?Please don?t play games with me, Adam,? Pelham said softly. ?You already know exactly what you?re doing here. You?re going to make the Kammler machine work for us.?

Chapter Thirty-One

Lenny Salt was pretty pleased with himself.

As he drove out of Laugharne as fast as the old Vauxhall would go, heading away from the coastline through the maze of winding lanes that criss-crossed the countryside like a spider?s web, he had a big smile on his face. He reached out and patted the camera on the passenger seat. Nice work. He?d got some great snaps of the Red Scarf Man. That would teach Them to send some spook out to trick old Lenny Salt. Information on Kammler? Lenny smiled. Yeah, right. As if these people could tell him anything. Nobody knew more about Kammler than the Kammler Krew.

He thought about the man he?d photographed, magnified up close in the long lens. Probably mid to late thirties, in good shape. Almost certainly ex-military. Those guys all had that look about them. MI5 or CIA? he wondered. Then again, what did it matter which agency he was working for ? it was all part of the same evil global fraternity.

Them. Lenny thought about Them a lot. The bastards were all in it together.

He?d seen this whole thing coming, for a long time. Had anyone listened to him? Had they fuck. And now look what had happened. Michio and Julia dead, and it was only a question of time before They got to Adam as well.

It?s not paranoia when they?re really out to get you, he thought. That was one of his favourite sayings, and it never failed to make him smile to himself, because he knew he was way too smart ever to let them catch him. He?d been too clever for Red Scarf Man today, same as he?d been too clever to let himself be duped by that girl last year, that German or whatever she was, the one calling herself Luna.

Luna ? what kind of stupid made-up name was that?

Lenny grinned to himself at the memory of how he?d fooled her. Same system he?d used today. Agree to the meet, watch them from a vantage point, take the pictures and slip away. Know your enemy. That was another favourite saying of his, one he took seriously. This was war. It was a matter of survival.

As soon as he got back to the caravan he was going to download the pictures onto his laptop with the others: all the people who?d ever tried to follow him, lure him or pinch his ideas. He was still working on a lot of the names, and of course most of them were phoney anyway ? that was the way They worked. But he had all the faces memorised, and he was always watching out for them, everywhere he went. More enemies would come for him in the future. He was certain of that ? but he?d be ready for them.

They weren?t going to get him. No chance. Not him, not wily old Lenny Salt. Always one step ahead, always on the move, untraceable, checking his emails from a different library or cyber-caf? every day, always paying cash and giving false names to the farmers whose bits of land he rented. Then, every couple of months, or whenever he felt the heat, he?d move on.

And now that Red Scarf Man was sniffing around, it was going to be time to pack up and relocate again. Away from west Wales, maybe up to Scotland this time. Or perhaps Cornwall. Plenty of places to hide away there, and there was always a hippy retreat or new-age healing camp where you could buy a bit of hash.

After half an hour?s drive Lenny was deep in the countryside. At the end of a long, twisty single-track lane he stopped at a farm gate, got out of the car and opened it, drove through and stopped again to shut it behind him. Cows looked up from their grazing and eyed the Vauxhall lazily as it bumped through the field. Across the other side, he reached the next gate and passed through into the wooded area where his camp was.

A few yards further up the track, half-hidden behind a sprawl of gorse and brambles, was the old Sprite caravan. He?d bought it cheap, in cash, from a secondhand dealer in the Peak District just before he?d left Manchester. As soon as he?d got it, he?d sprayed it with military surplus drab-olive paint to help it blend into the rural environments where he planned on spending the rest of his days. Home might be a box on wheels, but he liked to keep it nice and tidy.

Lenny got out of the car and walked over towards the caravan, avoiding the tripwire that was carefully stretched between two trees and attached to an alarm circuit. His hidden cameras watched him from the foliage.

Next to the caravan was his folding table, his deck chair and the barbecue that he grilled his food on. He fancied some sausages tonight. He climbed the aluminium steps to his front door, took the keys from his pocket and undid the two heavy steel padlocks to let himself in. It was hot and stuffy inside, and he pushed open the windows to let some air circulate.

Still grinning to himself at having fooled Them yet again, he stepped over to the fridge and pulled out a can of Old Speckled Hen. Cracked the ring and raised the can in a toast to his cleverness.

?I?ll have one of those too,? said a voice behind him.

The can dropped out of Lenny?s fingers and hit the vinyl floor with a hiss of foam.

Lenny spun around.

The man from the castle walkway in Laugharne was standing in the doorway.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Adam gaped dumbly at Pelham, as if he?d been slapped.

?That?s right,? Pelham said, clearly enjoying the look on his face. ?It?s here. I wasn?t joking when I said you were being given an incredible opportunity, Adam. You should be honoured. Welcome to the inner circle.?

?You found it.? Adam?s voice was hushed with awe.

?It was found. Not by me. I?m just a man with a job to do, the same as you. Mine was to find someone who could make it work. We failed twice. Now you?re here, we?re not going to fail a third time.? He cocked his head. ?Are we, Adam??

Adam was too stunned to formulate a reply.

?Good. Now, enough talk. I want to show you something that very few people have seen in more than half a century.?

Adam was still speechless as Pelham led him out of the office. The guards were standing outside the door, weapons dangling at their sides. They stood to attention as their boss strode out of the doorway and followed, pointing the guns at Adam?s back. Pelham led the way back towards the hangar, past the corroded hulk of the Me 262 and over to a doorway on the far side of the huge space, where he stopped and gave a sharp command. One of the guards produced a large key and unlocked the door.

On the other side of it was a large circular chamber, fifty yards across. Light streamed in from holes in the rough dome of a ceiling and Adam could make out the marks of picks and chisels in the craggy stone walls. He shivered as he thought of the doomed concentration camp slaves who had carved this space out of the solid rock of the mountain under the watchful eyes and cocked weapons of their Nazi masters. The smell of death was soaked deep into the walls of this place.

Running around the circumference of the chamber was a circular metal walkway, with a rail at chest height. Adam stepped to the rail and peered over the edge. His eyes widened. The centre of the chamber was an abyss, a round vertical shaft about fifteen metres across that plummeted straight down further than the eye could see. A rusted iron gangway led across from the edge of the chamber to a steel cage housing an open-sided industrial lift, the kind Adam had seen in pictures of old mines. Pelham walked briskly across the clanking gangway, opened a mesh door, and Adam followed him wordlessly into the lift. One of the guards accompanied them, and the other went over to a switch panel on the wall.

As the lift groaned downwards and the craggy shaft walls rolled by, Adam saw that the guard was looking down at his feet, fingering his weapon a little nervously. Nobody spoke. Down and down. Adam estimated they must be hundreds of metres inside the mountain. There was no ventilation down here, and the air was thick and foul.

The lift touched down and they stepped out into a circular gallery like the one above. A single arched passage led off it, lit down its length by age-yellowed lamps. Pelham led the way. The passage widened steadily, then came to a dead end.

Facing them, glowing dully in the lamplight, was a giant steel door. It filled the entire wall, tall and wide enough to drive a Panzer tank through. It looked to Adam like the entrance to the world?s biggest bank vault. The rivets stamped into its edges were the size of baseballs, and six massive steel deadlocks cut deep into the rock. Painted onto the door?s matt grey surface was a sign with a skull-and-crossbones image and the words ?VORSICHT: GEFAHRENZONE? in stark red letters.

The danger warning was loud and clear. Whoever had put that door in place must have known what terrible forces were to be contained behind it. Adam wondered if his captors had even the slightest idea of what they were dealing with.

Pelham gave a command to the guard. The man nodded, unslung his weapon and handed it to his boss. Stepped towards the huge door, dusted his hands and took a grip on the giant metal wheel, crusted with age, that was connected by a system of gears to the bars of the deadlocks. The guard braced his feet apart, paused a beat and then grunted with effort as he put his strength behind the lock. The wheel turned with a squeak, and the deadlocks began to draw back. Another turn, a few more inches.

Standing there with his mouth open and watching the locks slowly grind back across the door, Adam suddenly realised he hadn?t breathed for about a minute. His heart was firing like a machine gun. Pelham watched his face, and a little smile curled at the edges of his mouth.

Adam gulped. He was about to witness something incredible, legendary. Something he?d spent years studying from afar, within the confines of his safe little world, relying solely on his own scientific knowledge and the sketchy evidence of a handful of witness accounts. The mythical Kammler machine. The lost Grail of super-esoteric science. Here he was about to lay eyes on it for the first time.

Now he knew that Michio and Julia had stood on this spot, not so very long ago. Had they felt the way he was feeling now, quaking with terror and yet, somewhere deep inside, burning up with excitement?

The thought screamed at him from inside his head. Can I make this thing work?

The deadlocks had reached the end of their travel. The guard stepped away from the wheel, wiping the rust off his hands, then leaned his weight into the huge door and pushed hard. It began to open.

Adam felt Pelham?s hand on his shoulder, and walked towards the dark doorway. The air wafting out of the shadows smelled dank, and Adam shivered with the cold that suddenly tingled up and down his body.

Then Pelham flashed a torch, found the handle of a switch and yanked it. Lights flickered into life and Adam?s jaw dropped open.

He?d held an ingot of solid gold created inside a nuclear reactor. Watched the child-sized Honda ASIMO robot conduct a symphony orchestra. Stood inside a particle accelerator a mile underneath the ground as electrons slammed into one another at the speed of light. Witnessed the afterglow of a gamma ray burst when a giant star collapsed in on itself and a black hole was born. But he?d never seen anything like this before.

Under his feet, electric wires snaked like pythons towards the device in the middle of the vault. He followed them towards it.

Standing on a concrete plinth, the bell-shaped object was as tall as he was. He walked around its smooth sides, put out his hand and touched the cold steel casing.

