‘I don’t understand any of this,’ Brooke said, shaking her head.
‘You’ve known me a long time,’ he said. ‘Remember when I quit the regiment?’
She nodded. ‘It was such a surprise to me. I heard it through the grapevine that you’d just upped and left. Nobody could understand why. Then I didn’t see you again for four years.’
‘And you asked me then what had happened, and why I’d started up in kidnap and ransom work. Why I wanted to help look for people who’d been snatched. Especially kids.’
‘I remember you didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘I couldn’t talk about it. Not to anyone, not for a long time.’
‘Are you going to talk to me about it now, Ben?’
He nodded. Stubbed out his cigarette, lit another and tossed more logs on the fire. And then, deep into the night, he told her the story.
* * *
It was one that he’d barely spoken of to anyone in twenty-three years, an episode in his life that only a handful of people knew about. And yet one that had marked him more deeply and shaped his world more decisively than any of the wars and adventures, loves and losses, ups and downs that he’d known.
He talked in a low voice, relating it to her almost matter-of-factly, though the pain stabbed him with every word.
He’d been sixteen years old when his whole life had changed. It had been a tradition in the Hope family to take turns choosing their annual holiday location. That year had been Ben’s turn. He’d opened up an atlas, flipped a few pages and found himself looking at the great wide golden-coloured spaces that were North Africa. Thought about forts in the sand and heroic tales of Beau Geste and the Foreign Legion. Jabbed a finger down on the map and said ‘Morocco’.
So Morocco it was. Springtime in Marrakesh had been hot and dusty and filled with amazing sights and sounds for the teenage Ben. Nine-year-old Ruth had loved it too. They’d always been close, but that spring they’d become inseparable companions. Ben had lost endless games of table tennis to her, taught her to dive in the hotel pool, sat up with her in the evenings reading Lord of the Rings out loud while their parents drank gin and tonic and played bridge with the other guests in the bar.
On the third day, Ben had spied Martina in the lobby. Just a year or so older than he was, she’d seemed infinitely more sophisticated and grown up, almost like some kind of movie star. It had been the first real infatuation of what had, up until then, been a pretty sheltered life. He’d never thought a girl like that would look at him twice, so when she’d coyly sidled up to him the next day and asked if he’d take her to visit one of the local souks, he’d hardly been able to believe it.
There was one problem. His parents had asked him to stay in the hotel with Ruth that afternoon while they went to a museum Ben’s mother wanted to see without the encumbrance of kids. The solution had seemed simple: wait until they were gone, then meet up with Martina and bring Ruth along too. He’d felt a little guilty about disobeying his parents, but the lure of Martina had been too powerful a temptation.
It had been a heady couple of hours, basking in the glow of Martina’s beauty and the way she’d wanted to hold his hand as they wandered round the crowded souk looking at all the stalls. There had been exotic crafts and jewellery, snake charmers and performers, amazing tapestries and spices, a whole other world. He’d bought a gift for Martina, and she’d hugged him. For a boy from his over-protective middle-class background, it was intoxicating.
That had been it. The moment that clinched everything that was to follow.
Because in that moment, when he’d taken his eyes off his little sister for maybe ten seconds, maybe even just five seconds, too long, he’d turned around and she was gone.
‘And you never found her,’ Brooke said softly now. There were tears in her eyes.
He shook his head. ‘Everything possible was done, looking back. Embassy, police, the works. My parents even hired private detectives. It was two years before we finally admitted to ourselves that it was pointless carrying on with it.’
‘White slavers?’
He shrugged. ‘Probably. Nobody knows. But it had all the hallmarks, we soon found out. They whisk people away in seconds, and they can move them across enormous distances before anyone’s the wiser. There’s no telling where the victims can end up. They get sold into harems, or into prostitution. A lot of them wind up as junkies. Most of them don’t live very long.’
He let out a long sigh. It was still hard to think about, even harder to talk about.
