The Moscow Cipher (Ben Hope, Book 17)

by Scott Mariani

  Everyone was staring at Ben. He lit another cigarette and took a long, slow drag. He washed that down with a long, slow drink of the red wine. Then he set down his glass. Gave a deep sigh. Looked straight into the eyes of the two desperate people sitting across the table from him. And said:

  ‘I’m sorry. I think the two of you should waste no more time in reporting this to the police. For all their faults, they’re the only ones who can help you right now. It’s out of my league.’

  Chapter 7

  The octogenarian billionaire and his niece said little as they left the farmhouse, looking even grimmer in his case, and more inconsolably distraught in hers, than when they’d first arrived. Ben drove them back to the meadow where their helicopter was still waiting, the pilot patiently absorbed in the sports news. By the time the Land Rover rolled up next to the stationary aircraft Eloise had started gently sobbing. Kaprisky had uttered not a word, nor Ben. There seemed nothing more to say.

  Ben stood and watched as they climbed aboard. Kaprisky managed a brief wave as if to say, ‘No hard feelings’, but it wasn’t entirely convincing. The pilot pulled his switches and twiddled his controls, the turbine fired up and grew in pitch as the rotors began to spin, slowly, then faster, until they began to snatch at the air and the chopper danced and skipped on the ground. Then it rose upward, its downblast flattening the grass. The sunlight glinted along the KAPRISKY CORP company logo on its side as it spun around in the direction from which it had come, and sped off. Ben stayed where he was until it was just a red dot over the green hills of Normandy. He trudged back to the Land Rover, hauled himself up behind the wheel and drove back to the house.

  The yard was deserted, no sign of Jeff or Tuesday or any of the trainees. Walking towards the farmhouse’s door Ben heard the sound of running paws approaching, and turned to see Storm bounding towards him. Storm was a large German shepherd, black and tan with streaks of gold and silver across his shoulders and a thick mane that made him look like a wolf. He was Ben’s favourite of the guard dogs that helped to protect Le Val’s widening borders from intruders, and the feeling was mutual. He and Ben enjoyed a particular kind of entente. If Storm ever got annoyed at the way his master kept disappearing for periods of time, he never seemed to hold it against him. The dog licked his hand and looked up at Ben with amber eyes so full of intelligence that it would have been quite unsurprising if he’d broken into speech like a person. He frowned at his favourite human, seeing something wasn’t right. Storm didn’t miss much.

  ‘Yeah, buddy, it turned out to be a pretty rotten day,’ Ben said, smoothing his soft fur. ‘Coming inside? I wouldn’t mind the company.’

  The shepherd bounded up the steps to the front door after him, and the two of them made their way into the kitchen. Still no sign of Jeff anywhere. The wine bottle, now half-empty, had been put back on the side and the four glasses were upside-down on the draining board by the sink. Jeff was gradually becoming more domesticated thanks to the influence of Chantal, though in this case Ben could have saved him the trouble of washing up. He grabbed one of the glasses and filled it back up with wine, slumped in his chair at the top of the table and began working on finishing the bottle with Storm lying glumly at his feet, having given up trying to cheer his master’s spirits.

  The bottle was empty by the time Jeff reappeared soon afterwards. Ben knew from his footsteps in the flagstone-floored passage and the telltale banging open of the kitchen door that his old friend and business partner wasn’t in the best of moods either. Jeff stalked into the room, saw Ben sitting there, stood with his arms folded and gave him one of his patented hard glares.

  ‘Something on your mind, Jeff?’

  Jeff glared a little longer, then said, ‘Out of your league?’

  Ben stiffened. Knowing a fight was coming. Jeff wasn’t a man to hold back with his opinions, nor to back down in an argument.

  ‘That’s right,’ Ben said. ‘I’ve already explained why.’

  If Ben had declared he was becoming transgender and henceforth wished to be known as Lolita, Jeff wouldn’t have been looking at him with any more incredulity. ‘Bullshit. What’s the real reason? You getting old? Tired out? Not up to it any more?’

  ‘I belong here now,’ Ben said. ‘You and I have a business to run, remember? We’ve got bookings coming in every day, more classes than we can handle and a waiting list as long as your arm, we’re expanding all the time, mortgaged up to our eyeballs; and in case you’ve forgotten, we’re in the middle of looking for a second location to grow the business even more.’

