The Martyr’s Curse

‘You must be Pierrot,’ he said in French to the sandy-haired man. Pierrot was the rep for the distribution company that handled the monastery beer.

‘You’re not the regular guy,’ Pierrot said, eyeing him.

‘Just standing in,’ Ben said. They shook hands and got down to business. Pierrot’s crew of three quickly, efficiently switched the cargo from the Belphégor to the Renault while Pierrot spread a couple of forms out on the bonnet of the Beemer for Ben to read and sign on behalf of the monastery. Ben examined the small print carefully, checked the payment and bank details were correct, then reviewed everything again and found no problems. He signed on the line and handed the forms back to Pierrot. The man grinned, put the forms into a folder and then opened up the boot of his car.

‘Fait une putain de’chaleur, hein?’ he said, squinting up at the bright sun.

Ben nodded and agreed that it was pretty warm. Maybe if Pierrot lost a few pounds he wouldn’t feel it so much, but Ben kept that opinion to himself. Pierrot had other solutions. From a cooler in the back of the car he produced a couple of chilled bottles of Kronenbourg. He offered one to Ben. Ben shook his head and said no, thanks.

Soon afterwards, the crew finished up, swigged down a cold beer each and then piled into the Renault. Ben watched the truck drive off with its load, followed by Pierrot in his car. That was that. His job was done, his responsibility fulfilled, and it was time to go home. He walked back to the Belphégor. Clambered up into the cab, twisted the ignition key … and nothing happened.

He did it again. Again, nothing happened. Completely dead. Either the battery had suffered a total discharge in the time it had taken to transfer the beer to the Renault, or something more complex and sinister had just happened to the truck’s electrics.

Wonderful.

Ben heaved open the bonnet and peered in at the grimy nest of ancient wiring. He was no mechanic. Like other SAS soldiers he’d had some basic training in fixing vehicles, in case of certain emergency situations on hostile ground that involved commandeering – or just plain stealing – civilian transport that might not always be in top condition. But he had a feeling that the SAS would have continued on foot sooner than give the Belphégor a second look. Set fire to it maybe, if they needed to create a diversion.

Bolted to the flatbed behind the cab was a tool locker. Nothing more than a metal box, battered and dented and speckled with rust, about four feet long by about two feet wide. Ben jumped up on to the flatbed and crouched down, hooking eight fingers under the flaky edge of the locker lid to lift it. The hinges were near solid with rust and old paint, and it gave a creak as it opened. He looked inside, and what he saw made his mind up not to bother trying to fix the truck himself. There was a removable compartment containing an assortment of spanners that looked as if they’d spent decades at the bottom of a river. The lower compartment contained no jack, no tyre irons or wheel-nut wrench, only a coil of greasy old rope and a pair of bolt croppers.

All of which was about as useful as having no tools at all.

The other thing Ben didn’t have was a phone. The only items in his pockets were his wallet and the little bottle of Père Antoine’s tonic that he was currently working his way through. However liberating the joyful technology-free monastic lifestyle might feel up there on the mountain, it had its practical shortcomings down here in the big, bad world.

Remembering the garage he’d passed a little way back down the road, he began walking.

Within five minutes, he was standing on the forecourt talking to a jovial guy in a grease-stained overall, explaining his situation. Within ten, he was riding back in a tow-truck to where he’d left the stricken Belphégor. The mechanic hooked it up and they towed it the short distance to the garage where more guys in overalls came to stare and grin as if they’d never seen anything like it before. Which, Ben realised, they probably hadn’t. After a quick inspection, the mechanic in charge gave Ben the prognosis on the electrical system. The word he used was ‘foutu’. Not exactly a technical term. Not a very encouraging one, either, until the mechanic pointed to a rusted heap in the corner of the yard and told Ben that he should be able to cannibalise some parts from it.

Four hours, he assured Ben. Four hours tops, and the old Belphégor would be back in action.

Until then, there wasn’t a lot Ben could do. Even if he’d had a phone, he couldn’t call the monastery to tell them he’d be late coming back and not to worry. Not that they worried unduly about much, generally. They would have said it was in God’s hands. For all practical purposes that was the only way Ben could see it, too.

So, there it was. Four hours to kill. It wasn’t the end of the world.

