The Moscow Cipher

The old stone farmhouse, big and blocky and more than two hundred and fifty years old, was the central hub of Le Val, and the farmhouse kitchen was the central hub of the house. While Tuesday escorted the Belgians to the separate building used to accommodate trainees, Ben and Jeff led Auguste Kaprisky and his female companion inside. The kitchen was floored with original time-smoothed flagstones and lined with antique pine cupboards. The wine rack was always full, and there was always something delicious-smelling bubbling on the range courtesy of Marie-Claire, who lived in the nearby village and came in to cook for them. In the middle of the room was the pitted old pine table at which Ben, Jeff, Tuesday and a hundred Le Val trainees had spent countless hours talking, drinking, playing cards, planning strategies and (to Marie-Claire’s vociferous outrage) stripping and cleaning automatic weapons. It was all a far cry from the plush boardrooms out of which Kaprisky ran his multi-billion-euro empire, but the old man seemed too preoccupied to pay any notice to his surroundings.

They all sat around the table. Ben offered coffee, which was politely declined.

‘Now,’ Ben said, getting down to business. ‘What is it that brings you here, Auguste?’

The fair-haired woman still hadn’t been introduced, nor spoken a word. Kaprisky touched her hand. ‘This is my niece, Eloise. She speaks English, German and Dutch but very little French, having moved here relatively recently. I would like her to participate in this discussion, so may we switch to English for the remainder of the conversation?’

‘Of course,’ Ben said in English. Jeff looked much relieved.

Kaprisky made the usual introductions, in his rather stiff and formal way. Eloise offered a small smile and a limp handshake, and said very little.

‘Again, I must apologise for this intrusion,’ Kaprisky said. ‘My reason for being here is, as I said, that I – we – desperately need expert assistance with a matter of extreme urgency. I would have made contact to warn you in advance of our arrival, but what I’m about to reveal to you is, well, most delicate.’

Ben wasn’t surprised by the lack of communication. Kaprisky was an inveterate paranoid who worried neurotically about phone taps and email hacking. Ever since the attempt on his life, when a disgruntled business rival had lost his mind and assaulted Kaprisky’s home with an Uzi submachine gun, he’d spent untold fortunes turning his estate near Le Mans into a fortress within whose impenetrable walls the old man lived like a virtual recluse. When Jeff sometimes commented that Kaprisky was turning into Howard Hughes, he wasn’t joking. Only a serious emergency could have prompted the billionaire to leave his stronghold.

Kaprisky paused, spread his hands out on the table, seemed about to speak, then threw a covert sideways glance at Jeff.

‘Am I a third wheel here?’ Jeff said, catching his look. ‘No problem, I can make myself scarce.’

‘Whatever you’re about to tell me,’ Ben said to Kaprisky, ‘understand that I have no secrets from my business partner and you need have none either. I trust this man with my life.’

Kaprisky seemed satisfied with that. Eloise sat very still beside him, gazing at the table with a set frown wrinkling her brow.

‘I’m guessing this matter has to do with Eloise?’ Ben prompted.

Kaprisky nodded. ‘She is the only child of my late brother, Gustav. She is as dear to me as if she were my own daughter.’

Ben said, ‘Naturally.’ Then waited to hear what on earth this was about.

Talking as though his niece weren’t present in the room with them, Kaprisky went on, ‘Her full name is Eloise Petrova. Personally, I thought Eloise Kaprisky sounded far better, but in fact anything would have. The reason for this unfortunate change is that she married a Russian.’ Kaprisky spat that last word out as though his niece had married an alien slime creature. ‘Fortunately, she had the sense to split from him after a mere ten years. The divorce was an extremely acrimonious one. I will spare you the painful details.’

‘I’m sorry to hear of your family trouble,’ Ben said. Still wondering.

Kaprisky shook his head. ‘Not I. I have never tried to conceal my conviction that the marriage was a disaster from the start. Yuri Petrov is, has always been, and as far as I am concerned will always be, with no possibility of redemption whatsoever should he live for all eternity, the worst kind of pathetic excuse for a human being.’

‘So you don’t think much of the guy,’ Jeff interjected.

‘There is no man alive more unsuited to be a husband to my precious Eloise, or the father of her child. He is the most indolent, self-seeking, worthless piece of—’

‘We get the general idea,’ Ben said.