Kammler?s secret creation, shrouded in mystery for sixty-five years, the greatest enigma of the twentieth century. Maybe of all time. Die Glocke, the Germans had called it.

The Bell.

And here it was. Incredible.

The scientist in him was already hard at work, his eyes following the line of the joints in the strange metal casing until he?d located the bolted-on access panels in its underside. He had a pretty good idea of what was behind them.

Can you make it work? asked the voice in his head.

He knew the answer. Maybe I can.

But I?m not going to.

He turned. Pelham was standing a few feet away, watching his every move like a crouched leopard watching an antelope.

Wait for it, you bastard. ?I?m the last one who can help you,? he said. ?That?s right, Adam. You are. That?s why we?ve gone to such pains to make this as attractive to you as possible.?

?Meaning that if I refuse, you?ll hurt my boy.?

?I hope that won?t be necessary.?

?So I agree to help you, and then what? You?ll just let us both walk away, go home? You take me for a complete idiot? You think I don?t understand what?s going to happen to Rory and me if I give you what you want? I don?t know what kind of fool would agree to a deal like that.? Adam took a step closer to him. The guard was watching him with a frown, and the gun was pointing his way. But he didn?t care. ?So I?m making you a new deal.?

?A new deal,? Pelham echoed blankly.

?That?s right. You?re going to start listening to my terms now. Here?s how it?s going to be. You think those papers I brought with me are my Kammler notes? Wrong. They might be useful if you?re thinking of wiring up some smart house technology into this shithole. But the real stuff is right where I left it in my study back home, securely locked away in a password-controlled safe. And that?s where it?s going to stay until you let my son go.? Pelham didn?t reply.

?These are my terms. One, you let me take Rory safely home. Two, you let me see for myself exactly where this cosy little place of yours is. Three, you give me your guarantee that neither my son nor I will ever be harmed or threatened in any way again. Then, and only then, I?ll agree to come back here and help you make that thing work.?

Pelham jutted out his chin and raised an eyebrow. Said nothing.

Adam pointed at the machine. ?Play fair with me and I?ll give you what you want. But cross the line, and I?ll make sure the authorities will be on this place like flies on Rottweiler shit. And I?ll screw up that machine so bad, you?ll have to sell it for recycling into Coke tins. Don?t think I don?t know how.?

?Have you finished?? Pelham asked quietly.

?That?s all I have to say. Think about it.?

Chapter Thirty-Three

?Quiet little spot you?ve found for yourself here, Lenny,? Ben said.

Salt backed away. His eyes were wide and fixed on Ben as he reached his right hand back and fumbled for something on the Formica top behind him. Then his fingers closed on the wooden handle of the long barbecue fork and he snatched it up and pointed it like a weapon at Ben?s stomach.

?Stay away from me or I?ll skewer you.?

Ben looked at the fork. ?I think you?d better put that thing down before you go and hurt yourself.?

?Who sent you? Who are you working for??

?Just myself. Sorry to disappoint.?

?What do you want??

?To talk, Lenny. Nothing more.?

Salt clutched the fork tighter, standing there in a puddle of beer.

?You look like you?ve pissed yourself,? Ben said. ?Aren?t you going to put that fork down??

?You?ll kill me.?

?Lenny, if I?d wanted to kill you, you wouldn?t even have seen me.?

Salt blanched.

Ben reached slowly into his pocket, took out his wallet and handed him a business card. ?This is who I am and what I do.? He nodded to the laptop on the bed. ?Check out the website. There?s a picture of me.?

?I?m not connected here. No email, no internet.?

?Scared they might trace you??

Salt nodded sheepishly.

?You need to do a better job. It wasn?t hard to find you. And your snap-and-run routine needs work too.?

Salt was still frozen there, clutching the fork. The last of the beer had seeped out of the can and was trickling across the vinyl floor.

?For Christ?s sake,? Ben said. ?I haven?t got all day.? He stepped over, snatched the fork before Salt could react, and threw it out of the open caravan doorway. It whistled through the air and stuck juddering in a tree trunk.

Salt kept gaping speechlessly at Ben.

?Now clean that beer up, and let?s go outside and talk.?

Salt hesitated, then tore off a length of kitchen roll from a dispenser next to the stove. He used the paper to mop up the puddle on the floor while Ben grabbed two more beer cans from the fridge and led the way outside. Salt joined him, watching him warily, and they sat opposite one another at the picnic table.

Ben snapped open his beer. ?I?m sorry if I scared you before, Lenny. I didn?t want to.?

Salt grunted in reply, opened his own can with a spit of foam and took a long gulp, keeping his eyes on Ben. The business card was still clenched in his fist, and he scrutinised it carefully, first its printed front, then the blank back, staring at it as though it was the lost map to the secret US Government alien farm at Roswell.

?No invisible ink,? Ben said. ?No holographic cryptograms.?

Salt looked up. ?Tactical Training Unit? What does that mean??

?It?s my business. Just a training school.?

?Bullshit. It means you?re military.?

?Was military,? Ben said. ?Not any more.?

?Sure. That?s what you would say, isn?t it?? Salt sneered. ?I don?t talk to people like you.?

?I?m being completely honest with you. I?ve been out of the military for a long time now. I left there to do my own thing, and now I teach people how to do the same. I could give you the phone numbers of a dozen people who?d vouch for that.?

?Teach them to do what?? Salt asked suspiciously.

?To protect vulnerable people and stop bad things happening to them,? Ben said. ?And if something bad?s already happened, to help them get out of it. To find people who?ve been kidnapped, or who?ve got into trouble.?

?So you?re a detective??

?Not exactly.?

?A cop??

?Definitely not,? Ben said.

Salt narrowed his eyes. ?Are you looking for someone now??

Ben nodded. ?Yes, I am. I?m looking for a young woman who might have got herself mixed up in something very dangerous. And I?m hoping you might be able to help me with information. I?ll pay you for your time.? He dug some notes out of his wallet and held them up so that Salt could count them.

Salt?s eyes flicked down to the money, then back up to meet Ben?s. ?Cash up front.?

Ben tossed the money across the table. Salt palmed it and stuffed it in his pocket. He smiled. ?Now, what if I don?t feel like talking??

?Then I might feel like snapping your neck,? Ben said.

Salt swallowed. ?What information do you want??

?I want to know about Kammler.?

Salt gave a dark little chuckle. ?Of course. Seems like everyone?s getting interested in Kammler all of a sudden. There?s a lot of weird shit going on, man.?

?Are you saying someone else has approached you??

?Not for a while. I?m keeping my head down low.?

?What about before??

Silence.

?The neck-snapping part still applies. I thought we had a deal.?

?There was the German.?

?What German??

?This crazy German girl.?

?Go on.?

Salt shrugged. ?There isn?t that much to say. It was about eight, nine months ago, just before I left Manchester. She emailed me, same as you did. Wanted to talk to me about Kammler. Said her name was Luna, and she was based somewhere in the Black Forest. Offburg, Hoffenburg, something like that.?

?Offenburg?? Ben knew of the place. It was close to Strasbourg, near the border between France and Germany.

Salt nodded. ?That?s it. But I wouldn?t take that too seriously, man. I knew right away she was phoney. Told me she sold ceramics.? He smiled knowingly. ?Like someone who sells ceramics would be genuinely interested in this stuff. I tell you, man, the covers they come up with are pretty fucking thin sometimes.?

Ben asked, ?Did she arrange a rendezvous with you??

Salt nodded again. ?St Peter?s Square in Manchester. She was very keen to meet. Flew over the same day. At least, that?s what she said. The woman I saw might not have been the same one. Might have been one of her team, you know??

?So you turned up for the RV.?

?Oh, I turned up, all right. Old Lenny always turns up.?

?But you didn?t talk to her. You did what you did with me, took her picture from a distance and then buggered off. That?s a very bad little habit, Lenny.?

Salt flushed angrily. ?Got to protect myself, haven?t I? Can?t be too careful.?

?Have you still got the picture??

Salt hesitated a second, then shrugged and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder at the caravan. ?Let me see it.?

?What, now??

?Right now, Lenny. It?s important.?

Salt got up and went into the caravan. Ben heard him pottering about for a moment, then he re-emerged carrying a laptop and a battered screw-top tin labelled ?coffee?. He laid the computer on the picnic table, flipped it open and powered it up. While it was whirring into life he twisted the lid off the coffee tin. Ben caught the smell of ground beans. Salt shoved his hand into the brown powder, spilling a lot of it on the table, and came out with a small object wrapped in a miniature plastic Ziploc bag. He opened it, and Ben saw that the object was a computer USB flash drive.

Salt inserted it in one of the ports on the side of the laptop. ?You have to look away now,? he said, turning to Ben.

?Why??

?Because I can?t let you see me typing the password.?

Ben sighed and looked away. Salt rattled the keys, and then said, ?OK. You can look now.?

Ben turned back towards the computer as the contents of the flash drive came up onscreen. It contained a vertical list of JPG photo files, at least thirty of them.

?What is this??

?Them,? Salt replied.

?Them??

?My enemies.?

Ben scanned the list up and down. Salt had labelled each one with the date and place the picture had been taken.

?These are all people who?ve approached you??

?Nah, nah. They wouldn?t do that. It?d blow their cover. Most of these were just following me in the street.?

?So they could be anyone.?

Salt gave him a look. ?No way, man. I know when I?m being followed. So I take their picture, and then they don?t come back, see, but they always send more. You?ve got to know your enemy.?

Ben didn?t say anything.

Salt scrolled down the list of files, stopped and tapped a finger on the screen. ?This is her.? He clicked, and a photo of a woman flashed up.

Ben stared at it.

