The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (58 page)

Werner Kroll rolled back the sleeve of his dinner jacket and peered at the gold Longines on his wrist. He signalled to Glass on the other side of the ballroom. Glass nodded. It was time.

Dr Emil Ziegler was standing on the edge of an animated conversation near the grand fireplace when he felt the tap on his shoulder. Ziegler turned, looking over the top of his spectacles. ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir,’ Glass said, bending down to speak in his ear. ‘You’re wanted on the phone.’

Ziegler’s chubby face registered no surprise. He nodded, walked stiffly over to a nearby table and laid down his champagne flute. He smoothed back his thin grey wisps of hair, made his excuses to the group, and started making his way to the door.

Glass did his rounds. Nobody noticed as the twelve men left the party. Their exit was discreet and casual. They all knew exactly where they were going.

Eve watched them slip away. In six years she’d witnessed this seven times. Or was it eight? It was always the same polished, well-orchestrated performance. The
party guests would barely notice the absence of the grey-haired men, and nobody else had the slightest idea of where they were going. Or what was about to happen. As the last of the twelve left the room, Kroll and Glass exchanged brief glances. Kroll checked his watch again and looked satisfied. He headed for the doorway, Glass following a few feet behind.

Eve sipped her champagne and felt sick.

Nobody but members of the group had ever walked down the hidden corridor, one of the many secret passageways that honeycombed the old house. It was long and stark, lit by neons, the walls plain white and the floor bare concrete. At the end of the corridor was a waiting area. There were twelve wooden chairs, a low table with a jug of water and some glasses.

The twelve men gathered in silence, exchanging little more than a few nods. Emil Ziegler cleared his throat and poured himself a glass of water. Thomas Blochwitz glanced at his watch, mopped sweat from his pale forehead and took a puff from an asthma inhaler. Peter Gienger paced the waiting room. Ziegler watched him irritably. ‘Do you have to pace like that?’ he snapped. Gienger sat down.

They had little to say to one another. Their association wasn’t based on friendship. It was a business relationship that went deeper than loyalty, deeper even than money. When this was over, they wouldn’t see or speak to one another for a while. Until the next time. None of them knew when that would be. The signal would come, sooner or later. It always did.
The decisions were not theirs, but they knew and trusted that every time they met here like this, it meant a consolidation of their collective business interests. Tonight’s event was, for some of them, a very considerable consolidation indeed. It was the removal of a serious threat that had caused all of them a good number of sleepless nights over the past months.

Some of the men looked up as footsteps echoed down the bare corridor. Kroll appeared in the doorway. Glass stood behind him.

‘Gentlemen,’ Kroll said softly. A thin smile tugged at the corners of his lips. ‘I believe we are ready.’

Ben had seen these stone walls before. They were deep in the heart of the house now. The classical décor was behind them. In front of them was an arched bridgeway that Ben knew would take them where it had taken Oliver almost a year earlier.

He led the way through the arched passage and laid a hand against the heavy wooden door at its end. It was open. He pushed gently and stepped through.

They were standing on a high gallery overlooking the interior of the private church below.

Gardier’s whispered voice buzzed urgently in his earpiece.
‘Subjects have left
’, he said.
‘Presume heading
your way. I have no visual contact. Repeat, heading your
way
.’

Just a little moonlight seeped through the stained-glass windows, throwing long shadows across the church’s interior. The flagstones were plain and grey. Polished wooden pews gleamed dully.

Ben’s mouth went dry and his heart began to pound. He didn’t want to believe what he was seeing, but it
was undeniable. It wasn’t the room Oliver had captured on film. This was a completely different place.

He glanced around him. There were no doorways leading off anywhere, just the one they’d come in.

He could sense O’Neill and the others behind him, watching him and wondering what was wrong. His mind started to race, filling with thoughts that swelled his fears.

Kroll’s associates were heading for a completely different part of the house. Kroll had anticipated him, double-bluffed him. Eve had tricked him a second time. He’d walked right into it. He’d given Aragon away to them on a plate. He was out of time. And he was leading his team into a trap.

‘What now?’ O’Neill asked.

Ben said nothing.

‘What do we do, sir?’ There was an edge of worry to the Irishman’s whisper.

Ben said nothing.

Down below them, there was a grating sound of stone on stone. In the shadows of the church, in the middle of the aisle between the rows of pews, something was moving. A flagstone scraped sideways. A dark figure of a man seemed to emerge from the floor.