‘Forgive me,’ Kaprisky said, collecting himself and wiping flecks of spittle from his lips. ‘I get very worked up. It’s just that this haunts our lives, even two years after the marriage ended. Things were bad enough when this moron whisked Eloise off to live for a decade in Amsterdam, where he apparently had some kind of employment, the nature of which has never been clear to me—’

If that was a cue for Eloise to step in and say something, she didn’t respond to it. Her uncle carried on, ‘She then had to tie herself forever to him by having a child with him, despite all my warnings that she would come to bitterly regret it.’ Kaprisky halted mid-stream and grimaced. ‘I don’t mean the child herself. She brings nothing but joy and we love her dearly.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Ben said.

‘How I pleaded for her to see sense, but did she listen? No, no. Now she must deal with the fool every time they exchange custody of their daughter. To make matters even worse, the idiot has since returned to live in Russia.’ Land of the slime creatures, apparently.

‘What’s the girl’s name?’ Ben asked Kaprisky. There seemed little point in asking the mother, who still hadn’t offered a word to the conversation.

‘Valentina. She’s twelve.’ Kaprisky sighed. ‘As much as I despise her worthless father, I dote on that child. If anything should happen to her, I …’

Ben sensed the tone of desperation in his voice. Now, maybe, they were coming to the crux of the matter. ‘This is about Valentina, isn’t it? Is something wrong?’

Eloise Petrova went on staring vacantly at the tabletop. Kaprisky slowly nodded, his eyes filling up like dark pools of despair.

‘Yes, this is about Valentina. It appears that she and her father have disappeared. And we know why. The brute has kidnapped her.’

Chapter 6

Now Ben understood why Kaprisky had brought this to him.

For several years after he’d quit the military, Ben had operated as a freelance ‘crisis response consultant’ specialising in the area of what was known as ‘K&R’. The acronym stood for ‘Kidnap and Ransom’. The fast-growing industry of misery, terror and death perpetrated by cruel men against the innocent and the vulnerable. It was the most innocent and vulnerable victims of them all – kidnapped kids – whom Ben had most tried to help. The taking of a child, whether to extort money from the frantic family or for myriad other reasons, was the thing he despised the most. He’d have despised it, and its perpetrators, even if he hadn’t gone through the anguish and horror of losing his nine-year-old sister to human traffickers when he was a teenager, and the catastrophic family breakdown that had followed.

Nothing he’d done in his entire Special Forces career had driven him the way he’d been driven to find those lost children, bring them home safe and punish the men who’d snatched them from their families. To this day he could remember the names and faces of every single kid he’d rescued. He often thought about them, what they were doing now that they were older, what life was like for them, whether they ever still had nightmares about being taken and held prisoner. For him, the memories of children locked in damp, filthy basements, imprisoned in cages, chained to beds, blindfolded in the dark, often drugged, too often abused in other ways, would never fade. Thinking about it now, he felt his fists clench tight.

‘I haven’t been involved in that for a long time,’ he said to Kaprisky. ‘I’m not even going to ask who you’ve been talking to. It’s not exactly public knowledge what I used to do.’

‘I have many connections, my young friend. And there are many people in this world, whose names you and I both know, who still regard you as their saviour. Rest assured they are extremely discreet to whom they divulge such information, but they will never forget what you did to reunite families torn apart by monsters.’

Ben looked at Eloise, who still hadn’t said a word since they were introduced, then back at her uncle. ‘And that’s what you believe Valentina’s father is, a monster?’

Kaprisky said, ‘Parents have been known to kidnap their own children, have they not?’

Ben had indeed known several cases of that happening. It was usually done to harm the other partner in some way, the ultimate expression of a catastrophically fragmented relationship. That variety of kidnapper seldom chained their own kids up in basements or deliberately harmed them – although it wasn’t unknown to happen; but there was nonetheless a serious risk of harm coming to the kids as the ring closed around the offending parent and they became increasingly desperate to get away. More than one had ended up endangering their child’s life in a high-speed car chase or a volatile armed standoff with bullets flying in all directions.

That was why, in Ben’s experience, the often heavy-handed tactics of official law enforcement frequently did as much damage as good. Many of the stricken families who had come to him for help in the past had heard the horror stories and decided to forgo police involvement in favour of more unorthodox, yet far more effective, methods. Ben had no problem with bullets flying, but he liked them to be properly aimed where they were meant to go: into the kidnappers themselves, and preferably not into their hostages.

‘Have you reported this to the authorities?’ In his K&R rescue days it was always the first question he’d asked prospective clients, bracing himself for the reply.

Kaprisky shook his head. ‘Informing the police would, I agree, be the first and most obvious recourse. However, as you know, I value my privacy, and also that of what little family I have left. For that reason I would prefer not to have my niece’s private affairs disclosed to strangers.’ He paused. ‘I am also a highly cautious man, who has learned never to step on ground without having first made certain it was safe to walk on. It takes only the minimum of research to reveal that, if the many tragic reports of ineptly mishandled cases are true, involving the forces of conventional law and order in such instances is all too often the worst error one could possibly make.’

