The Nemesis Program

He stared at her. ‘What?’

The tears were gone now, and she was looking at him earnestly and levelly. ‘I can’t live like this,’ she said. ‘You walk away now, it’s over between us. Your choice, Ben.’

Chapter Eleven

Roberta had to clutch the passenger door handle as Ben skidded the Audi ferociously out of the vicarage gates and rammed the accelerator to the floor, speeding away through the village. His face was drawn, and his narrowed blue eyes had taken on that steely look she recalled from years ago. He’d changed back into his own clothes, black jeans and T-shirt and the scuffed, well-travelled brown leather jacket that Roberta remembered too. Watching him, it seemed to her that the old Ben Hope she knew so well hadn’t been buried too deeply underneath the new one. The old one felt more real to her, but she sensed he was a man Ben would sooner leave behind. It’s just who you are, she thought. You can’t repress it, and you know it.

He yanked his crumpled Gauloises pack from his pocket, flipped out a cigarette, and without taking his eyes off the road, bathed its tip in the flame of his Zippo lighter. The acrid smoke reached Roberta’s nose and she gave a little cough. Ben shot her an impatient sideways glance, hit the window button and the glass wound down to fill the car with a roar of warm wind, blasting the smoke away.

‘You didn’t have to do this,’ she began.

He held up a hand. ‘Please, Roberta. Don’t say anything.’

‘How can I not say anything? I just watched your life fall apart. I’m not completely insensitive, you know.’

Ben made no reply and drove faster. They quickly left Little Denton behind them, racing along the country roads. After a few minutes Roberta was about to ask where they were going, when a sign flashed by saying ‘EYNSHAM’ and Ben slowed the car to enter a small town. The streets were narrow and lined with Cotswold stone houses, traditional pubs and little shops. Ben pulled into a small square next to a church, parked the Audi between a van and a stone wall and killed the engine.

‘We’re going to church?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said, ‘we’re getting a bus.’ He pointed at the stop across the street, where a line of people were waiting and gazing expectantly up the road at the approaching double-decker. Ben got out of the car, snatched his cement bag bundle from the back seat, waited for Roberta to retrieve her travel holdall and then bleeped the locks before tossing the car key into the nearest drain. As they crossed the street to join the bus queue, he glanced back to make sure the Audi was well tucked away out of sight.

Boarding the bus, Ben led Roberta to the back, from where he could glance now and then out of the dusty rear window in case anyone was following them. Nobody was, and with a loaded machine gun bundled up at his side and his head in his hands he soon settled into a heavy, pensive silence that lasted for the whole twenty-minute trip through the winding country roads into Oxford.

Gazing around her at the bustling city for the second time that day, Roberta didn’t try to make conversation. From the noisy, smoky Gloucester Green station they took a second bus, hot and crowded, out to Jericho in the west of the city. A short walk from the stop in Walton Street, then Ben halted outside a modestly-sized Victorian terraced house with a little garden. He swung open the creaky front gate, took a set of keys from his pocket and showed Roberta into the house. ‘You’ll have to excuse the mess, but we hadn’t finished unpacking.’

‘Nice,’ she said, gazing around her at the clutter that filled the entrance hall. A dining table stood propped up against the wall, swaddled in bubble wrap with the legs removed. Most of the boxes were still sealed with parcel tape, others were open to reveal stacks of books on theology, philosophy and history. Roberta picked one out. ‘Hmm. Augustine: The City of God against the Pagans. A little light bedtime reading for you?

Ben pointed down the long, narrow hall. ‘Kitchen’s that way if you want to get yourself a drink. I’ll be back in a minute.’

Leaving her to her own devices, he ran up the stairs to the bedroom with his bundle under his arm. His pace faltered as he approached the door. Walking into the room, it was as if a dead weight had settled on his shoulders. Everything around him made him think of Brooke – the fine art prints that had hung on her walls in Richmond, her clothes and shoes neatly arrayed inside her wardrobe, the cushions on the bed, the green foliage of her beloved pot plants spilling down the wall from the windowsill, the soft smell of her perfume already imbued into the fabric of the place. He wanted to picture her smile, but all he could see in his mind was the teary look of hurt and anger that had been on her face when he’d turned and walked away.

When would he see her again? Emotions flashed up inside him: sorrow, guilt, anger, resentment against what had happened, against Roberta Ryder for bringing it on him.