  That idea had been on the cards for a few months. They’d looked at a couple of rural properties in the south of France, though no commitments had so far been made.

  ‘To hell with the business,’ Jeff spat.

  ‘Oh, to hell with the business?’

  ‘You heard the old man. You saw the look on that woman’s face. They need help, and fast.’

  ‘He’s not going to hurt her.’

  ‘He’s not going to give her back, either,’ Jeff said.

  ‘Kaprisky can easily find someone else to do the job.’

  Jeff shook his head. ‘Kaprisky’s going to hit the panic button, is what Kaprisky’s going to do. He’s liable to either bring in the bloody A Team, a bunch of trigger-happy numbskulls who think they’re Dolph Lundgren. Or even worse, he’ll take your advice and call the authorities. Either way he’s going to drive Petrov even deeper underground, or something bad will happen.’

  ‘That’s the risk,’ Ben agreed. ‘But even if I still worked in K&R, which I don’t, I can’t be in two places at once. If I said yes to Kaprisky, there’s no telling how long I could be away hunting for this guy.’

  ‘I can draft in a couple of temporary replacements to cover for you. I could call Boonzie. He knows a million guys out there who’d come in at short notice.’

  ‘I didn’t realise I was so replaceable.’

  ‘We’ll muddle through somehow.’ Jeff unfolded his arms, reached out and spun a chair out from the table and sat down, leaning towards Ben on his elbows and giving him an earnest, penetrating stare. ‘Seriously. This is what you do, mate.’

  ‘Did. We’ve moved on, Jeff. I’ve moved on. I’m retired from all that.’

  ‘Start talking like that, pretty soon you’ll be gathering moss in front of the fire with your fucking carpet slippers on, and a briar pipe in your gob, listening to Bing Crosby albums.’

  ‘That’ll be the day,’ Ben said.

  ‘Want my opinion?’

  ‘Do I have any choice?’

  ‘Nope. My opinion is that if you don’t find this Petrov guy and bring that girl home, you’ll never forgive yourself. I’ve never known you to turn down a chance to help someone who needed it, and I’m buggered if I’m going to stand by and watch you do it now. If you’re afraid of failing, you just need to look in the mirror, ’cause the guy looking back at you doesn’t do failure. And don’t you dare try to put this on me by talking about the sodding business.’

  ‘I have responsibilities,’ Ben said.

  ‘Too right, you do.’

  ‘I’ve already spent far too long away from home, running around the world doing too much crazy stuff.’

  Jeff shrugged. ‘You know what they say. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ Jeff always had an appropriately hackneyed saying to hand.

  ‘Maybe they do. But I wouldn’t want you thinking I was the kind of bloke who’d just up and run off towards trouble at the first beat of the drum.’

  Jeff craned his neck closer over the table, and his eyes bulged. ‘Mate, I already know that’s exactly who you are. So get the bloody hell out there and find that little girl and bring her home to her mother. Because you know you want to.’

  And so it came to pass that, two hours later, Ben Hope was sitting behind the wheel of his silver twin-turbo Alpina B7 with his old green army haversack on the passenger seat next to him, Miles’ Bitches Brew blasting on his speakers and a 180-kil
ometre-an-hour wind streaming in the windows as he tore southwards on the motorway towards Le Mans.

  Persuasive, that Jeff Dekker. And incredibly perceptive, for all his rough edges. He could read Ben’s mind as if his skull were made of glass. As usual, he was dead right. Because despite all his protests and refusals, Ben had known all along he wanted to do this. He was back in the saddle. Back doing what he did best. And the thought of a missing child was the only thing that could take the smile off his face.

  Chapter 8

  The home and reclusive sanctuary of Auguste Kaprisky was a seventeenth-century castle that had formerly belonged to the Rothschild dynasty. The security cordon its current owner had built around himself made entry into his private world something like accessing the Pentagon. If Ben hadn’t called from the road and left a message with Kaprisky’s PA to say he was coming, the armed guards on the gate probably wouldn’t have let him in at all.

