouette it was some kind of large, dark-coloured SUV. It stopped. The engine and lights died. The handbrake ratcheted on. Doors opened. Torch beams flicked this way and that around the clearing.

  Ben had been dead right. The woman hadn’t come alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The two figures separated in opposite directions from the SUV. The taller, wider silhouetted figure moving towards Ben’s right; the smaller, slighter one to the left. A man and a woman. Ben couldn’t yet see if they were armed, but they were certain to be. It was obvious they were expecting company. Their torch beams cast trembling spotlights that searched slowly around the edges of the roughly circular clearing. If Ben’s hidden position was at the six o’clock mark, the woman was at ten o’clock and her male companion at two o’clock.

  Ben remained perfectly immobile, barely breathing, his pulse slow and steady. Stiller than the stillest part of the landscape, yet completely aware of his environment. It was a skill he’d mastered many years ago. In his SAS days he’d come within three feet of the enemy on several similar occasions, without them having the first idea of his presence so close by. Sometimes he’d stayed hidden until the threat moved on. Sometimes it had been he who was the threat, striking out of nowhere with all the speed, aggression and use of surprise that his training had instilled in him.

  Tonight was going to be one of those kinds of nights.

  The woman’s torch beam swept slowly away from the edge of the clearing and dwelled for a few moments on the burned-out remains of the Belphégor, as if wondering about any possible connection between its being here and her mission. She’d stopped moving. Her male companion was working his way clockwise, probing into the darkness as if studying every leaf and twig. He stepped a little closer to Ben. Five o’clock. Then a little closer still. He was just a yard away through the curtain of ferns. Ben could hear his breathing. He could smell him. He could make out the recognisable boxy profile of the black pistol in his right hand.

  The torch in the man’s left hand swept over Ben’s head. The wobbling pool of light hovered a metre above where he was crouched.

  And Ben moved. Like a section of the darkness detaching itself from the rest, nothing more than a flitting shadow. Faster than it was possible for a human being to react, the man was gripped and helpless in an inescapable chokehold. The torch dropped out of his left hand and hit the ground with a thud, rolled and lay there, its strong beam projecting tiny stones as giant rocks against the edge of the clearing. Ben twisted the pistol clear of the man’s right fist and let it fall. Spun him around, holding him in front of himself like a gasping, choking human shield. The stubby muzzle of the FAMAS hard up against the base of his skull. Said in a calm, clear voice that cut through the night, ‘Drop your weapon.’

  The woman froze for an instant, her torch beam pointed immobile at an empty patch of ground. Ben saw something small and dark fall from her hand and hit the dirt with a thump.

  Ben said, ‘Shine the light on yourself. Do it now. Both hands in plain view. Make no mistake, I’ll shoot you.’

  The woman hesitantly turned the beam on herself and stood there dazzled and blinking, spotlit like an actress on a dark stage who’d suddenly forgotten her lines. The man in Ben’s grip was gasping for air. Ben let the pressure off his throat, shoved him a few staggering steps towards the middle of the clearing, then swung the rifle up and jabbed him hard in the back of the head with its butt. Steel and plastic connected against bone with a meaty sound. The man let out a grunt and collapsed on to his face, a few yards from the ruined truck.

  Ben picked the man’s pistol from the ground and instantly knew from the feel and weight of it that it was a Glock 19: mid-size nine-millimetre semi-automatic, fully loaded. Expensive, professional hardware. Only the very best lowlifes could afford them. He stuck it in his belt and moved towards the woman, training the rifle on her. She was still standing there, lit up like an apparition near the far side of the clearing, blinking and screwing up her face while trying to peer past the bright beam at whatever was happening. He hadn’t been bluffing her. If she tried to bolt, he’d gun her down without thinking twice. He wasn’t given to shooting women. But there were exceptions to every rule.

  He studied her as he stepped closer. She looked young, fresh-faced, no more than about twenty-five, twenty-six. Not tall, but athletic in build, muscular without being bulky, light on her feet. Chestnut hair, pulled back in a ponytail under a plain black cap. She was wearing faded jeans and a well-worn Highway Patrol-style black leather jacket.

  Ben snatched the torch from her as he got close. A solid aluminium tube, heavy with the weight of four large-cell batteries. As good a club as it was a flashlight. He kept the beam in her face and the FAMAS aimed a little way below, at her centre of mass. At this range it would blow a fist-sized hole right through her, and she seemed to know that. He stepped around her right side and shunted her forward with the barrel of the rifle.

  ‘Over towards your friend,’ he said. She began to walk stiffly towards the middle of the clearing. Her companion was beginning to stir, clutching his sore head and groaning in misery. Ben paused a step behind the woman to scoop up her discarded weapon. More of the same serious hardware. A Glock 26, s
ame calibre as the other, a streamlined sub-compact model suited to a smaller hand. Ideal for concealed carry. It fitted comfortably in Ben’s hip pocket.

  ‘That’s close enough,’ he said when the woman was within two yards of her injured companion. ‘Turn round and keep your hands where I can see them.’

  The woman stopped walking and slowly turned to face him, with her arms held stiffly out at her sides, fingers splayed and palms to the front as if to say ‘What did I do wrong?’ She blinked in the torchlight and obviously wanted to shield her eyes, but had the good sense not to make any sudden moves. Her face was tight with tension. She flicked a rapid glance down at her companion, who was struggling to get up to his knees.

  ‘Time for some introductions,’ Ben said. ‘You’re Michelle, is that correct?’

  She nodded, grimacing in the light.

  ‘You have a second name?’

  She hesitated. ‘Faban. Michelle Faban.’ She had the same transatlantic way of speaking English that he’d heard on the phone, but she looked as French as her name suggested.

  ‘And him?’ Ben asked, flicking the torch beam sideways at the man. He was on his knees, head hanging, breathing hard. He was blond, angular in his features. Scandinavian, Ben thought. Or Dutch, or German.

  ‘His name’s Breslin,’ she said. ‘Kurt Breslin.’

  ‘Michelle, you’re going to shine the light on Kurt while I frisk him. Think you can manage that without doing anything silly?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I hope so,’ Ben said. ‘Because if you even think about trying to take a swipe at me, I’ll know before you’ve made a move. And you’ll be dead.’

  She nodded again, and he handed her the heavy torch. He said, ‘On your feet, Kurt. I didn’t hit you that hard.’

  Breslin slowly, warily, pulled himself upright and stood there unsteadily in the brightness of the torch beam. The woman trained the light on them while Ben quickly went through her companion’s pockets. The man’s features were tight and angry in the white beam. Ben found nothing of interest, except a switchblade knife and a roll of duct tape. A few euros in any hardware store, one of the handiest accessories in a kidnapper’s toolkit. He confiscated both the tape and the blade. ‘Now it’s your turn, Kurt. Same goes for you. It’s not a good time for clever ideas.’