No. It wasn’t fair to blame her. He just had to see this through. Everything would be all right, he told himself uncertainly.

He chucked the bundled-up Beretta machine carbine onto the bed. Nearby stood a small antique bookcase that Brooke had been gradually filling from a half-unpacked box. His eye drawn to the row of titles on the shelf, Ben spotted a familiar leather-bound spine among her assorted paperbacks and psychology textbooks. He wistfully paused to take it off the shelf. It was the volume of Milton’s works given to him by Jude’s mother shortly before she and Simeon had been murdered. Inside it had been the fateful letter telling Ben the secret of Jude’s real paternity.

As Ben turned the book over in his hands, it fell open and he found himself staring at the first page of Paradise Lost.

Paradise Lost. He thought about that for a moment, then snapped the book shut and quickly replaced it on the shelf. He walked across to his own wardrobe, wrenched open the door and found his old green canvas army bag where he’d carelessly stuffed it into the back underneath a load of stuff, thinking he’d never need it again. You got that wrong, he thought as he dug it out and tossed it on the bed. The first thing to go inside was the gun, which was compact enough to fit without bits poking incriminatingly out of the green canvas. He began rummaging through drawers and boxes for items of spare clothing.

When he’d done packing, he strapped up the bag, slung it over his shoulder and said a quick, silent goodbye to the room. When he’d be back was anybody’s guess.

Downstairs, he found Roberta wandering around the semi-furnished rooms and looking agitated. ‘You want something to eat?’ he asked her. ‘There isn’t much in the house. We’ve been living on takeaways and eating out until we got settled.’ The last word stabbed him as he said it.

She shook her head with a frown. ‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Me neither,’ he said.

‘I’ve been thinking. We’re heading back to Paris, right? Makes sense.’

‘That’s where this thing started,’ he said. ‘I aim to get there as quickly as possible.’

‘But how’s that going to work?’ she went on anxiously. ‘If these sons of bitches can pinpoint my exact location in some backwoods Oxfordshire village, just like that out of all the places I could’ve turned up, it means they’ve got access to Christ knows what kind of information. They’ve got to be hooked into every database out there. Which means that the moment I step over the Channel into France, they’ll know right where to find me. There’s no way I can travel unnoticed, is there?’ She eyed the green bag hanging heavily from his shoulder. ‘And if you’ve got what I think you’ve got in there, it’s not something you can exactly sneak by the customs officials.’

‘There are ways we can get across undetected.’

Roberta looked sceptical. ‘If you’re thinking of swimming the Channel, think again. I can’t swim. Or maybe you were planning on stealing a rowboat?’

‘Not exactly,’ he replied, deep in thought. He glanced at his Omega diver’s watch. Its skeletonised hands read 3.17. ‘Might just about do it,’ he murmured, more to himself than to Roberta.

‘Might just about do what?’

Ben didn’t reply. Leaving Roberta looking mystified, he took out his phone and quickly punched in a number that was extremely familiar to him.

Jeff Dekker picked up after two rings. ‘Le Val Tactical Training Centre.’

‘It’s me.’

‘Thought you’d still be rehearsing for your rehearsal about now,’ Jeff replied. Ben could hear the smile in his tone of voice.

‘That’s one reason I’m calling,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t bother coming over to England tomorrow.’

‘Why’s that, mate? You found a better best man to walk you up the aisle?’ The smile was still there. Jeff thought Ben was kidding.

‘I’m serious,’ Ben said. ‘It’s off, Jeff. The whole thing’s off. Long story.’

Jeff seemed about to burst out into the reaction of amazement, stupefaction, outright disbelief or a combination of all three that Ben had been expecting – but something in Ben’s voice made him stop. ‘You want to talk about it, mate?’ he asked quietly.

‘No, I don’t.’ Ben said. He hadn’t called to pour his heart out. The second and more important reason for the call was to ask a question. ‘Listen, Jeff, the old landing strip near Valognes. Driven out that way in the last couple of weeks or so?’ The year before, they’d toyed with buying the disused airfield to convert into a civilian rifle range but then dropped the project as the location was too far from Le Val.

‘I passed there last Tuesday,’ Jeff replied, sounding bemused.

‘So you’d have noticed if anyone had dug it all up or parked a load of artic trailers on it.’

‘Far as I could see, it’s just the way it was. What the fuck d’you want to know for?’