The crypt was filled with flickering golden candlelight and the scent of hot wax. The wavering light lined the edges of the ancient symbols carved into the stone walls and the three massive columns that dominated the space. Around the stone walls hung intricate tapestries depicting the esoteric emblems of the Order of Ra. Up above, the golden ram’s head glinted and its spiral horns threw eerie shadows across the vaulted stone ceiling.

A line of men filtered through an arched entrance. They walked silently, solemnly, in single file, their heads slightly bowed as though out of reverence for a church service or a funeral. Each man knew his mark, and they quickly assembled in a semicircular formation in the centre of the floor between the columns. Like a line of elderly soldiers they stood and faced the strange platform. The sacrificial altar was ready for them, as always. Chains hung from the high wooden post erected in the middle.

Kroll and Glass entered the crypt last. They stood at the end of the line, slightly to one side. Nobody
spoke. Kroll threw a last quick glance at his watch. It was about to begin.

Deep in the shadows, the heavy iron door swung open. Three men stepped into the flickering light. Everyone recognized the face of the man in the middle. Philippe Aragon’s shirt was stained and crumpled, and there was a cut across his left eyebrow. His arms were held tight by the two hooded men flanking him. There was a leather gag tied across his mouth. His eyes were wild and staring, darting up and down the row of black-suited men who had come to see him die.

They walked him slowly to the wooden post. He struggled as they cuffed his arms behind it and wrapped three lengths of the heavy chain around his waist. He sagged weakly at the knees. Once the chains were secure, the hooded men turned and walked solemnly back into the shadows behind the altar, one either side, half-hidden in the darkness.

The only sound in the crypt was the echoing clinking of the chains as Aragon struggled feebly to get free. All eyes were on him.

Glass smiled to himself. He always enjoyed this moment. He didn’t give a damn one way or the other about Aragon or what he might represent, any more than he’d cared about the others. He just liked the idea of what they were going to do to him. Maybe one day, he thought, they’d get to do a woman this way. That would be good. Maybe the old man would let him do it himself.

The iron door creaked again, and the executioner walked out across the platform. His black hooded robe
hung down to his feet. In his hands was a long object wrapped in a piece of scarlet satin. He drew the cloth away and firelight danced down the blade of the ceremonial knife. He stepped up to the prisoner.

Kroll spoke out, and his voice echoed in the crypt. ‘Philippe Aragon, have you anything to say before your sentence is carried out?’ He gestured to the executioner. The hooded man reached out and tore away the gag from Aragon’s lips. Aragon hung from the post, breathing heavily. He fixed Kroll with red-rimmed eyes and spat in his direction.

Kroll turned to the executioner. ‘Cut his heart out,’ he said quietly.

The executioner didn’t hesitate. The razor-sharp blade glittered as he raised it above his head.

The twelve men in the line watched as if hypnotized. Glass grinned in anticipation. Kroll’s lips stretched into a thin smile.

The knife came down in a blur. Aragon let out a cry as the sharp blade buried itself deep.

Into the wooden post by his head. The executioner let go of the knife handle and it stuck there, juddering.

Kroll took a step forwards, his brow creasing, mouth opening. Something was wrong.

The executioner moved away from the prisoner. His hand darted inside his robe and came out with a suppressed 9mm pistol. The fat cylindrical muzzle swung towards the assembled spectators.

Glass reacted instantly by reaching for his own gun. A rattle of silenced gunfire raked the black-and-white flagstones at Glass’s feet and he dropped his weapon.

The hooded guards emerged back into the light. Candle-flame glimmered on their stubby black automatic weapons. O’Neill and Lambert. Two more figures appeared from behind the stone columns on either side. Delmas and Cook. Lambert stepped up to the wooden post and undid Aragon’s chains.

Ben ripped back his hood and shrugged the executioner’s robe off his shoulders. It slipped down to his feet, and he kicked it away.

Kroll’s associates were panicking, wide-eyed, looking to their leader for an explanation. Kroll’s jaw had dropped in amazement. Ben met his eye with a cold smile.
Figure that one out
, he thought.

The improvised plan had worked well. It hadn’t been difficult to disable the guards and take control of the crypt beneath the church, minutes before Kroll and his people had come in. The real executioner was now lying dead in a backroom with the rest.