‘That’s your choice,’ Ben said.

‘And so, that option must remain the very last resort, not the first. I would do anything to keep this in the family, so to speak, if at all possible. I consider that I owe you my life, Major Hope. That is as good as a blood connection for me. And that, as you have surmised, is why I am here.’

Ben hated being called by his military rank, but the old man got some kick out of authority titles and nothing would dissuade him of the habit of addressing Ben that way. ‘I’m honoured, Auguste. But I’ll only tell you what the police would have told you. Genuine kidnap cases are mercifully rare. There could be other possible reasons to eliminate before we start jumping to radical conclusions. Why don’t you run through exactly what happened? From the beginning.’

Kaprisky knitted his long, bony fingers in front of him on the table. He licked his lips, as though they’d gone dry. ‘May I trouble you for a glass of wine? My nerves are shattered.’

‘Of course.’ Ben stood, grabbed four glasses from the cupboard and a bottle of Chante Clair, Le Val’s current house red, from the rack. He pulled the cork, poured out the glasses and sat down. ‘You won’t mind if I smoke?’

Kaprisky took a long drink of wine. Eloise didn’t touch hers. Jeff knocked his down at a gulp and refilled it. Ben lit a Gauloise and leaned back in his chair.

‘As I said,’ Kaprisky went on, ‘Valentina’s father now resides in Russia. Moscow, to be precise. Since the divorce Eloise and Valentina have come to live on the estate at Le Mans, where they are very happy and Valentina is home-schooled by the finest private tutors money can buy. The unsavoury custody terms of the divorce settlement are that she spend a week with her worthless father every two months, which we have been honouring except in winter when it was too cold. As you know, I have my own personal jet on permanent standby not far from home.’

‘Indeed I do,’ Ben said. The previous year, Ben’s grown-up son Jude had got into serious trouble off the east coast of Africa that had required a very rapid intervention by Ben, Jeff and Tuesday. Kaprisky had provided the Gulfstream G650 as emergency transport, without which Jude would be dead now.

‘So, whenever it has been his time to have her,’ Kaprisky continued, ‘we put Valentina on the Gulfstream and fly her over, where he is supposed to meet her at the private terminal at the airport, to drive her to the dive of an apartment he keeps in some squalid part of the city. She normally stays for five days. At the end of each interminable visit, the process reverses and she flies home to us. In this way, the poor girl has been passed back and forth like the ball in a game of long-distance tennis. Scarcely the most satisfactory arrangement, but we have endured – until now.

‘Four days ago, at what should have been the end of her most recent trip to Moscow, Valentina failed to come home. The pilot called us to say that neither she nor her father showed up at the airport. I eventually had him fly the empty plane back to Le Mans. We have been frantically trying to contact them ever since, without success.’

Jeff knocked down another gulp of wine and made a frown that rippled his brow into corrugated creases. ‘So, Yuri just decided a week with his kid wasn’t long enough, or what?’

Kaprisky snorted derisively. ‘I suspect a far less wholesome motivation than fatherly attachment is at work here.’

‘Four days,’ Ben said, more to himself than Kaprisky. His mind was spinning through a hundred possibilities. On the one hand, a four-day absence wasn’t that long. On the other, a lot of very bad things could happen in less time.

‘But I have not been sitting idly waiting,’ Kaprisky replied. ‘No sooner had the aircraft returned without Valentina than we were ready to refuel and fly straight back there, with a team of my best men aboard. One of them, Andriy Vasilchuk, grew up in the Ukraine and speaks some Russian. I additionally employed a Moscow private investigation firm to assist the team in their enquiries. Their instructions were to go immediately to Petrov’s apartment and commence the search for him and Valentina.’

‘And they didn’t find them there, obviously.’

‘Not only that, but on questioning neighbours in his apartment block, it transpires that nobody there had glimpsed any sign of Petrov, nor of the child, for days before he should have delivered her to the airport.’

Kaprisky let out a long breath through his nose, leaned forward and fixed Ben intently with his piercing eyes. ‘I am no expert and would always defer to your superior judgement in these matters. But, to me, this situation bears all the suspicious hallmarks of an abduction. Please tell me if you can think of any other possible explanation.’

Ben was thinking hard. He said nothing as Kaprisky went on staring at him with such intensity that the old man was almost trembling.

Just then, Eloise spoke up for the first time since she’d sat down. Despite a marked German accent, her English was perfect. ‘There’s more you need to know. My uncle hasn’t mentioned the fact that, before this happened, I had been investigating my legal options to restrict Yuri’s right of parental access.’