  Once inside the perimeter, Ben drove for almost twenty minutes through the vastness of the chateau’s landscaped grounds, past rolling green paddocks where magnificent Arab horses grazed and cantered; past hectares of carefully tended orchards and vines, and along the shores of a perfectly blue glass-smooth lake with boathouses and a jetty where a moored sail cruiser rocked gently in the late afternoon breeze.

  Just as it seemed the grounds might go on forever, the fantastical chateau with its baroque architecture and columns and turrets rose up in front of him like a mirage. A classical fountain with a bronze statue of the goddess Diana the huntress dominated the circular courtyard, spouting jets of water that made rainbows in the air. Ben drove around it and crunched to a halt on the gravel, next to a row of cars. Most men of Kaprisky’s wealth would own a collection of the world’s most expensive supercars, but Ben happened to know that his personal vehicle was the battered, ancient Renault 4 parked nearest the house. He was a strange fish, that Auguste Kaprisky, with his own peculiar sense of priorities. It was rumoured that he put artificial flowers on his wife’s grave, so that he wouldn’t have to replace them too frequently.

  As Ben climbed out of the Alpina a pair of plain-clothes security guys appeared from nowhere and zeroed in on him. Neither was concerned about trying to hide the weapon strapped under his jacket, which their body language made clear they were ready to pull out at the first sign of trouble. They both had the fast eye and alert manner of ex-military men whose skillset had been bumped up to the next level. Ben knew how well trained they were, because he’d been the one who trained them: hence the failure of the attempt on their boss’s life; hence Kaprisky’s eternal debt of gratitude to all at Le Val, and to Ben in particular.

  ‘Easy, boys,’ Ben said to the pair. ‘I’m expected.’

  Recognising him, the guards smiled, nodded and backed down. One of them spoke into a radio. Seconds later the grand entrance of the chateau opened, and a butler in a black waistcoat and white gloves appeared in the doorway to welcome Ben as he climbed the balustraded stone steps. The butler was a small, gaunt man with oiled-back hair, who looked like Peter Cushing. He led Ben through a vast marble hallway that made their footsteps echo all the way to the frescoed dome of the ceiling. The Greek statues lining the walls were probably not plaster copies, Ben thought. The butler stopped at a door that King Kong could have walked through without ducking his head, knocked twice and then ushered Ben inside without a word.

  Kaprisky was pacing by one of the tall windows at the far end of the magnificent salon, overlooking an endless sweep of formal gardens. The billionaire looked twenty years older than he had a few hours ago. Even from a distance the stress of the situation was visibly etched all over his face in deep worry lines. When he saw Ben he came rushing to welcome him with a pumping handshake and tears of gratitude.

  ‘I was unsure what to make of your phone message. Dare I presume that you have changed your mind?’

  ‘It was wrong of me to disappoint you, Auguste,’ Ben said. ‘I’m here now. Let’s get your little girl back.’

  ‘I’m so thankful. I have no words.’

  ‘Any developments since we talked?’

  Kaprisky shook his head gravely. ‘We have heard nothing. The situation is unchanged, except that with every passing moment that brute could be getting further away with Valentina.’

  The salon door burst open. Eloise. She was wearing a different dress from earlier, and had a matching handbag the size of a postage stamp hanging from one shoulder. Her face was mottled from crying, but lit up with sudden joy at the sight of Ben standing there with her uncle. She rushed into the room and hugged Ben so violently that she almost head-butted him in the face and he felt her ribs flexing against his chest. ‘Dupont told me we had a visitor. I didn’t want to believe it was really you. Thank you. Thank you.’

  Ben said she was welcome and managed to detach himself from her death-grip without breaking any of her fingers.

  ‘Now, let us make the arrangements,’ Kaprisky said. ‘Before we begin, we must talk about money.’

  ‘You can keep your money, Auguste. That’s not the reason I changed my mind.’

  ‘Nonetheless, money is the oil that will make the machine run smoothly and enable a happy outcome to this dreadful crisis. You will have every possible resource at your disposal. Anything whatsoever you may require, you only have to ask.’ Kaprisky darted a hand inside his jacket, came out with a tatty old wallet and produced from it a shiny new credit card with the Kaprisky Corp logo emblazoned on its front.