Brooke was silent for a few moments. ‘You told me once that your mother had killed herself.’
‘Was I drunk?’
‘A little.’
‘It’s true. She did.’
‘Was it because of what happened to Ruth?’
‘She never got over it. And she never forgave me. Neither of them did. By the time I was nineteen, they were both dead. Her from an overdose, him from what I think was a broken heart. I drifted for a while, then joined the army. The rest is history.’
He took a long slug of wine, then went on.
‘The worst thing wasn’t losing Ruth. It wasn’t even knowing that I’d let it happen. It was not knowing what was happening. When I used to think about the things those men might be doing to her, I used to catch myself wishing that she could have been run over by a car or something. At least then it would have been over. Then I’d hate myself even more for thinking that way.’ He paused. ‘Years went by. And one day, I woke up and it hit me that my sister was dead. She just had to be.’
‘And that made it somehow easier to bear, but at the same time you felt even more guilty that her death could be a relief to you.’
‘There’s no escape, is there?’ he said, smiling weakly. ‘You just live with it.’
Brooke looked down at her feet for a moment, gathering her thoughts. ‘Ben, why do you think the woman you saw in Switzerland is Ruth?’
He turned to her. ‘You think I’m imagining it?’
‘Maybe.’
‘That’s what I thought, too. But I’m not.’ He told her all what had happened in Switzerland.
‘So what do you think?’ he asked her when he’d finished.
‘Run that last bit by me again. You chased after this person. You thought it was a guy at first, then realised he was a she. There was a struggle, and that’s when you thought you recognised your sister.’
‘That’s pretty much it.’
‘And you were so shocked that you just let her get away.’ He nodded.
A crease appeared between Brooke’s brows. ‘What are the odds, Ben? That it’s really her?’
‘In principle, pretty small,’ he admitted.
‘And she was wearing a mask?’
‘Standard military and security forces issue black three-hole ski mask. Same kind we use here.’
The line in her brow deepened. ‘I don’t get it. All this pain. Digging up all this past torment, inflicting this on yourself when you can’t be sure. Because, you know, you really can’t.’
‘There’s more to it.’ He paused while he refilled their glasses. ‘One day in autumn, when Ruth was about seven, she was helping my father rake up fallen leaves in the orchard and burn them in a garden incinerator. She was running around near the burner when she slipped and fell and touched her arm against the hot metal. The burn was pretty nasty, and the scar never went away. It was on the underside of her right forearm, about two inches long, crescent-shaped.’ He smiled tenderly at the memory. ‘It was actually quite pretty, smooth and white and perfectly formed. She even got to like it.’
‘So this woman in Switzerland. This neo-Nazi terrorist or whatever the hell she is. You’re going to tell me that she has the same scar?’
‘Exactly the same.’
‘And this is what you’re basing it on? A scar that anyone could have?’
‘Not everyone. I told you, it was very distinctive.’
‘So distinctive, you remember it that clea
rly after more than twenty years?’
‘It’s her, Brooke. I know her. I felt her presence. I looked in her eyes. Ruth’s not dead. She’s out there somewhere, and I’m going to do what I should have done years ago. I’m going to find her.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ben awoke long before dawn, and Ruth was the first thing that came into his mind. He took a quick shower and pulled on jeans and a shirt, then went downstairs and walked straight over to his office. Grabbed a laptop, shoved it under his arm and took it back across the dark yard to the house. He made some coffee, then sat down at the kitchen table and ran an internet search on Hans Kammler.
Top of the results that flashed up on his screen was Kammler’s online encyclopaedia page. It showed a black and white photo of a tall, slim, determined-looking man, caught mid-stride and glancing at the camera. He was wearing the insignia of an SS-Obergruppenführer, and his peaked cap bore the SS silver death’s head icon that had become the twentieth century’s most dreaded emblem of pure evil.
