‘You’re a government agent. As of tonight, I’m effectively a fugitive. Figure it out.’
‘If I wanted to resist you, don’t you think I would have by now? I could handle you.’
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Ben said. He put on the flat cap. Crouched down and poked a hand under the truck’s dirty sill, felt about among the dirt-encrusted suspension members and came up with fingers caked in black grease. He smeared a little on his face and wiped the rest down the front of the boiler suit.
‘It’s a great look,’ she said acerbically.
Ben grabbed the tarp from the load bed. ‘We’ll be coming up on a police roadblock soon. I’m going to have to ask you to snuggle down in the footwell for a while. If I don’t think you can manage that without complaining or making noise, I’ll have to tape your mouth up again.’
‘You’re just going to drive on through? These are trained police officers. Do you think they’re stupid?’
‘If they’re not, then I’ll just have to shoot my way through.’
‘You really are crazy.’
‘You want the tape?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll be quiet.’
‘Good.’ He racked the passenger seat back as far as it would go to give her space to cram herself down as low as possible, then covered her with the tarpaulin. He got back behind the wheel. Lying in the nook of the steering column and the dusty instrument panel was an old briar pipe, filled with some kind of tobacco that might have been dried horse manure. He clamped the worn stem between his teeth and lit the bowl with his Zippo as he drove. He coughed at the first acrid sting of the awful smoke.
‘Something’s burning,’ said a muffled voice from under the tarp.
‘Shush,’ Ben said. He drove on. The rubber boots gave little clutch or throttle control, but then the pickup was no thoroughbred. After rattling along for another kilometre, they rounded a bend and Ben saw his guess had been right. A pair of Renault Mégane police cars flanked the road up ahead, their headlights bright, their roof bars casting a blue swirl over the roadside bushes and trees. Two uniformed cops saw the truck approaching and stepped up to meet it. They were holding torches and both had holstered pistols on their utility belts. One was carrying the reliable old MAT-49 submachine gun on a sling, dangling at an angle across his chest. The other waved the Toyota down.
Ben stopped, and the two cops walked up to the vehicle. The one with the submachine gun stood blocking the way with a scowl on his face, as if all he wanted in the world was to get into a shoot-’em-up with a carload of villains. This was probably the most exciting night of his career. The other came round to the driver’s door, an older man, paunchy and jaded-looking. Ben wound down his window and a cloud of pipe smoke wafted out to meet the torch beam that panned around the inside of the cab. The light hovered over the plastic tarp that covered a kidnapped government agent, then flicked up at Ben, dazzling him. Then it did a quick tour of the back seats, flashed over the green canvas of Ben’s bag containing stolen cash and gold bullion, and over the black fabric of the holdall stuffed with military rifles and ammunition.
Ben sat calmly behind the wheel, the pipe dangling casually from his mouth. His right hand lay relaxed in his lap, just inches from the Glock 26 that it would have taken him less than half a second to draw and put in the cop’s face.
‘Where are you headed this time of night, monsieur?’ the cop asked.
Ben shrugged. He put on a gruff local accent. ‘Looking for Max.’
‘Who’s Max?’
‘My dog,’ Ben said. ‘Gone and run off again. Bitch in heat somewhere, is my guess. You haven’t seen him, have you?’
‘No, we haven’t seen your dog,’ the cop said irritably. ‘What kind of dog is it?’
‘Wolf dog,’ Ben said, which was the commonest French slang for a German shepherd, chien loup. ‘Big shaggy bastard. Goes for miles. Should’ve shot the randy fucker a long time ago.’
The light shone in Ben’s face a moment longer as the cop took in the dirty boiler suit, the nasty old hat, the grease stains, the pipe, the whole look. Unshaven and dressed like the roughest backwater hick, Ben could be pretty certain he didn’t bear much resemblance to any photo that had been circulated to the police. Probably the one that his former business partner Jeff Dekker still hadn’t taken down from the company website, last time Ben had bothered to look. He’d had his hair cut military-short and worn a tie for that one, to impress potential clients. It seemed like another lifetime.