The photo was of a woman standing on a flight of steps leading up to what looked like a library. She was on her own, and even frozen on the screen she looked tense, as though waiting for someone but not quite sure what she was going to find when they turned up. It had been a dull, cloudy day in Manchester, and she was dressed for cool weather in a dark green fleece. She had the same slight build as the woman he?d chased in Switzerland, about five-eight, with shoulder-length blond hair blowing in the wind. There was just one problem.

Ben looked at Salt. ?She?s got her back to the camera. You can?t see her face.?

?Hold on. I got a better shot just after that.? More clicking, and Salt exchanged the picture for another. Same place, seconds later. Now the woman was turned towards the camera.

Ben?s heart sank again. The definition on the face wasn?t good. All he could see was a blur of features. She could have been anyone.

?Can you zoom in and sharpen it up?? Ben said.

Salt tapped a couple of keys and the image expanded. The woman?s face disappeared offscreen, so that Ben got a close-up of the dark green fleece and the designer logo on its breast. Then Salt flicked another couple of keys and her face panned back into view. Salt used the cursor to draw a rectangle around her head, clicked down a sub-menu and the image suddenly sharpened into focus.

Ben was drawn into the screen, so that nothing existed outside of it.

It was her. It was Ruth. If there?d been any doubt in his mind until that moment, now it had been suddenly blown away into spinning fragments like flying debris in a bomb blast.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Adam?s eyes fluttered open to a world of blurs and echoes.

What happened to me?

He blinked, struggling to focus on the kaleidoscope of images and jumbled pieces of memory that were swirling randomly through his brain. Faces hovered in front of him, distorted and elongated, like reflections in the back of a spoon. He knew the distant voices he could hear were talking to him, but he couldn?t make out the words. Nausea washed over him, and his eyelids felt weighed down with lead. He sank his chin on his chest and groaned. Tried to move and found he couldn?t. Looked down at his hands, saw his fingers groping like claws. His wrists tied down, his arms pinned. The sudden fear opened his eyes wider and forced his brain to sharpen.

He was sitting in a wheelchair in a small room with grey walls and a bare bulb for a light. He wasn?t alone. One of the figures in the room with him, standing watching him with his head slightly cocked to one side, was Pelham. Behind him stood the two armed guards he?d seen before and another he didn?t recognise.

Now he was beginning to recall what had happened. He remembered the Kammler machine in the vault deep below. He remembered what he?d said to Pelham. Then the sudden shock of the man tripping him to the ground, effortlessly, like he was nothing, and holding him down while the needle had lanced painfully into his flesh.

And now he was here. But where was here? He tried to speak, but something was clamped against his lips and it wasn?t until then he realised he was gagged.

Pelham?s voice, gentle and soft. ?Just a mild sedative, Adam. You?ve been out no more than a few minutes. You might get a bit of a headache, but nothing serious. Now, let?s get started.?

A guard stepped forward and grabbed the handles of the wheelchair. Adam felt himself being swivelled round, and he suddenly saw himself dimly reflected in a big glass pane in front of him. He looked like a wild man, eyes staring, strapped to the chair by leather belts around his wrists and ankles and another one across his chest. The gag over his mouth was like a ping pong ball, pulled tight into his mouth by a buckle behind his neck.

The glass in front of him was a window, and he was looking through into another room.

?I?m sorry you decided to be difficult, Adam,? Pelham?s voice said behind him. He could see the man?s reflection standing behind the chair. ?I?m disappointed. I was hoping you and I could have a good relationship.?

Through the window, Adam saw the door open and somebody walked into the other room. He?d seen that face before. It was the woman who?d brought him from his hotel. She turned to the window with that impassive, steely gaze he remembered from Graz. Her eyes seemed to be searching, and he realised that she couldn?t see him. The window was a two-way mirror.

The door in the other room swung open again and a man walked in backwards, pulling something into the room. Adam knew him too. He was the muscular, bull-necked man who had been with the woman in Graz, the one who had hit him in the back of the head in the hotel corridor. The thing he was pulling into the room was some kind of trolley. Adam?s fuzzed-out brain took a second to register what it was.

When he did, horror shot up through him like lava in an erupting volcano.

The upper tier of the medical trolley was covered with shiny implements. Scalpels, drills, saws, needles. A large serrated knife. Beside it, a meat cleaver with a big square-nosed blade and a wooden handle.

The stocky man rolled the trolley across to the far wall and left the room. The woman took her time walking over to it. With her back to the two-way mirror she kneeled down beside it to pick something from the lower shelf, then stood up holding some kind of opaque plastic bundle. Adam watched as she unfurled it and realised it was an apron, the kind that slaughterers wore for butchering animals. She tied the apron strings neatly around her narrow waist, then reached into the front pocket, took out a pair of rubber gloves and pulled one on, then the other.

They?re going to torture me, Adam was thinking. They?re showing me the implements. He felt his bowels twitch.

But then the door of the room opened again, and the stocky man walked in backwards again clutching the handle of another wheeled trolley. This time it was heavier, and his tall companion from before was helping him with it.

But Adam wasn?t watching them. When he saw what they were bringing in, he started screaming through the gag and thrashing against his bonds.

The trolley was a workbench on wheels. Lying on his back across its pitted wooden surface, chained to its four corners by his wrists and ankles, stripped to his underwear, was Rory.

All Adam could hear was the screaming and crying and pleading of his son as they wheeled him in.

?Let me go! Dad! Dad! I want my dad! Don?t hurt me!? His back was arched as he struggled against the cuffs, the pale skin stretched over his ribs. He looked sickly and fragile and ill with terror.

Adam fought the leather straps holding him to the chair with every muscle in his body. He thought his heart was going to give out.

?I told you I was just someone with a job to do,? Pelham said quietly. ?And I always do my job. Even if it?s not very pleasant. And this isn?t going to be, Adam. I?m sorry.?

The two men wheeled the bench into the middle of the room, then stepped back to the side and let the woman take over. She glanced at the two-way mirror and nodded, and Adam saw a thin smile spread over her stony face. It was the first expression he?d seen on it. She seemed to be watching him, looking right at him as though she could sense his presence on the other side of the glass and knew what he was feeling.

?Her name is Irina Dragojevi?,? Pelham said behind him. ?The less you know about her background, the better. Of all the unsavoury things she does for a living, this is her favourite. She?s an expert. That?s why she was hired for this job, to do the things that the rest of us won?t. She enjoys it, Adam. You can see it in her eyes.?

Adam was bellowing through the gag, twisting his head from side to side and trying to bite the material apart as he watched the woman walk slowly around the boy on the bench and go over to the instrument trolley. She ran her hand along the row of implements, like a chef selecting the best tool for the task in hand. A heavy hacker to chop through a tough joint, a long slim blade to fillet a fish. Her fingers rested on the handle of a scalpel. She picked it up and examined the blade against the light, ran her gaze thoughtfully along the cutting edge. She shook her head, neatly replaced the scalpel and picked up the big meat cleaver. She weighed it in her hand and nodded to herself. Looked slowly back at the two-way mirror and one side of her mouth twisted into a smile of anticipation.

Next to her on the bench, Rory was struggling harder than ever, fingers clawing at the wooden bench, veins standing out horribly on his neck, screaming so hard Adam was terrified that his lungs would burst.

The woman?s gaze swivelled down at the child. She stared for a moment, then drew back her free hand and slapped him across the face, twice, with cracks that echoed in the room.

?Quiet,? she said.

The harsh blows silenced Rory?s screams. His chest heaved and he began to sob piteously.

Adam wasn?t a violent man. He?d never enjoyed nor invited confrontation, never been in a fight, always dreaded trouble. Once, when he?d been a student in New York, a tough guy in a bar had spilled his drink to see if the shy boy would put up his fists. Adam had left the place as quickly as he could, and never returned.

But if he could have got free of the chair, he?d have been through that window like a missile and he would have sawn open that bitch?s throat right there on the floor with a shard of broken glass and tasted the spray of her blood and spit in her face as she died.

?You still have time to reconsider,? Pelham said. ?I wouldn?t like you to think I was being unreasonable.?

On the other side of the glass, the woman slid the blade of the cleaver along Rory?s body, up his stomach to his chest, then over the trembling curve of his shoulder and down his arm. It stopped at his left wrist. Played on the skin, just hard enough to leave a white mark.

Then the woman took deep breath, looked as if she?d just seen God, and raised the cleaver eighteen inches in the air.

?Noooo!? Adam screamed through the gag.

The blade paused, catching the light. The woman glanced back at the mirror with raised eyebrows and a look that said ?Shall I go on??

Rory wasn?t struggling any more. His breath seemed to be coming in rapid gasps.

?Well, Adam?? said Pelham?s voice in his ear as he bent close to him. ?Your choice. She?ll start with the left wrist, then she?ll do the left ankle and go on working her way round. She?s waiting for me to tap on the glass. Once for no, twice for yes. What shall it be? Do you really want your son to be maimed for life??

Adam felt fingers at the back of his neck, and the gag went slack. He shook it free and it dropped into his lap. He twisted his head round so that he could see Pelham in the corner of his eye.

?Make her stop,? he pleaded. His voice came out as a croak. ?Don?t let her hurt my boy. Please. I?ll do anything.?

?All this could have been avoided, Adam. You have to learn there are consequences to your actions.?

?Please,? Adam sobbed. His eyes were screwed up in agony. Mucus dripped in strands from his chin.

?You?ll give me your word of honour? That you won?t defy me again? Because next time I won?t give you a second chance.?

Adam hung his head, breathing hard. Then nodded. ?I?d like us to be friends, Adam. I really would. And friends don?t ever lie to each other. You?re not lying to me, are you??

?I swear to God. I swear. Don?t hurt him.?