  ‘This is your expense account. It will work in any country or currency in the world. The limit is set at five million euros per week, but that can be extended with one phone call. Please make free use of it. You will of course be provided with an additional sum of cash in Russian rubles, for your convenience.’

  Ben took the card. Five million a week. Unbelievable.

  ‘One more matter. You indicated that your lack of familiarity with the Russian language was a concern; that will no longer be an issue. I am arranging for an assistant to accompany you at all times, to act as guide, interpreter, whatever you require. They will be entirely at your service.’

  Ben wished now that he hadn’t made a big deal of it. The last thing he really needed was a tag-along slowing him down. ‘Who’s that, your man Andriy Vasilchuk?’

  Kaprisky shook his head. ‘His skill is security, not detection. In any case my men will be standing down from the moment you depart for Moscow. Your guide will be the same local private investigator who assisted us previously, a partner in Moscow’s most highly reputed detective agency. As you know, I must always have the best.’

  Kaprisky allowed himself an uncharacteristic dry smile that showed his grey teeth, then glanced down at his watch. He seemed to delight in wearing the cheapest plastic Casio digital going. ‘For the sake of expediency, we should delay as little as possible. When can you leave?’

  ‘Are we forgetting the small matter of a travel visa?’ Ben said. ‘As far as I’m aware, EU citizens still can’t go just waltzing in and out of Russia without the right papers.’

  Kaprisky gave a dismissive little wave of his hand, like brushing off a mosquito. ‘Forget such piffling technicalities. It is already, as you British would say, sorted.’

  ‘In that case,’ Ben said, ‘I’m ready to leave right this minute. I’m assuming the jet’s standing by to take off at a moment’s notice.’ Kaprisky kept the aircraft at Le Mans-Arnage airport, just a few minutes’ drive from the estate.

  ‘Naturally. You will be familiar with your flight crew, I think, from your journey to Africa.’

  There weren’t many things Ben wanted to remember from that particular escapade, but he’d never forgotten the stalwart service of Kaprisky’s chief pilot Adrien Leroy and his Number Two, Noël Marchand.

  ‘Flight time to Moscow will be three hours and eleven minutes,’ Kaprisky said. ‘It will be evening by the time you arrive, and so my chef will be at your disposal to provide whatever you wish to eat. You will land at Vnukovo Internation
al Airport, twenty-eight kilometres southwest of the city. Your assistant will be there to meet you on landing, with a car to take you to your hotel. I hope you will be satisfied with the accommodation.’

  ‘Just the basics, Auguste,’ Ben said.

  ‘Oh, it is nothing remotely fancy, I assure you. But then, a man of your experience is used to the rougher side of life.’

  ‘Just a couple of things before I go,’ Ben said. ‘First, I’d like a photo of Valentina.’

  Eloise unsnapped the tiny handbag, dug inside and pulled out a glossy print. ‘This one is very recent.’ It showed a pretty dark-haired child with lots of light and joy in her sparkling hazel eyes, pictured by the lake. Eloise said, ‘There are more pictures in her room. Would you like to see it?’

  Ben said yes, anything was useful. With her uncle in tow, Eloise led Ben quickly from the salon, through the gleaming labyrinth of marble and priceless rugs and furniture, and up a grand staircase to a bedroom on the first floor. Valentina’s room was the size of a luxury penthouse apartment, with its own bathroom and dressing room and a walk-in wardrobe fit for Marie Antoinette. Everything was pink, from the silk on the walls to the canopy of the Cadillac-sized four-poster bed to the teddy bears clustered on the pillows, and the pillows themselves. There were books everywhere, a precarious stack of them piled on a pink bedside cabinet: Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, a collection of short stories by the same author, Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin and a volume of poetry by Mikhail Lermontov. Ben wondered how many twelve-year-old girls were so heavily into Russian literary classics.

  Eloise saw him looking at the books and explained, ‘She adores reading. And her goal is to become completely fluent in Russian before her father’s fortieth birthday next April, so she can surprise him.’ Eloise let out a deep, shuddering sigh and screwed her eyes shut, shaking her head in anguish. ‘What has he done? What has he done?’

  ‘She’s a clever kid,’ Ben said, to keep it light.