He took a note of the garage’s number and set out on foot towards town. The walk took him thirty minutes, by the end of which lunchtime had been and gone and he was hungry and thirsty. A few sips of Père Antoine’s tonic did a little to quell the thirst. Ben still didn’t know what it contained. He put the bottle back in his pocket and checked the contents of his wallet for the first time in months. In all that time he’d spent not a single penny, so there was still plenty of cash inside. Now to find a place to eat.

Briançon was a pretty place. Parts of the old town had once been heavily fortified, to defend the region from an attacking Austrian army. However many centuries ago that had been, Ben didn’t know for sure – but when you lived in a medieval monastery, everything seemed recent and modern by comparison. He walked through narrow, winding grey-stone streets and up steep paths and steps, looking for a bistro or a sandwich bar. The streets were busy. Lots of colour, lots of noise and life. He wasn’t used to it any more. It was a rhythm you had to get readjusted to, in the same way he’d often had to get back in synch with normal life after spending long periods away on military operations in jungles or deserts, back in the day.

Rounding a corner, Ben saw parasols and tables out on the street. This was the kind of bistro he’d been looking for, where he could get a snack like a croque-monsieur and a Perrier water. It looked like a welcoming place. A waiter with a tray was weaving efficiently among the tables. One table was occupied by an animated white-haired group who looked like a tourist party. At another was a middle-aged professional guy in suit and tie, maybe a local businessman or a bank manager, reading a newspaper. At another sat a couple, not old, not young, in their thirties. They were clasping hands across the table and obviously in love. The guy was heavily built, in jeans and a polo shirt. The woman was wearing a light sleeveless top and shorts and sandals, and had her back to Ben.

There was another table nearby that was empty. He walked towards it. His plan was to stay a while, watch the world go by, bide his time while the mechanics were doing their bit and then slowly wander back to the garage to pick up the truck. There was no hurry. No pressure. He felt relaxed and easy about the whole thing. The monastery had taught him to feel that way.

As Ben approached the café terrace, he did a double-take at the woman sitting with her back to him and suddenly halted dead in his tracks as if he’d been shot. He felt himself go very cold. He stood there, staring.

Her auburn hair was thick and loose, falling down in curls between her shoulder blades and moving nicely when she did. Her shoulders were slightly burned, a touch too much sun on her fair redhead’s skin. Everything about her was stunningly familiar. He was certain he recognised the curve of her slim back. Her elegant posture, the way she had her ankles crossed under the chair as she leaned forward talking about something and gesticulating with her free hand. The fingers were tapered and delicate. She wore no rings.

A million emotions suddenly flooded through Ben’s mind, stinging him like electric shocks. His hands began to shake. He blinked. It was her. He couldn’t believe it.

She was oblivious of his presence, but as Ben went on staring, the guy she was with began to take notice of him.

Ben walked a few steps closer. His legs felt wobbly. He reached out to touch her shoulder. The guy she was with narrowed his eyes and looked to be about to say something, but Ben spoke first.

‘Brooke?’

Chapter Nine

Ben couldn’t help himself. He put his hand on her shoulder. Her skin was warm and soft and dry against his fingers. She flinched a little in surprise and let go of her companion’s hand, breaking off from whatever she’d been saying to him in mid-sentence.

‘Brooke?’ Ben said again. He was positively amazed, amazed, to see his ex-fiancée here. It was like something out of a dream, the dream he’d had so many times.

She turned. Her mouth opened. Her eyes locked on to his, as blue as a summer sky.

Blue. Not green. Brooke had eyes the colour of emeralds.

It wasn’t her. This woman was a couple of years younger than Brooke. Her mouth was thinner, her cheekbones higher, her features sharper. Especially with the hostile look she was giving him.

The millisecond that Ben realised his mistake, he withdrew his hand and stepped back. ‘Please forgive me, Madame. I mistook you for someone else.’

Her blue eyes flared. ‘It’s Mademoiselle,’ she snapped, as though calling her ‘Madame’ was a far worse crime than laying your hands in a familiar way on a total stranger. So much for the neo-post-feminist political-correctness movement in France.