Ben narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Why? Are you suggesting—?’

She flinched visibly at the notion. ‘Abuse? No, nothing of that sort.’

Kaprisky gave another snort, as if to say, ‘Who knows what that creep might be capable of?’ His niece shot him a look and went on: ‘What it is, Monsieur Hope, is that on several occasions when Valentina was sent to visit her father, he failed to show up at the other end to collect her, and she had to be flown back home without having even seen him. No apologies from my ex-husband, no attempt to explain, not even a call. Finally, after two missed visits in a row, I lost my temper and sent him a message.’

Ben could see where this was leading. ‘You threatened him.’

‘I had consulted my lawyers earlier that day, who were confident we could make a case against Yuri on grounds of neglect. I told him straight out that I had had enough of his behaviour, that I would be putting things in motion and that Valentina’s next visit to him would be her last.’ Eloise shook her head. Her eyes clouded and she dabbed at one of them with a knuckle, smearing her mascara. ‘I was so angry with him. I didn’t realise what I’d done. This is all my fault.’

‘Absolute rubbish,’ Kaprisky said. ‘The blame lies entirely with that reckless imbecile. You did the right thing, my dear. How many times have you complained to me of that man’s unreliability, his complete lack of responsibility, the way he pours so much vodka down his throat that he reeks of the stuff from morning until night … Need one say more?’

Eloise gave a tiny nod, her eyes still misted up with tears. ‘It’s true, he does drink far too much. I’ve tried quizzing Valentina about it, but she doesn’t say anything, and I think it’s to protect him. The fact is that he was never emotionally stable, and I think he’s got worse and worse since the divorce.’

‘As well as being a pathological liar,’ Kaprisky added angrily. ‘All those years in Amsterdam, when he was supposedly employed in some aspect of the computer business, I always thought the whole thing suspiciously vague. I was long convinced that he was leading a double life of some kind. God only knows what that man was up to, and no doubt still is. In a debauched, morally bankrupt drug addicts’ haven like Amsterdam, of all places?’

‘I’m past caring what he does,’ Eloise said bitterly. ‘Let him live how he pleases. He can destroy himself for all I care. But not with my Valentina.’ She turned to Ben, eyes brimming. ‘Do you not see? If I hadn’t threatened him he wouldn’t have taken her. I made him panic. I made this happen. And now there’s no telling what could happen next. I might never see my little girl again. Am I not right?’

Ben was beginning to think she was. Which meant the worst fears of uncle and niece might very well be justified. All the indicators were pointing unpleasantly towards this being a classic parental kidnapping.

It seemed unlikely that Yuri Petrov would intentionally harm his daughter. But he would be fully intent on not being found. That was the tricky part.

‘Please,’ Kaprisky said. ‘Will you help us?’

Ben said nothing for a long time. He stubbed out the butt of his Gauloise. He could feel the three pairs of eyes on him: Jeff’s as well as Kaprisky and Eloise. Finally Ben asked, ‘Do you still have men watching the apartment?’

Kaprisky nodded. ‘If Petrov had returned there at any time since his disappearance, I would know about it. I also have some connections at government level, who would have notified me if Petrov had attempted to leave the country. As far as we know, he is still in Russia.’

‘Russia’s a fairly large place,’ Ben said. ‘Any way to narrow that down a little?’

‘I am afraid not, no. We have no idea where he could have taken her. They could be travelling even as we speak.’

‘Then you have a problem,’ Ben said. ‘A bigger one than you perhaps realise. This isn’t about scouring a few known haunts, talking to his drinking cronies and sniffing out a borrowed apartment or some cheap rental where he might be lying low somewhere in the same city. Instead, you’re telling me Yuri and Valentina are a moving target anywhere within over six million square miles of the biggest country in the world. Dozens of major cities to choose from. Massive mountain ranges. Forests the size of England. The longest rivers on the planet. A coastline that stretches from the Pacific to the Arctic Ocean. A lone operator couldn’t cover that much ground in months, maybe years. Only the Russian authorities would have the resources and manpower to launch a nationwide manhunt on this scale. I don’t even speak the language.’

‘If it’s a question of money—’

‘It’s not,’ Ben said.

‘I would spare no expense to find her. None whatsoever. My own resources are vast.’

‘I know that, Auguste.’

‘I am begging you, Major.’

‘Ben.’

‘I implore you, Ben. Go to Russia and find Valentina. Bring her back. There is nobody else I trust to carry out this job. My own men are amateurs by comparison to you.’

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.