‘One more thing,’ Ben said. ‘If I needed the Alpina for a couple of days, could you get Raoul or Paul to leave it there for me?’ Raoul de la Vega and Paul Bonnard were the two ex-military trainers who worked as assistant tutors at Le Val. The Alpina was a high-performance BMW 7 Series used as a demonstrator for the bodyguard defensive driving courses taught at the facility, called VIP Evasion / Reaction, VIPER for short.

‘Shouldn’t be a problem. But what—?’

‘Thanks, Jeff. I’ll be in touch.’ Before his friend could say anything more, he ended the call.

‘Who’re you phoning now?’ Roberta asked as Ben immediately started stabbing in another number.

‘My sister,’ he replied.

She stared at him. ‘You have a sister?’

‘That’s another long story,’ Ben said. It always seemed so strange to him that Ruth was only a call away. For so many years, she’d seemed to have been lost forever. From child kidnap victim to adopted daughter of a billionaire tycoon – whose business empire she now ran like she’d been doing it all her life – Ruth had walked a strange path, almost as strange as her elder sibling’s.

‘Well, hello, big brother,’ her voice chirped on the line.

‘Where are you?’ Ben asked.

‘Nice,’ she said acerbically. ‘The customary greeting. No “Hi, Ruth, how are things? How’s your life?” All I get is “Where are you?”. As it happens, I’m on my way over to you right now. We’ll be touching down at London Oxford Airport in just under … let’s see, say thirty minutes.’ Her tone changed suddenly as excitement bubbled through. ‘You know, Ben, I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this. Seeing you and Brooke getting hitched at last—’

‘What plane are you coming on?’ Ben cut in, interrupting her. As CEO of Steiner Industries, the mega-corporation Ruth had inherited from her adoptive father, the Swiss billionaire Maximilian Steiner, she had the pick of one of the biggest corporate fleets of aircraft in Europe.

‘Wow, you are in a chatty mood, bro. Since you ask, I’m using my favourite little runaround, the new Steiner Industries ST-1 turboprop. We do lead the way in promoting eco-friendly aviation, as I may have told you before.’

‘No more than ten or twenty times,’ he said. ‘What’s the LDR for that aircraft?’

‘Landing distance required?’ she replied, sounding perplexed by the question. ‘Uh, minimum eighteen hundred and forty feet.’ Even as a young child, Ruth had always been sharp when it came to numbers, and few things escaped her. ‘But why do you want to know?’

‘Range?’

‘Over seventeen hundred nautical miles all fuelled up, which we were when we left Zurich. Ben, if you don’t mind my saying so, you’re sounding just a little bit weird. Something’s wrong.’

‘I don’t have a lot of time to explain, Ruth, so I’ll make this quick. The wedding’s off. And I need to borrow your plane.’

Chapter Twelve

Forty-three minutes later, Ben and Roberta were walking across the tarmac at Oxford London airport in Kidlington towards a sleek twin-engined light aircraft that sat by a private hangar. The afternoon sun sparkled off the small aircraft’s pearly-white fuselage.

‘Not bad, is she?’ said a familiar voice, and Ben turned to see his sister emerging from the hangar. She was casually dressed and her hair, the same exact shade of blond as his own, was tied back under a baseball cap. Not quite the image of the corporate CEO. She was known for attending high-level conferences in faded jeans and combat boots. Business bosses from New York to Tokyo just had to get used to it.

Ruth patted the plane’s gleaming flank with pride. ‘Prototype design. Under eleven metres from nose to tail, thirteen from wingtip to wingtip, more than twenty per cent more fuel-efficient than anything in her class, with emissions to match and almost totally made of recycled materials.’

‘Still trying to save the world,’ Ben said, embracing her.

‘Beats trying to blow it up,’ she replied, hugging him tightly. In her former radical wild-child days she might have been here to firebomb the aircraft instead of as its corporate owner.

‘I’m sorry you wasted a trip,’ Ben said. ‘But it’s good to see you. You’re looking well, Ruth.’

She took a step away from him, tightly clutching both his hands and eyeing him with concern. ‘Wish I could say the same about you, bro. You look awful. You’ve got to tell me what happened between you and Brooke. Did you two fight?’

‘This is Roberta,’ Ben said, evading the question, and to avoid raising more of them he added, ‘She’s a friend of mine from long ago. Now, listen, I hate to press you, but we really need to get underway.’