Ben sipped coffee as he read through the text. What Steiner had said about the man had been correct. Born in 1901 in Stettin, Germany, Kammler had trained as an engineer and gone on to enlist in the SS in 1932. Ten years later, now a general, he had been singled out as one of the Reich’s most skilled technicians and personally appointed by Adolf Hitler to oversee the design and construction of facilities for the Nazi extermination camps, including the notorious gas chamber and crematorium at Auschwitz – a task that he seemed to have attended to with single-minded fervour.
By 1944, Kammler’s scientific expertise had taken him even higher within the Nazi hierarchy. He’d been tasked by SS boss Heinrich Himmler to head up the V-2 rocket programme that had rained devastation on London in the later stages of the war. At the same time, Kammler had been put in charge of something called the Special Projects Division, about which there seemed to be very little information available, but which Ben figured had been the German equivalent of the USA’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA.
The man’s death was somewhat shrouded in mystery, too, with accounts ranging from suicide to execution by the Soviets alongside two hundred other SS soldiers in the final days of the war.
So much for the encyclopaedia entry. Ben clicked out of it and started exploring the other links that his search engine had thrown up. Somehow he didn’t think the Hans Kammler on Facebook was the same guy he was after. And the scattering of other results didn’t seem to offer up a great deal, either. Internet conspiracy theory nerds seemed to have run wild with speculation about Kammler’s involvement with the Special Projects Division. Just about all of the remaining search results were links to misspelt and frequently semi-literate forum entries linking Kammler to everything from Nazi occult rituals to time machines to flying saucers.
Ben gulped back the rest of the coffee as he waded through the quagmire with building impatience and frustration. None of this could possibly have any bearing on why anyone would want to kidnap Maximilian Steiner. It was becoming clear that he was going to have to talk to someone – someone who not only knew more about Hans Kammler than the internet could offer, but could also shed light on why Steiner’s documents were so attractive to a gang of neo-Nazi kidnappers. He reckoned the world of Holocaust-denying fascists must be fairly small and close-knit. The problem was getting a foot in the door.
But he had an idea of who might be able to help.
He was just about to shut down the laptop when Brooke walked into the kitchen. ‘Morning,’ she said sleepily. She was still in her dressing gown, her hair tousled, eyes bleary.
Ben stood and pulled up a chair for her at the table. She slumped into it gratefully as he prepared a fresh pot of coffee and put it on the range.
‘Christ,’ she said, resting her face in her palms. ‘Why did I drink so much last night?’
‘My fault. Sorry.’
She looked up at him. ‘Look at you. Fresh as a daisy. How do you do it?’
‘Addled by a lifetime of self-abuse,’ he said. ‘So intoxicated, my body’s given up caring.’
‘Sure. Then you go out for a ten-mile run and you don’t even get out of breath. Some alcoholic you are.’
For his SAS training Ben had once had to carry a thirteen-stone man with full kit and rifle up and down the side of a mountain. He wasn’t sure if he could still do that. Maybe he should give it a try sometime, he thought.
Brooke’s gaze flicked over to the computer. ‘What were you looking up?’
‘SS General Hans Kammler, inventor of the amazing Nazi time machine.’
‘You’re really going to do it, aren’t you?’
‘Look for my sister? Of course I am. I have to.’
The percolator was spitting and bubbling. He grabbed a mug, poured out Brooke’s coffee, added a dash of cream the way she liked it, and set it down in front of her. ‘I know what you think about this,’ he said as he sat down beside her. ‘But finding people is something I do well.’
‘If anyone can find her, you can.’ She paused to sip some coffee. ‘Oh, that’s good. But the real question is, Ben, what are you going to find?’
Ben stared at his hands on the table.
Brooke went on, her voice soft and gentle. ‘First, most likely, if you track down this woman, she isn’t going to be your sister at all. She’s going to turn out to be some crazy stranger who just happens to resemble the image you have of Ruth in your mind, the age she would have been now. Wishful thinking is a powerful force.’