Pelham straightened, stepped over to the glass and tapped loudly, once. He held his hand there, and for a terrible instant Adam thought he was going to tap a second time. But then he took his hand away.

Behind the glass, the woman?s eyes glinted with rage. She slammed the cleaver back down on the trolley, ripped off her gloves and apron and stormed out of the room. The stocky man and his tall companion moved in silence towards the bench and wheeled the trembling, whimpering boy back out through the door.

Adam was left staring at an empty room.

Pelham wheeled the chair round brusquely to face him. ?So let?s start again, shall we??

Adam nodded weakly.

Pelham undid the straps holding his wrists and ankles, then unbuckled the leather belt around his chest. Adam slumped in the chair. His hands were as pale as a corpse?s, and the pain was excruciating as the blood started flowing back into them.

?You told me you left your notes in the safe in that smart house of yours in Ireland. Is that right??

Adam let out a defeated sigh. ?In my study,? he whispered.

?Such a stupid thing to have done. Look at the time you?ve wasted, and the unnecessary stress you?ve inflicted on your son. No parent should ever allow their child to experience trauma like that. I only hope he can forgive you.? Pelham pulled up a stool, sat down and took out a little notebook and pencil. ?Right. Now that you?ve decided to see reason, you?re going to tell me exactly where those notes are and how to get to them. Then I?ll be sending Irina and her colleagues over immediately to fetch them, and I won?t be expecting them to return empty handed. Understand??

?I understand,? Adam murmured.

?Now, I know you?re a very clever chap and you?ve got that whole house password-controlled. So I want you to give me all the necessary codes to get into and around it. Start talking.?

Adam told him everything. The passwords for the gate, the front door, the study, the safe, even the bedrooms.

Pelham looked pleased as he stood up and headed for the door. ?See how easy it can be?? He paused with his hand on the handle and waved the pad. ?I?m going to give this information to our friend Irina. Then we?ll get you cleaned up and you can start familiarising yourself with that thing downstairs. Making that machine work is your life from this moment on, Adam. And your son?s, too.?

When Pelham was gone, Adam sank his chin on his chest, put his hands over his face and sobbed. He didn?t care about the guards in the room with him. Dignity no longer served any purpose.

Then he went rigid with fear as a thought struck him like a bullet to the head.

Sabrina. He?d forgotten all about her.

Oh, God. Sweet Jesus. Please don?t let Sabrina still be there.

Chapter Thirty-Five

?Is she the one you?re looking for?? Salt asked him.

?Yes,? Ben said quietly. ?It?s her.?

?Any idea who she is??

?Some idea.?

?You going to tell me? Could come in handy.?

?No, I?m not.? Ben had to speak carefully. He could hardly breathe.

?She?s a spook, isn?t she? One of Them. That?s what They do, man, they hook them in. Brainwash them. Turn them into automatons to carry out their missions.? He pointed. ?I?m sure these are the bastards who killed Julia and Michio. It?s all got to do with Kammler, see? The whole thing.?

Ben stared at him. ?Julia and Michio??

Salt nodded through a swig of beer. ?Julia Goodman and Michio Miyazaki. They were part of the Krew,? he mumbled. ?Like me. We were all in it together.?

?I don?t get it. What crew? You mean they were lab assistants like you at Manchester??

Salt shook his head. ?No, man. Julia was my boss. She was head of department. Michio was a planetary scientist based in Tokyo. I?m talking about the Kammler Krew.?

This was getting more and more impenetrable. ?What happened to them??

?Climbing accident. Heart attack. At least, that?s what the official reports will tell you. But here?s what really happened. I was in email contact with them all the time. Not every week, you know, but often enough. Then, bang, they?re gone. Off the radar. Vanished. So I make a few enquiries, don?t I? I?m told that Julia?s taken a long holiday. OK, she was seriously into hiking and climbing, that kind of thing. But she never mentioned anything to me about a holiday. Next thing you know, she?s fallen off a mountain in Spain. Dead, of course. Meanwhile, I hear from Michio?s brother who tells me Michio was off on a research trip to America. Maybe that?s true and maybe it isn?t. But guess what? Wouldn?t you know it, Michio gets stung by a scorpion, goes into shock, dies of heart failure. Both of them killed in a short space of time, and nothing to link them whatsoever except for one thing. Both members of the Kammler Krew. See? Ha.? Salt slapped the table.

Ben was feeling a growing surge of unease as he listened. It started in his guts and worked its way upwards until his throat felt clamped and his heart was thudding. If what Salt was saying was the truth, it meant that the stakes had just risen from attempted kidnap to actual abduction and murder.

And was Ruth part of it?

A dull roar filled his ears. His eyes lost focus.

Salt jabbed his finger again at the screen, making it wobble on its hinges. ?So who knows, man? What side is she on? The assassins?, or someone else?s? That?s the world we live in, man. You can?t trust anybody.? He paused, looking down at Ben?s hand. ?Hey. You?re bleeding on my table. I eat off this table.?

Ben followed his gaze and realised that he?d crushed his can in his fist without knowing it. The thin metal had sheared, leaving a sharp edge that had gashed his palm. A trickle of blood was dripping across his hand onto the wood. He wiped it away, struggling to clear his mind.

?I?m not getting this, Lenny. Why would these people, whoever they are, be going after scientists??

Salt frowned at him, apparently taken aback, as though it was the stupidest question of all time.

?Maybe it?s to do with tests of some kind?? Ben said, remembering what Don Jarrett had told him.

Salt?s brow crunched up into a grimace. ?Tests??

?Tests on the gas chamber. Poison residues in the ground, something like that? But why physicists? That would be something a chemist would do.?

Salt stared. ?You?ve got this totally wrong, man. This has nothing to do with gas chambers.?

?Holocaust deniers,? Ben said. ?It?s about people who?? But he could see the deepening look of consternation on Salt?s face, and his voice trailed off.

?No way, man.?

?But Kammler was the designer??

?I know that,? Salt interrupted him. ?SS Building Division, and all that shit. But that?s a whole separate thing. Forget about the Holocaust and all that. That?s not why people are going after the Kammler stuff. This is about science.?

Ben stared at him. ?Science??

?Weird, weird shit.? Salt shook his head. ?Like you wouldn?t believe.?

?As in Nazi time machines and UFOs? You?re right. I don?t.?

?You?ve got to be open, man. There?s stuff out there that would blow your mind. The Germans were developing all kinds of far-out technology in the war. Heard of the Foo Fighters? Those lights that the British bomber crews saw on night missions over Germany that would just, like, hover there and then go whizzing across the sky like nothing anyone had ever seen before or could explain? Who do you think made those? And where d?you think the Yanks stole it from after the war? Philadelphia Experiment. Heard of that? US Navy special optical cloaking device, 1943? They made a whole ship disappear, man. Right into the ether, with all the crew on board. Then brought it back. Electromagnetic fields, anti-gravity. Weird science is all real, man. Everything you?ve ever heard of is real. But the fucking spooks use disinformation to cover it up, discredit a few scientists here and there so that nobody will take it seriously. Meanwhile the bastards know full well it?s all true and they?re hiding it from the world.?

Salt?s voice started fading away into the background of Ben?s thoughts, and after a while Ben could hardly hear him at all as he sat there ranting and gesticulating, his eyes wide with indignation, his wizened face cracked open in a snaggle-tooth snarl.

Ben closed his eyes and remembered that day in Switzerland. Replayed the events in the clearing, the kidnappers coming out of the trees in their black combat clothes and masks. The swastika badges on their jackets.

He remembered them clearly. He hadn?t imagined it. And much as he despised the idea of his sister wearing that badge, until now he?d at least had some clear grasp of what was going on ? or had thought he had. It had seemed to fit so perfectly with what Steiner had said. Yet what Salt was telling him blew the whole logic of the situation out of the window. Suddenly everything was changed, turned upside down.

Now his head was aching with concentration as he tried to make sense of it all. There was just one clear thread running through the mess. It was the clear, unalterable fact that, whatever the hell this was about, this woman calling herself Luna, but who was really his lost sister Ruth, had attempted to talk to Lenny Salt about Kammler. He didn?t know why she had ? that could come later. For now, all that mattered was the evidence he was looking at on the screen in front of him. She?d come a long way to talk to Salt, and that meant she was determined. Determined enough, perhaps, to want to talk to someone else when Salt failed to honour their rendezvous.

Ben thought about it for a moment, then looked up at Salt and asked, ?This group, this crew or whatever it was. Was it just you, Michio and Julia? Just the three of you??

Salt shook his head. ?There were four of us, for a while at least. Until Adam dropped out.?

?Adam??

?Adam Connor. O?Connor now. Changed his name. Irish roots, but he?s American. He was Professor of Applied Physics at the University of New York.?

?You haven?t mentioned anything happening to him. Does that mean he?s still alive??

?He was when I talked to him a few days ago,? Salt said.

?You told him your theory about Michio and Julia??

Salt nodded. ?I warned him, and if he?s got any sense he?ll keep his head down, like me.?

?How did he react??

?Oh, he probably thinks I?m paranoid. Mad old Lenny. Serve him right if they do get him.?

Ben paused, thinking hard. ?When did you take down the Kammler page on your website, Lenny??

?When all this happened. To protect myself.?

?Before you took the page down, was Adam?s name mentioned there??

Salt looked puzzled. ?Yeah, it was, until he made me take it off. He didn?t want to be associated with us any more. Thought it was bad for his reputation or something.?

?So Luna could have found him, the same way she found you.?

Shrug. ?I suppose.?

?Is Adam into conspiracies the way you are, Lenny??

Salt flushed. ?No, he?s got his head in the sand like everyone else.?

?So if she?d turned up, he wouldn?t necessarily have tried to avoid her. But months later, nothing?s happened to Adam. So she can?t have been involved with whatever happened to your friends.?