‘So what’s up?’ Ben asked in the gruff accent. ‘You looking for someone?’ He took another puff of the pipe. The choking fumes swirled like ocean fog around the torch beam. The cop gave a splutter and stepped back from the window. Ben wasn’t sure if it was because of the pipe or the chicken-shit smell of the boiler suit. Either way was fine by him.
‘Not you, that’s for sure,’ the cop said. ‘Okay. Move on. Hope you find your dog.’ He signalled to the one with the submachine gun, who stepped aside to let the truck pass. He looked disappointed, but maybe the next vehicle they’d stop would be full of Mafiosi bristling with automatic weapons. Ben wound up his window and drove on with a rattle of loose exhaust. In the mirror, the two cops ambled back to their cars and then were lost from view.
Ben replaced the pipe on the dashboard and said in his own voice, ‘You can come out now.’
The tarpaulin crackled as Silvie shoved and crumpled it aside and heaved herself up on to the seat. She looked at him. ‘Max?’
Ben shrugged.
She shook her head. ‘I take back what I said. Maybe they really are that stupid.’
‘Thanks for acting like a model hostage. I’m glad I didn’t have to shoot you.’
‘You’re welcome. So what now?’
The first streaks of dawn were breaking over the mountains. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The routier café was open early in the hopes of catching some business from passing long-haul truckers. It was a low, stretched-out building off the road, with a car park big enough to turn articulated lorries but mostly empty apart from a panel van and a smattering of early-bird customers’ cars. The sun was coming up. It was going to be another warm day. By now, Ben had already discarded his farmer’s disguise and flung the stuff into the pickup’s load bed. The worst of the greasy dirt on his face was wiped off with a rag. They wouldn’t have let him into the Ritz, but he was presentable enough for this place, all right.
He was light-headed from lack of sleep and couldn’t remember his last meal. ‘You know the routine,’ he said as they crossed from the parked Toyota towards the café entrance. ‘Try not to look like a prisoner, and don’t forget I have a gun in my pocket.’
The place didn’t look too appetising, or even too clean, but Ben was too tired and hungry to care. He walked Silvie past the few occupied tables, where people who looked even wearier than him tucked into brioches and breakfast fry-ups. The aromas of sizzling bacon and fresh coffee reached Ben’s nose and made his mouth water. He ushered Silvie to a table right at the back, away from the other diners. They sat opposite one another on soft vinyl bench seats, next to the window from which Ben could see the Toyota. The glass was grimed with dust and dirt on the outside and grease and fingermarks on the inside, and had a faded sticker saying Défense de fumer. Ben dumped his green bag on the seat, took off his jacket and laid it next to him with the hidden butt of the Glock close to his hand. When a bored-looking waitress descended on them moments later, he ordered a large pot of coffee, sausages and bacon and mushrooms and fried bread. Silvie asked for fruit juice and a croissant. Ben took out his cigarettes.
‘You always smoke this much?’ she asked as he lit up.
‘I had seven months off. Making up for lost time,’ he said. He leaned back and puffed away.
‘It’s unhealthy.’
‘So’s hanging out with guys like Kurt Breslin,’ he said.
‘There’s a No Smoking sign there right next t
o you.’
‘So arrest me,’ Ben said. He reached over and pulled open the straps of his bag, dipped his hand down to the bottom and found the cool smoothness of the gold bar. He lifted it across with both hands and laid it on the thin wood veneer of the table, which seemed to sag under its weight.
‘Evidence,’ he said.
Silvie’s eyes widened at the sight. ‘You weren’t bullshitting me.’
‘Your man Dexter had two of them on him.’
‘Why?’
‘You tell me. Looked like he’d taken them for himself.’
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘Aside from those, I found another two lying around, as if they’d been in a hurry and weren’t too bothered about losing the odd one.’
‘Which suggests that there must have been a hell of a lot of it,’ Silvie said, staring at the bar.
Ben nodded. ‘My thoughts exactly. Enough to keep them busy for hours bringing it up and loading it into the raid vehicle.’
She frowned. ‘That’s what troubles me. Surely a load like that would have filled up most of the vehicle. It’s big, but it’s not that big. And it was carrying a full complement of passengers, plus all kinds of other equipment. How come I didn’t see anything, when I got a peek inside?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ben said.