‘I wouldn’t say it’s wishful thinking to believe that my little sister came back from the dead as a Nazi.’
‘That brings me on to the next bit. The worse bit. What if, by some bizarre chance, this person really is your sister? She won’t be the little girl you remember. She’ll have changed. Whether it’s wearing a swastika badge or joining some kind of cult, you have to ask what makes an intelligent person gravitate to this type of extreme behaviour. You don’t know what kind of mental or physical trauma she might have been through, what kind of people she’s been associating with and what severe psychological disturbances she could be experiencing. She’ll be someone you don’t recognise. She might not even remember you.’ Brooke paused. ‘I’m sorry. I’m laying it on thick, and I don’t want to hurt you. It’s just that you need to understand, for your own sake as much as hers.’
‘Everything you say makes perfect sense,’ Ben said. ‘But I won’t change my mind. I’m going after her anyway.’
She nodded and took another sip of coffee. ‘I knew that’s what you were going to say. But promise me that if you find her, and she really is who you think she is, that you’ll let me get involved. I mean, professionally. You’re both going to need help to get through this.’
He nodded. ‘It’s a deal. And thanks. You’re a real friend.’
‘And you’re a real worry.’
He looked at his watch. ‘Time to make the first call of the day.’
‘Who to?’
‘There’s a guy I know at Interpol. Luc Simon. He might be a place to start. I heard he’s high up the food chain these days. He was a cop in Paris when he and I worked together.’
‘Worked together?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Blowing up buildings, taking down bad guys. It was never an official thing. We had a kind of understanding.’
‘I won’t even begin to ask,’ Brooke said. ‘I’m going for a long, hot shower.’
As she left the room, Ben walked over to the phone and dialled the number for the Interpol General Secretariat in Lyon. After giving his name and details to an endless series of receptionists and secretaries who seemed hellbent on preventing him from being put through to the person he wanted, he persisted and finally heard the familiar voice on the line.
‘It’s been a long time,’ Simon said warmly. ‘I didn’t think I was going to hear from you again.’
‘Neither did I, for a while there. You’re a difficult man to get to talk to these days. Congratulatio
ns on your promotion, by the way. Commissioner. Pretty impressive.’
‘I gather you’ve moved on yourself since we last talked. You’re a respectable businessman now.’
‘A regular tycoon. But I was calling about something else. I need your help.’
‘Fire away. I’ll see what I can do.’
‘What do you know about neo-Nazis?’
Simon grunted. ‘Plenty. It’s a growing problem across Europe. You only have to look at the statistics for visitors to Hitler’s birthplace to see the rise. We have extreme far-right groups sprouting up like toadstools all over the place – France, Holland, Austria, Italy, everywhere. Why do you ask?’
‘What about Holocaust deniers?’
Simon thought for a moment. ‘Well, a lot of our shaven-headed, armband-wearing friends make no effort to decry the Holocaust. In fact, some of them would be all too happy if it had been ten times worse. But then you have this diverse splinter group, associated with the neo-Nazi movement but in some ways quite distinct, who want to persuade the world that Hitler never really did these things and that the historical account has been fixed to vilify him.’
‘And he was actually a great guy, he loved his mum, etc, etc.’
‘You get the idea. Quite a strong little subculture going on there.’
‘That’s what I’m interested in. Anyone in particular stand out?’
‘Before I say any more, Ben, I have to ask you why you want to know all this.’
‘Personal interest,’ Ben said. ‘Nothing you’d like to share with me?’
‘I’d rather keep it to myself, Luc.’
‘Only I seem to remember the last time you and I were in contact, you left a bit of trouble in your wake. Like dead men and bullets all over Paris.’
‘That was then, Luc. I’ve settled down now.’
‘Maybe. But some people never change.’
‘Trust me. I just want to talk to someone about a wartime document, written by someone called Kammler.’
‘That’s it? A document? You don’t want to take the document from them, or anything like that?’
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