Ben went on apologising, but it was too late. Now the guy with her was getting involved, standing up abruptly and scraping his chair across the terrace with the backs of his legs. He had to step away from the table to avoid butting the parasol, because he was a big guy. At least three inches taller than Ben and about a foot broader across the chest. The mild irritation in the woman’s eyes was eclipsed by the fury in his. Ben couldn’t entirely blame him. It was a normal thing. A male thing. Like a rutting stag wanting to win his mate by scoring over the potential competition, this guy obviously felt he had to put on a show. Naturally, he was going to make a big thing of wanting to protect her.

Too big a thing. Right away, Ben could see the signs of a situation about to turn ugly. He wasn’t the only one. The businessman was watching over the top of his newspaper. The white-haired group had stopped talking and were throwing anxious glances at them.

‘Hey, I said I was sorry,’ Ben said, keeping his tone light and his body language unthreatening. ‘Let me buy you a drink, okay? No hard feelings.’

‘Get your fucking hands off her,’ the guy raged.

‘I did,’ Ben said. He’d backed off two long steps and now couldn’t have touched her if he’d wanted to.

‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’

‘I’m from the monastery,’ Ben said.

The big guy sneered. ‘Joker, eh?’ He came around the table, brushed past his girlfriend and moved towards Ben with his fists clenched and raised.

‘Let’s not take this too far,’ Ben said. ‘It was a mistake. I apologised.’

The woman was saying nothing. There was a gleam in her eye. Maybe she was enjoying this. Maybe the idea of being fought over was making her day. Ben couldn’t be sure, but in any case he was too busy watching her beau to take too much notice. The guy stepped closer, within punching distance. Which, with arms the length of his, was a fair stretch. ‘I’m going to knock your damn head off, asshole.’ Then the punch was on its way. Ben could have sat down, eaten his croque-monsieur, drunk his Perrier and maybe taken a little nap in the time it took coming. He stepped out of the way of the swinging fist. The guy’s momentum carried him forwards, past Ben.

‘You don’t want to do this,’ Ben said. ‘Why spoil a beautiful afternoon?’

But now it was even more too late. This wasn’t about the woman any longer. His face mottled with humiliation, the guy gathered himself up for a second punch. It was faster than the first, though not much. Ben had time to say, ‘You’re an idiot,’ before he caught the fist that was flying towards his face. He twisted it. Just a little twist. Nothing too aggressive. Certainly not vicious. But once he had the guy’s arm trapped, he wasn’t going to let go either. A lucky hit from this opponent could break his nose, smash his teeth. Ben didn’t much feel like returning to the monastery all banged up and bloody. He was fairly certain they had disciplinary rules against lay brothers who brawled in bars in their spare time. Père Antoine might just show him the door, and Ben wasn’t ready to leave.

So as Ben saw it, he really had no choice. He twisted the guy’s thick arm all the way around behind his back and used the painful leverage to dump him on his face. He hit the ground hard.

‘Stay down,’ Ben warned him. ‘It’s finished. You made your point. You’re a hero.’

But the hero wouldn’t stay down, which was a bigger mistake than the one Ben had made in touching his girlfriend’s shoulder. He swayed up to his feet and came on again. Blood was leaking from his nose and spotting all down the front of his polo shirt. Ben stepped in between the flailing arms and hit him in the solar plexus. Minimum force. It didn’t feel to Ben like much more than a tap, but the guy went sprawling backwards as if a horse had kicked him. He crashed into the table at which Ben would have been quietly enjoying his lunch now, if this hadn’t happened. The table capsized, spilling the big man back to the ground. Bloody-faced and wheezing and clutching at his stomach, this time he didn’t seem inclined to get up again. At that moment the waiter came bursting out of the bistro, along with a couple more guys. One of them pointed at Ben and yelled: ‘J’appelle les flics!’

‘No need for the police,’ Ben told them, spreading his hands. ‘I’m sorry for the trouble,’ he said to the staring auburn-haired woman, then turned and began walking away.

‘Wait!’ she called after him. ‘What’s your name?’

That just beat everything. Ben could hear the commotion as he made his retreat, but didn’t look back. Turning the corner, he broke into a jog. His nerves were jangling badly. Not because of the fight. It was as if some huge, gaping wound inside him, which he’d thought had healed, had been ripped back open again even worse than before and his whole being was gushing out of it, draining him right down to the marrow.