?Maybe that?s just what they want us to think,? Salt said. ?See how they fuck with our minds, man??

Ben ignored him. He was thinking about this American guy. The man sounded like a sensible kind of person, as different from Lenny Salt as it was possible to be. Nothing made sense any more, and maybe it was an outside chance ? but what if Adam had actually spoken to Ruth? He might know something. She might have given him a phone number, an email address. Even terrorists lived normal lives, lived in regular homes like everyone else. Or she might have given him a surname. Even a fake name could be a useful lead.

?You?d better give me O?Connor?s number. I?d like to talk to him.?

?I can?t give it to you. I don?t have it.?

?Lenny??

?Seriously, I don?t have his number. I never did. I don?t like to use phones, man. They?re always listening.?

?I?m going to be pretty annoyed if I have to travel all the way to America just because you don?t like to talk on the phone.?

?He?s not in America any more.? Salt pointed west, through the trees. ?He?s just across the water there.?

?Across the water??

?Ireland. He moved there, out in the Wicklow Hills near Dublin. Got a smart house business, lives out in the sticks by a lake.?

?Will he be at home??

Salt shrugged. ?Don?t see why not. He said something about expecting a visitor to stay when I saw him, so I don?t think he?s going anywhere.?

Ben looked at his watch. It was nearly quarter to two. He could drive from here to Pembroke Dock, catch the first ferry and cut across to Rosslare, then head north towards the Wicklow Hills. He should be there by nightfall.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Night was falling fast and early over Teach na Loch as the gathering storm rattled the glass in the windows. Sabrina looked out at the black clouds scudding across the sky and the ripples distorting the moon?s glow on the surface of the lake. Then, as she watched, a cloud passed in front of the moon and the water went dark. The gently rolling hills were suddenly black, ominous silhouettes against the even blacker sky.

Not a prick of light anywhere to be seen, not a single person for miles. It made her feel very alone in the isolated house, and she found herself wishing she were back in noisy, cramped London.

The cream floor-length curtains suddenly swished shut without warning, making her jump before she realised that it was the house detecting the sudden change in the light and closing the curtains automatically. Three side lamps came on simultaneously a second later, the eco-bulbs glowing dull at first and then brightening.

?Would you like the fire on?? asked the soothing, electronic female voice from somewhere and nowhere.

?Go screw yourself,? Sabrina said to it. Every time she came here, Adam had installed some new piece of gadgetry, and it always took her by surprise. Pretty soon there?d be a robot arm in the bathroom waiting to wipe your ass.

She walked over to the big, soft sofa, stretched herself out on it and went back to her thoughts.

Still no word from Adam all day. She?d been hoping he?d at least call her from Edinburgh to let her know when he was coming back. She?d tried calling him, but his phone was always off. And of course it was way too much to expect him to bother to answer the three messages she?d left him.

It was getting harder to know what to do. Why was Adam acting so oddly? Had he stashed Rory away at tennis camp so that he could go off with some woman he?d met? But that didn?t make sense. If he?d met someone, why the furtiveness? It wasn?t like he had anything to hide. Oh, wait, maybe she was married. That would explain a lot. He wouldn?t want to let his little sis know about that kind of thing. Little sis who was pushing thirty but still had to be treated like a kid.

Or maybe Adam wasn?t acting oddly at all, and he was right about Rory?s practical joke, and there was a glitch with the email dates, and Rory had got himself another phone, and she was just winding herself up pointlessly with bullshit delusions. That would make more sense, Sabrina thought ? and it was almost certainly what the cops would have said about it all, if she?d been dumb enough to go to them. She?d been tempted a few times that day to call them. Glad she hadn?t.

She jumped up from the sofa, a vision of a gin and tonic in a tall, frosted glass suddenly filling her mind. As she padded down the corridor in her bare feet, the house sensed the movement and turned lights on to guide her way. She walked into the kitchen and it was suddenly a blaze of white light.

?I am capable of flipping a switch, you know,? she muttered. ?Fucking smartass house.?

The house didn?t respond. At least it didn?t ask her, Shall I put the kettle on?

?Frank Sinatra,? she called out.

This time the house responded instantly with ?Come Fly With Me? from hidden speakers all around the room.

She mixed her drink, sliced a lemon, clinked ice in the glass and took a slurp. ?Cheers, Frank.? Then she added some more gin for good measure, left the kitchen and the lights escorted her back down the corridor.

What?s the matter with you? she thought to herself. Why couldn?t she just chill out and enjoy what was left of her vacation?

Well, maybe it?s got something to do with being left all alone in a dark, creepy house that talks to you and makes things happen by themselves, with nobody around for a mile in every direction and a storm blowing outside.

As she thought this, a gust of wind hit the building and she was sure she felt it move.

?What is this place, Tornado Alley?? she muttered to herself. Wondering for a moment about what she would do if there was a power cut, she quickly reassured herself that her oh-so-scientifically-minded and supremely clever brother would have a genny down in the basement if it came to it.

She slumped back down on the sofa with her drink, grabbed the remote control, aimed it at the giant wall-mounted TV and pressed a button.

The TV stayed blank. Instead, a bright flame whooshed up to fill the electronically-controlled open fireplace below it.

Sabrina cursed. Why did all the goddamn remotes have to look exactly the same? She killed the fire with another touch of a button, chucked the remote down and picked up the right one to turn on the TV. Flipped through a bunch of channels and landed on a rom-com movie she?d seen years ago but liked enough to watch again.

She settled back against the cushions, getting in the mood and smiling to herself as Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal went through their bickering, fast-talking routine.

Suddenly, lights came on in the corridor. One after another, click, click, click. And stayed on.

She frowned. ?Adam, is that you??

She half-expected him to walk into the room, brushing rain off his jacket and putting down his case, calling, ?I?m ho-ome.?

But there was no reply.

Sabrina muted the TV. ?Adam?? she called again. Still nothing. She got up from the sofa, stepped across the room and peered out into the corridor. The lights were already fading again.

?Is someone there?? There was a tremulous little edge to her voice that she wished hadn?t come out. Her heart began to beat faster.

Outside, the thunder rumbled, and the rain lashed down harder on the windows and the skylights.

Sabrina was frozen to the spot, staring out into the dark corridor.

Something moved.

She tensed.

Cassini came slinking out of the darkness.

?Oh, Cass, you almost scared the shit out of me,? she sighed. ?Jesus.? She couldn?t help but chuckle with relief as she scooped the cat off the floor and walked back to the sofa, holding him in her arms. ?Don?t you ever think about doing that to me again, pal. OK??

She went back to the sofa, took another gulp of gin and tonic and turned the movie sound back on. Cassini draped himself across her lap, so floppy he felt boneless, and she stroked him absently. She could feel the tiny vibration of his purring resonating through her, relaxing her.

?I would be proud to partake of your pecan pie,? said Billy Crystal in a funny voice up on the screen. Sabrina smiled.

And the cat?s body suddenly tightened like a spring on her lap, and his needle-like claws dug through her jeans and stabbed into her skin. She let out a cry of pain. The cat was up on his paws, arched. Then he jumped off her and darted away.

Then Sabrina looked up and saw that the lights were back on in the corridor.

And that there was a man standing there.

Watching her.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Sabrina shrieked and took off across the open-plan living room towards the stairs.

Too slow. The man was squat and heavy with muscle, but he was quick on his feet and in two powerful bounds he was on her. She went crashing into a side table, rolling and lashing out at him with her bare feet. A grunt as her heel connected with his eye socket; he let go of her and she scrambled to her feet and made the stairs. Her legs felt ready to buckle under her as she raced up the open treads. His footsteps pounded up behind her. Then she was on the landing and launched herself down the glass corridor.

The first door she came to was the master bedroom, and she grabbed the chrome handle with both hands and jerked it open. Staggered inside just as the man came sprinting down the corridor after her. He shoved his hand inside the door, and she slammed the edge of it hard on his fingers.

He let out a sharp cry. She yanked it open and slammed it again hard enough to sever those damn fingers ? but he?d jerked his hand away and was roaring with pain outside the door as she braced her weight against it and remembered the password Adam had told her.

?Lock!? she shouted.

The house responded and the bedroom door instantly clunked as the mechanism engaged.

Sabrina stood there panting, her hands shaking, doubled over with the pain from the stitch in her side. She looked around her. She?d never been in Adam?s bedroom before. There was a big leather bed, a bookcase filled with science and architecture books, a bureau and a sofa. Next to the sofa was her brother?s prized candy-red Fender Stratocaster guitar, leaning up against an amplifier. Nothing she could use to defend herself. If this had been the States, there?d have been a pistol or a shotgun for home defence.

Calm. Calm. Pull yourself together. She?d read that in these situations, barring a loaded .357 Magnum in the bedside table drawer, the best thing to do was stay out of the way, let the thieves take whatever the hell they wanted and not confront them. She was safe in here. The locks were sturdy. Everything was fine. Stolen TVs and silver were easily replaced.

But how had he got past the security? This place was tighter than Fort Knox. Panic welled up like a tide. Her mobile was downstairs. She was stranded up here.

She glanced at the window. Rain was lashing on the outside of the glass. Maybe if she could get out onto the balcony and run round the outside of the house, she could scramble down the fire escape and get away.

At that moment she realised the sounds of pain had gone quiet outside the door. Suddenly she heard his voice again, just the other side of the thick wood. He didn?t scream, ?I?m going to get you, bitch.? That would have been bad enough, but what she heard was even worse. He spoke one word, in a normal tone that scared her almost to death.

?Cassini.?

And the lock clunked open.

The lock clunked open and she stared at the handle in horror. Watched it turn, and before she could react or think to shout ?lock!? the door opened. And he was in.