‘And why would Streicher have kept the entire haul on board a single vehicle when the smart thing to do would be to distribute it among several? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘That’s not all that doesn’t make sense,’ Ben said. ‘I still don’t understand why they needed the second charge.’
‘To seal off the hole? Cover their tracks?’
‘Then why didn’t they drag all the bodies in there too? Including the body of their own man, which they left lying out in the open for anyone to find?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘And why go to the trouble of setting up a timed charge to seal up the hole, if they’d already emptied the treasure out of it? There was nothing more to hide.’
‘Maybe they just wanted to create a diversion. The hour’s delay would give them plenty of time to get far away. Maybe it was intended to take out anyone who might come snooping. Or maybe the timing device was faulty.’
‘Too many maybes.’ Ben saw the waitress approaching and slid the gold bar back into his bag. The waitress took no notice of Ben’s cigarette, instead dumped her tray on the table between them and left without a word. Ben stubbed out the Gauloise on his saucer and launched straight into his food. For two minutes he said nothing more as he demolished most of his plateful and drank a pint of hot black coffee. Silvie sipped her fruit juice and picked at her croissant.
‘Then there’s the matter of how he even knew the gold was there,’ Ben said at last. Full of protein and carbohydrates, fats and caffeine, he felt halfway human again already. All he needed now was about twelve hours’ sleep.
‘If Streicher makes it his business to find out about something, believe me, he does,’ Silvie said. ‘I told you he was insane, and I wasn’t kidding. He has the kind of abnormal capacity for single-minded focus that’s associated with all kinds of psychiatric conditions. Like an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but apparently without any of the anxiety. Once he gets fixed on a subject, he can literally talk about it all day and all night. It’s way beyond normal enthusiasm. I’ve witnessed some of his monologues. One night, weeks ago, before he moved us to the house in Lausanne, he was there with Hannah Gissel and some of the others. They were in the living room, drinking wine. I overheard some of the conversation, except it wasn’t so much a conversation as Streicher himself just talking, and talking, and talking, almost as if he didn’t care whether anyone else was listening, or even there. He gabbled on and on about a crypt. Deep underground, carved out of solid rock. But no mention of where it was, or in what kind of place. He said it was full of secrets.’
‘Secrets?’
She nodded. ‘Ancient secrets. Ones that had been almost completely forgotten over the course of centuries. Only he had been able to connect the facts. How he was going to make history. How he was going to be remembered. And on, and on.’
Ben said, ‘Père Antoine talked about secrets too.’
‘Père Antoine?’
‘The prior of the monastery. I got to know him well, though not so well that he’d confide anything more. Something about the place’s history seemed to trouble him.’ Ben told Silvie about his discovery of the walled-up crypt, and how the old monk had been unwilling to discuss it. ‘When I tried to press him, he clammed up and changed the subject.’
‘He must have known they were sitting on a pile of gold,’ Silvie said. ‘There are probably hundreds of ancient treasures all over France, waiting to be dug up, and thousands of speculators who’d do anything to get a piece of them. The last thing a very private, secluded place like a monastery needs is a load of noisy attention. Maybe he was nervous about people finding out, the media getting wind of it, all kinds of hysteria and TV crews and crowds of idiots with cameras gathering outside the gates.’
Ben considered the idea for a few moments as he chewed on a piece of fried bread with mushrooms and washed it down with more coffee. ‘It didn’t sound to me as if he was talking about treasure. He mentioned ghosts from the past. Things that ought to be forgotten about. Like a dirty secret. Something shameful from days gone by. Something so terrible that it was still impossible to talk about it. That was the impression I got. And there was more down there in the crypt than just gold bars. I saw it for myself.’
Silvie frowned over the rim of her glass as she sipped the last of her fruit juice. ‘What?’
‘Old bones,’ Ben said. ‘Human skeletons. Piles of them. It was hard to tell how many. Scores of them, maybe hundreds. Men, women and children.’
‘A mass grave?’