A hundred yards up the twisting narrow street, he settled back down to a fast walk. The jangling wasn’t wearing off, but becoming more intense. His thoughts and emotions were flying around inside him in so many directions at once that he could hardly even see where he was going. All he could see was Brooke’s face. He kept going. Crossed the street without looking, heard the urgent blast of a car horn and ignored it. He wouldn’t have cared if a bus had mown him down. Let it.

Four minutes later, he was inside another bistro. He walked straight up to the bar.

‘What’ll it be, monsieur?’ the barman asked.

‘Scotch,’ Ben said.

‘Which one?’ the barman said, motioning at a row of bottles.

‘I don’t care. You choose.’

‘Water?’

‘As it comes.’

The barman poured out a glass. It was empty almost the moment it touched the bar.

‘Leave the bottle,’ Ben said.

It was going to be a long day and an even longer night. But nothing in comparison to what would come later.

Chapter Ten

The first thing Ben saw on awakening was the stained Artexed ceiling above him. With some effort, he shifted his gaze to look down the length of his body and saw that he was lying in a bed. He closed his eyes. For a few disorientated moments, it seemed to him that he was tucked up in his bunk in the safe haven of the monastery. That the discomfiting fragments of memory playing at the edges of his mind were all just a bad dream.

Except that they weren’t. He opened his eyes and realised that he wasn’t dreaming about the sour taste in his mouth or the thudding headache of a serious whisky hangover. Wedging himself up in the bed to peer at his surroundings, it also occurred to him that his cell at the Chartreuse de la Sainte Vierge de Pelvoux wasn’t decorated with peeling posters of naked women and filled with bodybuilding equipment. A long bar resting on a flat weight bench was sagging with enough iron to make Ben’s muscles hurt just looking at it.

Nor did his cell contain a wall-mounted rack full of guns. Confusing.

Ben’s watch said it was 7.47 a.m. He climbed out of the rumpled bed and felt the full force of the hangover wash over him. He was still fully dressed. The bed was beside a small window. While his cell looked out over a sweeping eagle’s-view vista, all that could be seen from here was the bare brick wall of a neighbouring building. He peered down and saw an alleyway, empty but for a couple of wheelie bins.

He threaded his way between the bench press set-up and stacks of weights over to the gun rack. They weren’t replicas. He took one down. AK-47. Romanian, with a folding stock and unloaded thirty-round curved steel magazine. Old, but well looked after, the metal parts covered in a light sheen of oil.

Ben thought, Hmm.

He replaced the weapon on the rack and looked at the one below it. It was a FAMAS rifle, service weapon of the French army for the last thirty years or more. FAMAS stood for Fusil d’Assaut de la Manufacture d’Armes de Saint-Étienne. It was a strange-looking contraption, built on the design concept the military designated ‘bullpup’, with the receiver placed behind the pistol grip and trigger unit instead of in front of it. It was a way of creating an automatic weapon that was short and handy without sacrificing too much in the way of barrel length. Some hated it, some loved it. To Ben’s eye the thing looked ungainly, but he knew it did the job it was built to do. This one was standard military issue with the twenty-five-round straight magazine, even fitted with the regulation bayonet.

The real question was what one of these was doing in the room with him. Ben was beginning to wonder now if he’d fallen down a cosmic wormhole and woken up in a parallel universe.

He tentatively left the room and found himself at the end of a narrow passage he was certain he’d never seen before. He followed the beat of rock music and the scent of fresh coffee to a door at the other end, and swung it open.

The other side of the door was a small kitchen. Seated alone at a scarred pine table, listening to a radio and holding a mug that said ULTIMATE WARRIOR, his host in this strange place flashed him a brilliant smile. Suddenly, Ben’s fragmented memory was beginning to slot miserably back together.

‘Hey, big man,’ his host chuckled in French, rising to greet his guest. Maybe he was being modest. Six-six at the very least, with skin the colour of burnished ebony, he wasn’t the smallest Nigerian guy Ben had ever seen. He made the muscle-bound oaf Ben had beaten up the day before look like a dwarf. He was somewhere in his late forties, his hair grizzled at the temples. A tattered Gold’s Gym T-shirt showed off his weightlifter’s shoulders and powerful, vein-laced arms.

Ben stared at him, struggling to recall the name. ‘Omar,’ he said at last.

The dazzling grin widened. ‘Brother, I’m surprised you remember a fucking thing.’