She backed away across the bedroom, past the sofa towards the window. He padded in towards her. She could see the fire in his eyes and the bunched muscles under his rain-speckled shirt. The fingers of his right hand were bloody. His teeth were bared in a fierce grin as he stalked across the room.

Her hand brushed something hard. Adam?s guitar, propped up next to the sofa. A big, heavy lump of solid wood, like a musical axe. She wrenched it up in both hands and swung it at his head.

The man stepped back out of the arc of the blow, and the momentum of the heavy guitar almost carried Sabrina off her feet. It smashed into the bookcase. Glass flew everywhere.

The man came at her. She recovered her balance and swung the guitar at him again with a grunt of effort, and this time it caught him hard on the shoulder. She was sure that she?d have shattered a normal man?s collar bone, but with all the muscle on his upper body the blow just glanced off and he pawed the guitar out of her hands as he rushed her like an angry bull. He lashed out and backhanded her across the face, and she shrieked and went sprawling back across the bed. He grabbed her by the hair, hit her again.

Then he clambered on top of her, driving the air out of her with his weight, straddling her hips and pinning both her arms behind her head with one strong hand. She fought back, spat in his face, but he was heavy and powerful and there was little she could do to resist him. With his free hand he started ripping at her clothes, fumbling at the fastening of her jeans and yanking down the hem of her waistband. Started grabbing at his zipper.

No, no, no. Please. Not this.

He had her jeans down past her hips and she was screaming for him to stop when the bedroom door burst open and a woman and a tall man walked in. The woman was holding a stack of plastic CD cases.

Sabrina?s attacker twisted round to look at the two of them, and muttered angrily in a language she didn?t understand. The woman froze, taking in the scene, then stepped across to the bed. Her arm shot out and she grabbed a fistful of the stocky guy?s hair. Jerked his head back harshly, making him cry out in pain, and dragged him off Sabrina.

Sabrina rolled off the edge of the bed, pulling up her jeans and trying to cover herself up. Her hands were shaking so violently that she could barely do up the button of her jeans. Across the bedroom, the woman still had the man?s hair bunched up tight in her fist. His eyes were popping with pain. She wrenched his head back and forth a couple of times in disgust and then let him go.

Cowering by the side of the bed, Sabrina was on the point of thanking the woman for saving her from being raped. But then the woman turned to stare at her, and the cold look in her eyes made Sabrina recoil.

?Who are you?? Sabrina asked her.

The woman?s stare bored into her. ?Shut up,? she said in English. Then she turned to the men and made a sharp gesture as she headed for the door. The tall man followed.

The stocky guy knew what to do. He scooped Sabrina up in his arms and dragged her out of the bedroom, ignoring her screams. She was powerless in his grip, and could feel the suppressed fury pulsing out of him. The woman led the way down the open-tread staircase, across the glass-roofed rear atrium and through the tall glass doors onto the rear terrace overlooking the lake. Rain was slashing down onto the concrete, driven diagonally by the howling wind and hitting so hard it was bouncing. In the pale light Sabrina could see beyond the terrace and garden to the grassy slope down to the lakeside. The wind was churning up the water, and white-crested waves were rolling up the shore and breaking against the little wooden jetty where Adam kept his rowing boat.

Sabrina?s bare feet hardly touched the ground as the powerful man hauled her out across the terrace. The woman turned to him, her blond hair plastered across her face by the wind, and issued stern, authoritative commands. He just nodded. Then the woman gestured to the tall man and led him away, up the flagstone path that skirted around the side of the house towards the front yard and out of sight.

The man dragged Sabrina closer to the lakeside. They were on the grass now, and she could hear his boots squelching on the sodden ground. Her hair was in her face and the rain stung her eyes and she could barely see. She writhed in his arms. It was like being clasped by a machine. His hand was pressed hard over her face, muffling her cries of protest. As he walked, half-dragging and half-carrying her, he stumbled on the rough ground and his fingers slipped an inch and she could open her mouth.

She bit hard, felt her teeth break skin and flesh.

He ripped his hand away and slapped her, then again. And again. She could feel his blood on her face. Heard the rasp of his voice close to her ear as he spoke to her in that strange language. Then he laughed.

She knew what the woman had told him to do. His job was to drown her in the lake.

She felt her heels drag on the stones as they neared the shoreline. His feet splashed into the water, and the icy shock took her breath away and made her heart stutter as he dumped her body into the waves. She screamed again, but it turned into a gurgle as he pressed a big flat palm against her face and drove her head down under the surface.

The water roared in her ears and filled her nose. Bubbles streamed out of her mouth. She flailed desperately with her hands, managed to fight free of his grip. Broke the surface and filled her lungs with air before he pushed her back down under the icy black water. She battled to hold her breath as her fingernails raked at his hands and wrists. But he was just too strong.

She knew she couldn?t hold on much longer. In a few short seconds the water was going to come pouring into her lungs and he was going to hold her there until she drowned.

She was going to die. This was it.

Then suddenly she was gasping and wheezing and tasting air as her head burst free of the surface again. The man had let go of her. Through the coughing fit that racked her body she saw him go down on his knees, the water surging up to his neck and over his shoulders.

She blinked the water out of her eyes. A dark figure was standing behind the man, with an arm locked around his throat. A brutal twist, and Sabrina heard the crack over the roar of the wind as the stocky guy?s neck snapped like a branch.

Then a hand was grasping her tightly by the arm and pulling her out of the lake.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ben hauled the coughing, spluttering woman up onto the shore. In his right hand was the automatic pistol he?d taken from her attacker?s belt.

To come to an idyllic lakeside retreat to talk to a retired physics professor and find a gang of armed killers trying to murder a woman ? Ben wasn?t even trying to figure it out. The questions could come later, after he?d got himself and her out of this.

It had been on the approach to the house, the Audi?s windscreen wipers batting away the thundering rain on full speed, that he?d spotted the beige Citroen Picasso parked at the gate. Innocuous enough, but a woman?s scream of terror was a sound that could carry a long way, even through a stormy night. He?d killed his lights and engine and coasted the last few yards to the house, left the Audi hidden among the trees and come in over the wall. He could still hear the screaming as he?d sneaked through the grounds. Crouched behind a flowery shrub, he?d wiped the rain out of his eyes and watched the blond female and the tall man walk away around the side of the house and head back towards their car.

He?d been more interested in the woman. Everything about her cool, imperious bearing said that she was the leader. As she walked, she?d kept glancing at something in her hand. Hard to tell from that distance, but Ben had thought it looked like she was holding a pile of CDs.

Then, as Ben had sat watching, his attention was quickly diverted to the second guy, the squat one with the muscles. It was becoming increasingly obvious that he didn?t have good intentions towards the woman they?d dragged from the house.

In situations like that, it was hard to remain a passive observer.

Wishing there?d been time to conceal the attacker?s body, Ben helped the frightened woman up the bank to the cover of the long grass, laid her down and crouched beside her in the shadows. Any minute now, the other two were going to be wondering what was keeping their friend so long, and they?d be back.

She shrank away from him, fear in her eyes. Water was dripping from her hair, and her clothing was soaked. Ben could feel his own wet shirt clinging to him, and the wind chilling his skin. He knew he had to get the woman inside the house quickly. Even in summer, hypothermia was a dangerous reality.

?I won?t hurt you,? he said softly. ?What?s your name??

?Sabrina.? She wheezed, coughed up lake water. ?Who are you??

?Sabrina, you?re going to have to keep your head down. Don?t do anything unless I say. Understand??

The sound of car doors. Shouts carrying on the wind, right on cue.

?Slatan?? The woman?s voice, harsh and edged with anger. The name and the accent sounded Bulgarian or Estonian to Ben.

He peered up over the long grass. The rain was moving on quickly. The wind tore a hole in the dark clouds and in the pale moonlight he saw the two figures approaching from the path along the side of the house, scanning right and left as they walked a few yards apart. Both had a grim, hard look and moved cautiously. Professional killers, Ben thought. And as they crossed the terrace to the edge of the grass, he saw the stubby black weapons they were holding in their arms that looked worryingly like Israeli Mini Uzi submachine guns. Sound suppressors, extended thirty-round magazines. The bright crimson dots of laser sight beams swept the lakeside. Whatever it was these people had come out here for, somebody wasn?t taking any chances.

He quickly checked the pistol he?d taken from the dead man. Even in the dark, he could tell by touch what it was ? a big-framed, old-fashioned Colt .45 automatic, maybe a Gold Cup or a Government model. It was a fancy piece, with an extended beavertail grip safety and a muzzle compensator to control recoil by diverting part of the gas blast from the barrel. But all the buttons and bells in the world couldn?t disguise the fact that he had only eight rounds at best and barely visible iron sights that were next to useless for shooting in the dark, against state-of-the-art laser optics and the high-capacity firepower of two machine guns. It didn?t seem quite fair.

He shrugged to himself. One thing the SAS had taught him was that you did what you could with what you had. And he was lucky he had anything at all. He press-checked the breech. Glanced across at Sabrina and put a finger to his lips. Saw the whites of her eyes in the moonlight.

The woman and the tall man were about fifteen yards away when the woman suddenly stopped and pointed at the lake.

The floating dark shape in the water was exactly what Ben had been hoping they wouldn?t spot. His stomach tightened like a fist as he watched and waited for their reaction.

The woman did pretty much what he expected. She was definitely the leader, and a decisive one. It took her less than two seconds to scan the long grass, jerk the cocking bolt on her Uzi with a ferocious snarl and let loose a ripping spray of gunfire that churned up the ground dangerously close to the grassy clump where Ben and Sabrina were hidden.