Jack Glass stared up at Ben with burning hate in his eyes. Even disarmed, he was still the most dangerous man in the room. Ben kept the sights of the Heckler & Koch square on him, watching him down the pistol’s barrel. The hammer was back, the safety was off. His finger was inside the trigger guard. He only had to squeeze lightly and the hammer would punch down on the round in the chamber, igniting the fulminate in the primer and sending the 9mm hollowpoint spinning down the short barrel. It would reach Glass’s body in less than a hundredth of a second. The bullet would mushroom inside him, exploding into a million razor splinters of lead alloy
and copper that would blast out a wide tunnel of lifeless jelly.

His finger caressed the smooth, curved face of the trigger. His eyes were fixed on Glass’s. He let the sights blur out.

A bullet in answer for Oliver. Another for Leigh. And he had fifteen more in the magazine. He wouldn’t stop until the last spent case was tinkling across the floor and the hot gun was locked back in his hands and Glass and Kroll were lying broken and twisted and sprawled in a lake of their mixed blood. His heart quickened at the thought. He felt his eyes burn. He saw Leigh’s smile in his mind. His throat ached.

‘Ben,’ said a voice to his left. He darted a glance sideways, still aiming the gun at Glass.

Aragon was looking hard at him. ‘Don’t do it,’ he said.

Ben shook his head. His fingertip ran down the trigger blade. One pull.

‘This wasn’t what we agreed,’ Aragon said softly. ‘We’re not murderers.’

One pull.
The gun began to shake in Ben’s hand.

‘They’ll be arrested and spend the rest of their lives in jail,’ Aragon said. ‘That’s what you promised me. A bullet in the head is not the same thing as justice.’

Ben let out a long sigh. He took his finger out of the trigger guard and flipped on the safety. He let the pistol down.

Glass smiled. Kroll was still staring at Ben in disbelief, his wrinkled mouth half open as if the words were stuck.

Kroll’s associates stood frozen as the four team members moved forwards out of the shadows, weapons shouldered. The old men’s faces were drawn and pale, eyes wide, foreheads thick with sweat.

Emil Ziegler suddenly staggered. His face was twisted in agony as he clapped a hand to his left shoulder. He collapsed, convulsing. Heart attack.

Cook was a trained medic. Slinging his MP-5 behind him, he ran to the stricken man’s side and dropped down to his knees.

Ziegler’s arm lashed out. Cook fell back, the last expression on his face one of complete surprise. Then the blood started spurting from his slashed throat. Ziegler’s chubby fist was still clutching the stiletto knife.

Suddenly the air was filled with yelling and panic. O’Neill and Lambert looked ready to empty their MP-5s into Ziegler. Aragon was commanding them to hold fire,
hold your fire.

In the corner of Ben’s vision, the edge of a tapestry fluttered in the shadows. He looked away from Cook’s body.

Glass and Kroll weren’t there any more.

Ben leapt down from the platform and tore the gold-threaded tapestry away from the wall. He saw the entrance to a small hidden archway, dark against the shadowy stone. A cold breeze wafted from it. He stepped inside the dimly lit stone stairway and saw that it spiralled upwards. He could hear the sound of running footsteps echoing off the walls above him.

He threw a glance over his shoulder. The crypt was secure. There was nothing anyone could do for Cook. Aragon was propped wearily against a pillar, pressing numbers into a phone. The other three team members had the old men firmly cornered. They were Philippe Aragon’s responsibility now.

Ben had other business. He started up the spiral steps, two at a time. The staircase wound round and round. Over the sound of his own rapid footsteps he thought he could hear the two men running ahead of him. He was gaining.

A second later he heard the flat report of a pistol. Followed by another. They were just up ahead.

* * *

The moment she’d recognized Ben Hope in the ballroom, she’d known that her moment was approaching fast. It was the endgame, the culmination of all these years of fear and duplicity and self-loathing that Werner Kroll had put her through. She didn’t care any more. It had to stop here. Whatever happened.

She hadn’t lived as Werner’s prisoner all this time without finding out a few of his secret routes. The enormous rambling house was riddled with them, enabling him to slip unnoticed from one place to another. Even though he’d always kept the private crypt locked to her, she knew about the hidden stair and had thought he’d come that way. He always had a surprise card to play. He was like that. Too clever to let anyone catch him so easily.

Now it was time for her to surprise him. She’d gone to her room, changed out of the party dress into jeans and an old sweater, taken that detested wig off for the last time and fetched her purse. Then she’d come here to this dark, dusty part of the old house to wait for him, crouching in the shadows of the passage, staring at the iron-studded door that she knew he was going to emerge from sooner or later. Through a dark passage to her right, the stairway wound right up to the top of the house. She wasn’t going to let Kroll up there.