Ruth greeted Roberta with a brief, slightly perplexed smile, then turned back to Ben with a jerk of her head that said, ‘Can we have a word in private?’. Leading him a few steps away, she paused under the roar of a departing light passenger jet and then asked Ben straight out: ‘Are you walking out on Brooke for her? Is that what’s going on? Because if it is, I’m not sure how comfortable I am about getting drawn into it like this. Brooke’s a friend to me.’

‘It’s not what you think,’ Ben said, making an effort to hide the pain he was feeling. ‘Like I told you, she’s just a friend. She’s in a bit of trouble, and she needs my help.’

‘And what about Brooke?’

‘Brooke and I will work things out,’ Ben said evenly, sounding far more confident than he really was. ‘Ruth, are you going to let me use the plane or not?’

Ruth paused for a moment, then sighed and waved an arm at the aircraft. ‘Whatever. She’s all yours. Don’t you have any more luggage than that?’

‘Just what you see,’ he said, hoping she wouldn’t start asking questions about what was in his bag.

Waiting at the hangar entrance was a young guy with unkempt hair, a smattering of a beard and a ring in his ear – the kind of eco-hippy type that Steiner Industries employed these days under Ruth’s direction. ‘That handsome fellow there is Dylan,’ she explained. ‘He’s one of the best pilots we have.’

Ben looked at her. ‘Your pilot’s name is Dylan.’

She shrugged. ‘Sure. And he plays the guitar, too.’

‘He needs a shave.’

‘Believe me, you’re in good hands. He’ll take you wherever you want to go. You’ve got enough gas to take you halfway around Europe and back again.’

‘We’re not going that far,’ Ben said. By his estimate their journey distance was just under 140 nautical miles, a mere hop and a skip for the high-tech turboprop. ‘And you can hang on to Dylan. I won’t be needing him.’

‘Then who’s going to fly the—?’ Ruth blanched. ‘No, no. Please don’t tell me what I think you’re going to say. I like this plane, Ben. Not to mention it’s worth the same as a Lamborghini Reventon.’

‘If I smash it up, you can get your accounts department to invoice me,’ Ben said, stepping towards the plane. ‘I really appreciate this, Ruth.’

‘I must be crazy.’

‘It runs in the family,’ Ben said.

A few moments later, he was seated behind the cockpit controls, running an eye across the panels of dials and read-outs and the extensive array of high-tech computer wizardry as Roberta explored the rear section with its plush eco-friendly non-leather seating for four or five passengers to travel in style. ‘Pretty neat,’ she commented, opening a door and peering at a little bathroom. ‘We’ve got food and drinks on board, too. I’ll admit, I hadn’t expected travelling with you would be this luxurious.’

‘Don’t get too used to it,’ he said.

Outside, Ruth and her companions had retreated to the hangar. A couple of runway attendants in reflective vests and ear-defenders had appeared to shepherd the aircraft as it prepared for take-off. Ben fired up the engines and the twin propellers began to spin with a whine that quickly grew to a roar, muffled inside the well-insulated cabin.

‘I didn’t know you could fly one of these things,’ Roberta said from the rear, strapping herself into a seat by one of the oval porthole windows.

‘Well, I’d be lying if I said I’d ever actually flown one of these before,’ he replied, waiting for the props to get up to speed. This state-of-the-art plane was a different animal by far from the last aircraft he’d piloted – a prehistoric Supermarine Sea Otter loaded with drums of avgas that he’d deliberately crashed onto the deck of a sailing yacht like a flying incendiary bomb, blowing the aircraft, the vessel and its contingent of thugs to kingdom come. He didn’t think Roberta would appreciate those details.

‘You what?’

‘But the basic principle’s the same for all these kinds of things,’ he said. ‘Trust me, it’s like riding a bicycle.’

‘Maybe I should’ve taken my chances with the bad guys,’ Roberta muttered to herself.

The Steiner ST-1 taxied away under the anxious gaze of its owner, picked up speed and left the runway smartly to climb into the hazy afternoon sky. Content that he wasn’t going to drop them down somewhere in the English countryside or into the Channel, Ben levelled the aircraft at 285 knots and a cruise altitude of 24,000 feet, settled back in the pilot’s seat and set his course for Normandy.