Ben slumped in a wooden chair. ‘That’s about all I do remember.’ But the rest was slowly coming back. He wasn’t sure he wanted it to.

Omar filled in the missing pieces with obvious amusement. How he and his bar-room buddies had found a new drinking companion the previous evening when this already toasted English guy had wandered into their regular haunt clutching the remains of a bottle of scotch. It had turned into quite a night.

‘Did I say anything?’

‘Just kept rambling on about some woman. You got it bad, my friend. I know how that goes, believe me.’

‘Nobody got hit, did they?’ Ben dared to ask. He looked at his knuckles. No sign of fresh bruising, and they didn’t hurt. Still, that didn’t prove anything.

‘Didn’t get that far,’ Omar told him with a booming laugh. ‘Not quite. Shit, I never saw anyone put away that much whisky before. Me and the boys were taking bets on when you’d drop, man. Incredible.’

‘Yeah, it’s a real talent,’ Ben muttered. ‘I hope you won your bet.’

Omar shook his head, still beaming. ‘Nah. You cost me big time.’

‘Sorry to hear it. Did you bring me back here?’

‘Wasn’t going to leave you lying in the gutter for the cops to scrape up, now was I?’

‘I appreciate that, Omar.’

‘Hey, no worries. How’d you like the room?’

‘Interesting,’ Ben said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Especially the wall decorations. I don’t mean the posters.’

‘Oh, that,’ Omar replied dismissively. ‘Just a few souvenirs.’

‘That’s a G2 FAMAS. You won’t exactly find one in the local gun shop.’

The bright grin again. Ben was going to need sunglasses for the glare. Omar said, ‘That one came home with me from a little spree called Opération Daguet.’

‘You fought with the French Army in the Gulf?’

Omar shrugged it off. ‘Long time ago.’

‘1991,’ Ben said. ‘Around the time I joined up.’

‘I knew there was something about you.’

‘British Army. Special Air Service. Long time ago, too.’

‘Want a coffee, bro? Look like you could do with it.’

‘And a favour,’ Ben said, nodding and then wincing at the pain the movement cost him. ‘I need a lift. Have you got a car?’

Omar looked at him. ‘Shit. Have I got a car?’

Chapter Eleven

Omar’s pride and joy was a H1 Hummer, the civilian version of the M998 US Army Humvee, the nickname that was the nearest anyone could pronounce to HMMWV or High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle.

The last time Ben had been inside a real one had been on a classified SAS mission in the Middle East. The demilitarised version might not have been bristling with heavy armament, but it was still a monster of a truck that dominated the road by sheer force of intimidation. Painted a deep, gleaming metallic gunmetal that was halfway between charcoal grey and black and all tricked out with mirror-tinted glass and oversized wheels and crash bars and enough auxiliary lighting to fry an egg at thirty paces, it could have been custom-built to suit Omar’s own huge frame.

‘Won it in a poker game,’ he explained loudly over the roar as they muscled their way across Briançon with all the noise and presence of a tank battalion, scattering lesser traffic into the verges. ‘I can hardly afford the insurance, but what the hell, I like it.’ Ben might have appreciated it more if every jolt of the off-road suspension hadn’t sent another arrow of pain through the middle of his skull.

The garage opened for business at 8.30. As the Hummer roared up on to the forecourt, Ben saw the Belphégor truck sitting waiting there for him.

‘Thought you weren’t coming back,’ the mechanic said. ‘Had her all fixed up and ready for you yesterday afternoon.’

‘Don’t ask,’ Ben replied.

The mechanic tossed him the keys. ‘Wouldn’t take her on a grand tour of Europe, but treat her kind and she’ll do fine.’

Ben waved a final thanks to Omar, and the Hummer took off with a large hand extended in a goodbye wave from the window. Ben watched it roar away. Now he just wanted to get out of Briançon as fast as possible and try and put this shameful episode behind him. He paid the repair bill from his own money, and clambered into the truck. It rumbled into life at the first twist of the key. As long as it got him back, that was all he could ask.

It was coming on for 8.45 as Ben set off. His thoughts were dark and brooding on the drive back to the monastery. It was another bright and sunny morning, but he was too swallowed up in self-loathing and penitence to take much notice. He’d let himself down, and not just himself. He’d turned his back on the monastery for just a few hours, and look at the result. This relapse meant there was a lot more work to do.