As she heard the footsteps and the rattle of keys in the lock of the old door, she slipped the Black Widow out of her purse and firmly snicked back the hammer with her thumb. The door creaked open, and she stepped out of the gloom to meet them.

Kroll stopped in the entrance and stared at her. Glass
was with him. Kroll’s eyes flicked from hers to the muzzle of the little pistol and back up again. ‘Eve—’ he began, raising a hand.

She’d never pointed a gun at a living person before. But she didn’t hesitate. The rubber grip filled her palm. Her finger curled around the little spur trigger and squeezed.

The .22 Magnum fired a very small bullet at a very high velocity. The report of the supersonic round was vicious in the enclosed space and she almost cried out at the lancing pain in her ears.

Glass twisted and clutched at his neck. He swore and staggered back two steps. There was a spray of blood on the stonework behind him.

But he didn’t go down. He swayed on his feet and for an instant Eve thought he was going to come at her. She struggled with the little gun. Her hands had started to shake violently and she couldn’t get the hammer cocked for a second shot.

Glass staggered across the landing towards the next flight of stairs. She was still fumbling with the gun as he disappeared round the corner. She heard his footsteps racing unevenly up the wooden steps.

Kroll stood still in the middle of the landing. His eyes were wide.

The Black Widow’s hammer clicked back into place and she brought it to bear on him. ‘Eve,’ he said again, raising his eyebrows. ‘Think what you’re doing.’

‘It’s over, Werner,’ she said. ‘I can’t let you go on with it any more.’

His eyes pleaded. ‘Look into your heart, Eve.’ He
took a step towards her. ‘You know that you don’t want to kill me.’

She saw the stubby little automatic in his hand an instant too late. His face tightened. He fired from the hip, without aiming. His first shot went through her hand. The .22 spun out of her grip. She screamed.

He fired again and caught her in the shoulder. The searing agony sliced through her. She fell back, slumped against the wall and slid down slowly to the floor.

Kroll smiled as he stood over her, his legs planted either side of her body. He aimed the little Colt auto between her eyes. ‘Goodbye, Eve,’ he said.

Then he went tumbling forward with a spasm.

Ben Hope was in the doorway. Through the pain and the ringing in her ears, Eve heard the muffled cough of his gun repeating in a rapid staccato as he emptied it into Kroll. The old man crumpled bloodily onto his face with nine bullets in him and lay half on top of her.

Ben grabbed Kroll’s dead body by the collar and rolled it aside. He knelt down beside Eve. He could see that not all the blood on her was Kroll’s. He ripped the neck of her sweater, searching for the gunshot wound.

The bullet had hit high on the right shoulder, between the collarbone and the upper chest muscle. He probed gently, fingers slick with blood. She was near to fainting as he ran his fingers over the back of her shoulder and found the small-calibre bullet lodged under the skin. It had passed through the shoulder without fragmenting. He breathed more easily. It wasn’t as bad as it looked.

The hand was worse, quite a bit worse. He winced when he saw the jagged bits of bone protruding whitely
through the flesh. Her fingers were twisted in a way they shouldn’t be. She might never recover the full use of that right hand.

But she’d live. She’d been lucky. Kroll had been a bad shot. The sign of a man who had always paid others to pull the trigger for him. Or maybe just a sadist who wanted to take his time and cause as much pain and peripheral damage as he could before he killed her. Either way, it was over now.

‘You’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘You’ll be taken care of.’

‘Thank you’
, she mouthed weakly. She tried to smile, and then passed out.

He looked at her for a moment, and reached out and caressed her cheek, leaving a smear of blood.

He stood up and looked down at Kroll. The old man lay twisted like a broken doll. The von Adler line had just ended, and with it two centuries of murder and corruption. Werner Kroll’s lifeless eyes were staring like oily porcelain. The thin wrinkled lips seemed to smile mockingly at him. For an instant Ben wanted to shoot him again.

But he had other things to worry about. Where was Jack Glass?

There was a spatter of blood on the wall. Splashes of it across the floor. They led towards the stairs. A slick red footprint on the first step. A big red splash on the second. Another footprint on the third. A bloody handprint on the banister rail. The blood led all the way up. But it was just a trail. Glass himself was nowhere.

Ben’s mind suddenly filled with a single thought.

Clara.