The ball was rolling. No choice. Ben could hardly make out his sights against the target but he fired back anyway. The flat punch of the .45 stabbed his ears and he felt the recoil kick back against his palm. Shooting almost blind, but he?d hit something, because the woman cried out and staggered back a step and fell, clutching her arm. The tall man instantly opened up with his Uzi, lighting up the night with his muzzle flash.

The sustained burst of fire drove Ben back down the slope, dragging Sabrina with him as clumps of earth and bits of grass showered down over them. Sabrina rolled in the dirt, wrapping her arms around her head for protection.

Ben scrambled back up the bank just in time to see the tall man helping the woman to her feet and the two of them retreating back towards the side of the house. He chased after them. Saw blood on the ground where the woman had fallen, and a trail of bright red spots along the path.

At that moment the moon was obscured by another black cloud and the grounds were plunged back into darkness. The man and woman were little more than shadows up ahead. Ben broke into a sprint. As he ran he pointed the Colt and let off three more blind shots that he instinctively knew all went wide of the mark. The flitting shadows darted around the side of the house and into the front yard. He heard running steps on the wet gravel. The sound of doors slamming and the Citroen?s engine revving high, the rasp of spinning wheels.

Ben rounded the corner of the house and emerged into the yard just as the car was taking off at high speed. He fired at the taillights as they sped away from the gate and up the road, but they were already out of effective pistol range. He lowered the Colt and watched the headlamps carve through the bends, and then the Citro?n was gone and the road was as black as the hills that merged into the night.

He turned away and started running back to Sabrina.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The sky was clearing and the wind was dropping as Ben took Sabrina back to the house. He wasn?t quite sure whether her passivity was a sign of trust for him or a symptom of shock, but her body was limp as he carried her in his arms, and her dripping hair nuzzled against his shoulder. She didn?t seem able to speak, and the only sound she made was a weak sobbing as he carried her up the stairs to look for a bathroom. His first priority was to get her warm and dry. They could talk later.

He found the bathroom he was looking for on the first floor, and kicked open the door. Lights came on automatically as he carried her in, and he remembered what Lenny Salt had told him about Adam O?Connor?s smart house technology business. He laid Sabrina gently down in a big cane chair in the corner, tore three fluffy cotton towels off a heated rail and wrapped them around her as he ran the bath to a temperature just warm enough to get her blood circulating again.

He kneeled down beside where she sat, checked her pulse and spoke softly to her. She murmured back. Her face was still pale, but colour was returning quickly. Once he was satisfied that she wasn?t about to keel over, he left her alone to get out of her wet things and into the warm water, and went downstairs to check all the doors and windows. Everything had electronic locks that clunked like a car?s central locking at the touch of a button. He checked each room in turn, the house sensing his movement and lighting the path ahead everywhere he went.

He could see no signs of a struggle anywhere, until he walked into the master bedroom back upstairs and found the rumpled bed, smashed bookcase and the electric guitar lying on the rug. Moving up to the second floor, the first door he tried led into what was obviously the bedroom of a young teenager. A single bed with an X-Men duvet set, a collection of electronic gadgets scattered across the floor, posters on the wall. He closed the door.

Across the broad, lushly carpeted landing from the boy?s room was a darkened room with a half-open door. Ben went inside cautiously. Again the lights went on automatically for him as he entered, and he saw that he was in a large study.

Someone else had visited the room, and not long ago. Ben crouched down and felt the shoeprints on the carpet. They were still damp from the rain. Two sets of them, one larger and one smaller. The tall man and the woman had been here.

He stood up and looked around. The ultra-modern furnishings were sparse and tasteful. The walls were lined with framed black and white photos of space-age-looking houses in a variety of settings. Below a window overlooking the lake was a black leather swivel chair and a broad desk in ebony wood.

The damp shoeprints led past the desk to a wall safe in the corner. Ben went over to it and saw how the shoeprints were more concentrated here, overlapping as though the intruders had spent a few moments standing in this spot examining the contents of the safe. They hadn?t bothered shutting the steel door after them, and it hung open. There was no keypad or dial visible anywhere, and he guessed that it was probably voice-activated using a password. No sign of forced entry. The intruders must have known the password.

Inside the safe were various folders and files marked with printed labels for things like tax and insurance, a couple of lockable steel cash boxes, a presentation case for an expensive Swiss watch, and two horizontal racks of CDs. Ben ran his eye along the double row of discs. None of them was music or DVDs. They were all computer files, and the professor appeared to keep his work life well organised because each little section was marked with labels obviously relating to his own smart house design concepts. CPU VOICE-ACTIVATION SYSTEM. IRIS SCAN RECOGNITION SYSTEM. EMERGENCY OVERRIDE SYSTEM. Ben ran his eye quickly along the line, then stopped.

There was an empty space in the rack where four CDs used to be. The label underneath the empty space was completely unlike the others. It said KAMMLER STUFF.

He gazed around the study for more clues. Nothing leaped out at him. He walked over to the desk. There were just a few items on its gleaming black surface. A chrome steel lamp, a closed MacBook and another framed photo, this time of a young boy of about thirteen smiling happily for the camera. Next to the computer was a phone handset off its charger with just one bar left on its battery life indicator, as though it had been left lying there for a few days by someone in a rush to get away. Near the phone was a ballpoint pen and a copy of the Irish Times, dated five days ago.

Noticing a scrawled note in ballpoint on the upper margin on the front page, Ben leaned down to read it. The scribble had been done in a hurry, but he could make out that it was a set of flight times from Dublin to Graz via Vienna, arriving 6.06 p.m. Austrian time.

He sensed a presence in the doorway and spun round quickly.

It was Sabrina. She was wrapped in a bathrobe with a towel round her hair and another one round her shoulders. Her eyes looked a lot brighter, and there was a flush of pink in her cheeks that hadn?t been there before.

?I thought you?d gone.? She studied him curiously for a moment. ?You saved me,? she said softly. ?Thank you.?

?How do you feel??

She gave a shaky chuckle. ?I?ll live. Thanks to you. I don?t even know your name.?

?It?s Ben,? he said.

?Glad you showed up when you did, Ben.?

?You?re probably wondering what I?m doing here.? She tried to smile. ?Right now, everything is so screwed up, nothing seems that strange to me.?

?Is Adam your husband, Sabrina??

She shook her head. ?He?s my brother. Are you a friend of his??

?I just want to ask him some questions. Where is he??

?He?s away on business.?

?In Austria??

She frowned. ?Scotland. At least, that?s what he said. But Rory?s gone.?

Ben guessed that she was talking about the boy in the picture. ?What do you mean, he?s gone??

?He was kidnapped,? she blurted. ?I wasn?t sure it was true, but now I know something?s going on. I should have called the cops.? She looked at him as though a sudden thought had come to her. ?Are you??

?No, I?m not the police. Nothing like that.?

?Then what are you? Just some guy who knows how to break necks and shoot guns??

?I?ll explain everything to you. But not here. We need to leave.?

She stared at him. ?Leave??

?Your visitors seem to have found what they were looking for, but they might want to pay a return visit to tie up loose ends.?

Realisation crept into her eyes. ?You mean me??

He didn?t reply.

?Guess I don?t have a lot of choice. Where are we going??

?To the nearest pub.?

?Good. I need a drink.?

?Not to drink. To talk. Get some clothes on. My car?s outside.?

Sabrina glanced up and down his body. ?You?re soaked. You need to change. Try Adam?s wardrobe.?

As she got dressed in the bathroom, he took her advice and found a change of clothes in the master bedroom. He gratefully stripped off his wet things, towelled himself down, and quickly pulled on the warm, dry clothes. The trousers were a thirty-six-inch waist, and he had to cinch the belt up tight to make them fit.

A couple of miles from the house was a small village with an inn. Ben parked up the Audi, left the Colt in his bag on the back seat and led Sabrina into the lounge bar. The fire was crackling in the chimney and the atmosphere was cheery with a lot of chatter and clinking of glasses. Irish folk music was playing for the benefit of the tourists, and shamrocks and Guinness logos lined the walls.

?Welcome home,? Ben said, looking around.

Sabrina shot him a curious glance.

?I used to live here in Ireland. Out west, Galway Bay.? He bought them each a double Bushmills and carried the drinks towards a little cubby-hole with a candlelit table for two.

Sabrina sat opposite him. Brushed the hair away from her face, sniffed and cupped her whiskey in trembling fingers.

?Let?s talk,? he said.

Sabrina told him everything. About who she was, about her week?s holiday in Ireland to be with her brother and nephew. About Adam?s peculiar behaviour, the tennis camp and the Edinburgh conference and the strange phone call from Rory. ?The rest is pretty self-explanatory,? she finished. ?You saw what happened.? As she said it, her eyes clouded.

?I don?t believe Adam?s in Edinburgh,? Ben said. ?I?m pretty sure he took a plane to Austria. He?d been checking flight times before he left.?

?Why Austria??

?Maybe to meet with the kidnappers and talk terms. Maybe that?s where they?re holding Rory. Maybe they?ve sent him on some kind of errand. Or else he?s gone there looking for help, which could be a foolish move.?

Sabrina lowered her head against her hands. When she raised it and looked at him, her face was streaked with tears. ?Kidnappers. So you really think they?ve taken him??

?I?m afraid that?s what it looks like, Sabrina. I?m sorry.?

?But why? What do they want? Money, like a ransom? Adam isn?t that rich. Richer than he was when he was an academic, but not what you?d call wealthy.?

?You don?t have to be rich to be targeted by kidnappers,? Ben said. ?People will do anything to get their loved ones back.? He paused. ?But this isn?t about money, I don?t think.?

?Then what??

?Information. I think they?re using Adam for something, and Rory is their insurance policy.?

?My brother?s a house designer. What information could he have that was so important??