After just twenty-five uneventful minutes in the air, Ben checked his bearings, reduced altitude and caught sight of the northernmost tip of the Lower Normandy coast far below. The aircraft overflew the Pointe de Barfleur and the towering Gatteville lighthouse, just a tiny grey needle sticking up from the rocks surrounded by calm blue sea.

Remaining steady on his course for another few minutes as they passed over Saint-Vaast and then the spreading outskirts of Valognes, the nearest town of any size to the Le Val facility, Ben gradually let the plane drop down lower on the approach to his target, the small disused airfield in the countryside a few kilometres outside Carentan. As the small tongue of concrete surrounded by green fields grew larger and details came into view, he was relieved to see that Jeff Dekker had been right about the place not having changed since the last time he’d seen it.

He checked his instruments, made his final adjustments. Flaps; undercarriage; speed; altitude: everything was in order, or as close to it as need be. The Steiner ST-1 swooped in low over the rickety barbed-wire fence, the disused buildings and the graffiti-covered hangar where local kids loitered to smoke dope, and touched down with a yelp of tyres. Ben instantly eased off the throttle and the plane decelerated on the bumpy strip, rolling to a standstill forty yards short of the sunburned grass beyond. The engine whine died away and the prop came to a halt. Ben pulled off his headset, quickly reset his Omega to French time, then pressed the control to activate the hydraulics for the aircraft’s side hatch.

‘Well, I must say, that came in pretty handy,’ Roberta commented as she stepped down to the cracked concrete. ‘Remind me to put one of these gizmos on my Christmas list.’

Ben used a remote button to close the hatch and set the locks and alarms on the aircraft. The late afternoon was warmer than England. The soft breeze smelled of cut grass and was filled with the chirping of crickets. He looked around and quickly saw that Jeff, trustworthy as ever, had delivered on his promise. The dark blue Alpina B7 was sitting on the stubbly yellowed grass a little way from the landing strip.

‘That our ride?’ Roberta asked, walking over, and Ben nodded. ‘No key in it,’ she observed, peering through the driver’s window.

‘Who needs keys?’ Ben stepped up to the door and said the word, ‘Open’. His voice was one of the four programmed into the car’s sophisticated voice recognition locking system. The locks opened with a clunk and Ben popped the boot lid. Underneath the floor of the boot was a special armoured compartment that VIP close protection personnel could use, where necessary, to carry concealed weapons and other sensitive equipment through border checkpoints. Ben quickly removed the Beretta Storm from his bag and stowed it snugly inside the hidden space, then piled their bags on top.

He climbed behind the wheel. It had been a little while since he’d last driven the Alpina, but the familiar whiff of Gauloises was still faintly detectable inside. There was even one of his old John Coltrane CDs nestling in the map compartment. The Le Val high-speed evasion car felt uncomfortably like home.

Ben said, ‘Start’. The Alpina’s tuned engine instantly burbled into life.

Roberta raised an eyebrow. ‘Very cool.’

‘Special privilege,’ Ben replied. ‘Le Val personnel only.’

‘Even though you don’t work there anymore?’ Roberta said. She thought about it for a moment, then added, ‘Figures.’

He looked at her. ‘What figures?’

‘That your friend Jeff didn’t delete your voice signature from the menu. He must’ve reckoned you’d be back before too long.’

Without a reply, Ben put the Alpina into gear and pulled sharply away. Sensing that she’d said the wrong thing, Roberta quickly changed the subject. ‘How far to Paris from here?’ she asked.

‘A little under two hundred miles,’ he said.

‘Three hours?’

‘In this thing, more like two and a half,’ he said, and put his foot down.

‘That figures too,’ Roberta murmured but Ben was too focused to hear.

Chapter Thirteen

The drive to Paris was even quicker than Ben had estimated, and by evening they were filtering through the western approach into the city. He’d been deep in his own thoughts nearly all the way, and was still silent as he negotiated the hectic evening traffic into the centre. As he took a right off Boulevard des Batignolles, heading southwest down Rue de Clichy, Roberta turned to him and said, ‘Montmartre is the other direction, to the north.’

‘I know where Montmartre is,’ he replied. ‘We’ll take a trip up that way later tonight.’

‘So where are we going?’

‘Somewhere these friends of yours can’t find us,’ he said. ‘You’ve been there before.’

‘I wish you’d quit calling them that,’ she said irritably. ‘Then you still have that old place, huh?’