‘More than a grave,’ Ben said. ‘Worse than a grave. They were shackled and chained to the floor. Nobody does that to a corpse. These people had been taken down there, walled up and left to die, a very long time ago.’
‘Underneath a monastery? Who would do something like that?’
‘The church authorities of the day,’ Ben said. ‘Nobody else would have had the power. And I think that Père Antoine knew about it. I think that was the secret he wouldn’t talk about.’
‘Horrible.’
‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘Very horrible.’
Silvie leaned forward with her elbows on the table, gazing emptily down at the wood veneer, her brow slightly furrowed and her lips pursed, as if she were thinking hard.
‘What?’
‘This may sound weird, but did Père Antoine ever talk about a curse?’
Ben looked at her. ‘A curse?’
She nodded. ‘Don’t ask me for details. All I know is what I heard Streicher talking about that night. I remember that he kept mentioning something about a blind man’s curse.’
‘What blind man?’ Ben said, baffled.
‘In history. I think he was the one who cast the curse, or whatever it was. A priest, I think. I’m trying to remember his name. Damn it, what was it? Someone the blind.’
‘That would make sense, I suppose,’ Ben said, barely interested.
She ignored him and clicked her tongue in frustration. ‘Salvator. That was it. Salvator l’Aveugle.’
The name reminded Ben of Rollo le Tordu. Funny how a person could become so inextricably associated with their disability that it merged with their identity. Right now, he was Benoît le Confondu. Benedict the Confused.
‘Well, I don’t believe in curses,’ he said.
‘But secrets are another matter,’ Silvie said. ‘This has something to do with the monastery, I’m sure of it. If we could understand it, I think it would explain how Streicher knew about the gold.’
Ben was silent for a beat. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere. You promised you’d tell me what you knew.’
‘I also warned you how little that was. Like I said, you’
ll be disappointed. It wasn’t exactly a successful mission as undercover insertions go. It’s not a career-maker. In fact, in four months I was able to discover virtually nothing more than what I was briefed on going in.’
‘Which was?’
‘Key facts,’ she said. ‘That Udo Streicher is Swiss, that he’s forty-six years of age, that he has absolutely no criminal convictions or record of any kind, not so much as a library fine, and that he’s very wealthy. His family made their millions in shoes, although he never worked for the business. He trained as a dentist. For a time he owned a private practice in Geneva. All totally legitimate and above board.’
‘A dentist,’ Ben said blankly.
‘He’s also a certified pilot, holds a Swiss private licence. He’s exactly six foot tall, weighs about a hundred and fifty pounds, has dark hair greying at the temples, grey eyes, has no known home address whatsoever and is of prime interest to certain government agencies, who it seems have closely guarded reasons for believing he’s on the verge of something big.’
Ben stared at her. ‘On the verge of something big?’
‘I know. It’s a hell of an insult to the people he’s already hurt. But my superiors wouldn’t consider what he’s done to your friends as something big. Take it from me. What they’re thinking of is in a completely different league. Killing a few monks is nothing by comparison. Minor collateral damage. That’s just the way it is.’
‘All right,’ Ben said. ‘So just what is this master plan they’re all so het up about? What is it we’re supposed to be waiting for Streicher to pull off next? Was the raid on the monastery some kind of dry run for something? Was the idea to steal the gold to finance a bigger project?’
‘I’ve already asked myself those same questions.’
‘And what about answers?’
‘For that, you need to be talking to DGSI.’
‘I thought that’s what I was doing. So far you’re not giving me much.’
Silvie gave a short laugh. ‘Pay grades, remember? You think my superiors tell me everything? I’m just a plain vanilla field agent. Way down the chain of command. Expendable. Not someone the agency trusts with privileged information. If Streicher’s people had got suspicious of me and applied pressure, that is to say whatever kind of torture they might use to make me talk, waterboarding or hot irons, they’d quickly have realised I knew nothing. They’d simply have disposed of me, and the agency would come up with another plan for getting inside the operation. In effect, I was piggy in the middle. Which pisses me off, more than a little bit. In no way is that what I signed up for.’
The Martyr’s Curse (Ben Hope, Book 11) Page 19