Ben asked, ?Did he ever mention the name Kammler to you??

She looked blank, thought for a moment, then shook her head. ?Not that I can remember. Who?s Kammler??

?Your brother was involved in some kind of scientific research. He had some computer files on disc in his study safe. Those people took them. I think whatever is on those discs is what they were looking for.?

Sabrina was quiet for a moment, biting her lip in agitation. Then she reached for her bag and started rummaging in it.

?What are you doing??

She found her phone. ?What I should have done days ago. I?m calling the cops. They?ll know how to handle this.?

He shook his head and leaned across to grab her hand. ?That?s not a good idea.?

?For Chrissakes, if he?s in fucking Austria that?s a lead, isn?t it? Surely things can be done? Don?t they have, like, Interpol and stuff for situations like this??

?Look at me, Sabrina.?

She was quiet and looked at him.

?If you call the police, you?re signing your nephew?s death warrant.?

She went white. ?How can you know that??

?Because Adam is under orders,? he said. ?That much is obvious. It?s the reason he was acting strangely before he went away, the reason why he made up that cover story about the tennis camp and going to Edinburgh for business. The kidnappers will have made it clear to him that if he breathes a word of this to anyone, they?ll harm Rory. The last thing anyone needs to do right now is start stirring things up.?

She didn?t reply, looked down at the table.

?Now, imagine what you?re going to put in motion if you involve the authorities in this. With all the best will in the world, it?ll leak out. There?s always someone willing to take a backhander in return for a juicy story. Television. Radio. Newspapers. A whole media circus, with the kidnappers watching every move. You might as well hold the gun to Rory?s head yourself and pull the trigger.?

Alarm lit up her eyes. ?How come you know so much about all this stuff??

?Because it was my job to deal with situations like this, and now I?m looking for someone who?s been missing for a long time. I think that person is in deep trouble, and I have a strong feeling it?s connected to the trouble your brother and nephew are in. Beyond that, right now I really can?t say any more.?

She sighed. ?So what happens now??

He leaned across the table and spoke gently. ?Sabrina, I do know one thing for sure. You weren?t supposed to survive this evening. When those people go back to whoever sent them and report what happened, and that there?s a witness??

?They?re going to come looking for me.? The words came out with a tremor, and she went a shade paler. Ben saw her pupils dilate with fear.

He nodded. ?It?ll be easy for them to find out from Adam who you are and where you live. They only have to threaten Rory, and there isn?t anything in the world he won?t tell them. That?s what kidnap is all about. Control.?

?It means I can?t go home.?

?No. It could be dangerous.?

Her eyes brimmed with tears again. ?So where I am going to go? Stay with friends? What the hell do I tell them??

?You tell them nothing. You can?t be in contact with anyone you know. They can be traced, and you?d just be putting them in danger too.?

She looked helpless.

?Do you trust me?? he asked.

?I don?t even know who you are. But you saved my life. What am I supposed to say??

?London?s a big place. You can easily lose yourself in it. I know someone there, a very close friend of mine whom I trust completely. I?ll have to clear it with her, but I think she?d let you stay with her. You?d have to cancel everything, keep hidden, not even go out.?

Sabrina chewed her lip. ?For how long??

?As long as it takes for me to sort things out.?

?Does that mean you?ll find Adam and Rory??

He took a deep breath. ?I?ll find them.?

Chapter Forty

In the terrible place that Rory?s world had become, all that separated night from day was whether he could see light under the cell door. When the light was on in the corridor outside, it meant it was day; and he lived in constant terror. When the corridor was in darkness, it meant his captors had gone to sleep. Like vampires, returning to their coffins, giving him a few safe hours to huddle in his bed and cry softly and try to be strong and brave and all the things he wanted to be. But more than anything, he wanted his dad to be here.

He had no idea what time it was or how long he?d been lying there under the sheets, burrowed in tight like a frightened animal. When he heard the cell door open and the footsteps walk across the stone floor towards the bed, every muscle in his body went rigid. A torch-beam scanned the room and he saw its circle of pale light land on the bed, shining through the sheets.

Whoever it was came closer, and he felt icy fingers of panic clench his heart as he thought of the hateful witch-woman who?d done those awful things to him just a few hours before. It was her. He could still feel the touch of the cold blade against his skin. Now she was back for more.

But when he felt someone sit on the edge of the mattress next to him and the warm, gentle hand on his shoulder, he knew it wasn?t her. A joyful thought leapt through him at that moment. His dad was here, come to save him. He threw back the sheet and sat up in bed.

The face he saw, dimly illuminated in the torchlight, wasn?t his father?s. It was the short, ruddy-faced man who?d been bringing him his food.

Rory eyed him uncertainly. ?What do you want, Ivan?? he said with all the strength and confidence he could muster. There was still a shake in his voice, and he felt dizzy and sick.

Ivan put his finger to his lips. ?Shh. They do not know I am here,? he whispered in that thick accent of his. He flashed the light furtively back at the door, then let it shine back on his face. Rory could see the anger in his eyes.

?They should not have done that to you. I would not have allowed such a thing to happen. You must understand this, Rory.? Ivan reached into his pocket, brought something out and offered it to him.

Rory looked at it. It was a chocolate bar. He tore off the wrapper and ate greedily.

Ivan smiled as he watched him. ?Good,? he whispered. ?Eat. Get strong. You will need your energy.?

Rory chewed and swallowed until there was nothing left. Ivan gently took the wrapper from his fingers, stuffed it back in his pocket and handed him a tissue. ?Wipe your mouth with this. They must not know I brought you chocolate. They would kill me.?

Rory wiped the flecks of chocolate from the corners of his mouth and gave the tissue back to Ivan. ?Why?? he asked the man.

?Listen to me carefully. I am not one of them. I am here to spy on them.?

Rory?s eyes widened and his heart began to thump. ?Are you a cop??

?A special agent,? Ivan whispered. ?And I will get you out of here.?

?When??

?Soon. Very soon, I promise you. But you must trust me. Will you trust me, Rory?? Rory nodded quickly.

?Thank you. I know it is hard for you, and you are very scared. You are a good, brave boy.?

?Where?s my dad? Is he here??

?Shh. I think someone is coming.? Ivan turned off the torch, plunging the room into darkness. They both stared in the direction of the cell door. Any second now, Rory imagined the light was going to come on in the corridor and that woman was going to come marching in with the guards and find them together. They?d take Ivan away and kill him, and then he?d be alone again.

But nothing happened. The corridor remained dark and quiet.

Ivan let out a sigh of relief and turned the torch back on, shading its beam with his hand so that his face was half-lit and full of shadows. ?It is too dangerous for me to be here,? he whispered. ?I must go. I just wanted you to know that you have a friend in this place. I will not let them harm you. Everything will be fine. You have my word.?

?Ivan??

?I will be back. Get some rest,? Ivan whispered. Then he slipped out of the door and Rory heard the soft click of the lock.

Chapter Forty-One

Ben called Brooke from Rosslare docks while he and Sabrina were waiting for the night ferry.

?Brooke? Sorry to be calling late. But I need a favour.?

?Fire away,? she said.

Without going into too much worrying detail, he outlined the situation. Brooke listened carefully, and when he?d finished she said, ?No problem. She?ll be fine here. I?ll make up the spare bedroom.?

He thanked her. ?I owe you one.?

The ferry crossing offered him a chance to grab some much-needed sleep. When they hit the Welsh coast dawn was breaking. Five hours of hard driving later, Ben was cutting through the south London traffic in driving rain and thinking of Jeff, probably well on his way to Nice by now for a week of sunshine, beer and pretty girls.

Brooke?s place was in Richmond, a red-brick Victorian house split into flats. Ben had never been there before, and it wasn?t until the door opened and he saw her standing there smiling at him that he was even sure he had the right place.

Her hair was loose over her shoulders, and she was wearing navy blue linen trousers and a light summer blouse the colour of her eyes. A string of jade beads hung around her neck.

She looked good. Really good. It wasn?t until she said, ?Aren?t you going to introduce us?? that Ben realised he?d been staring at her. He quickly introduced Sabrina, and Brooke said hello and led them both inside.

Stepping into Brooke?s home felt a little strange to Ben, foreign yet oddly familiar, like a d?j?-vu experience. Everything about the place ? from the big comfy armchairs, to the cushions strewn everywhere, to the pine cones in the fireplace and the vases of fresh flowers and enormous pot plants that sat about on the polished wood floor ? somehow spoke of her, was her. Django Reinhardt?s 1930s gypsy jazz was playing in the background, and aromatic candles filled the apartment with the scent of vanilla and lotus.

?It?s so kind of you to put me up,? Sabrina said.

?It?ll be nice to have some company,? Brooke replied warmly. ?Now, I suppose you guys must want some breakfast.?

?Just some coffee,? Ben said. ?I?m not staying.?

?Would you mind if I freshened up first?? Sabrina asked.

?Sure. The bathroom?s through there. Help yourself. There are towels in the airing cupboard.?

Sabrina left, and Ben stood about in the kitchen as Brooke made coffee. She served it in mugs and handed him one. His had a picture of the Pink Panther on it, and hers had Paddington Bear. She dribbled in a spoonful of honey, held the mug in both hands the way he liked, and sipped.

?Nice place,? he said, looking around him. The coffee was hot and strong. He took a big gulp and felt better. ?A bit more sophisto than Le Val.?

?I love Le Val,? she said. ?I?d swap it for this place any day.?

?I love it too,? he said quietly. Felt a twinge as he remembered the troubles there waiting for him.

?Won?t you sit down? You look tired.?

?I?m fine.?

She looked at him with concern. ?What?s happening, Ben? Last time I saw you, you were running off to Bruges. Where now??

?Germany,? he said.

?Ruth??

He nodded. ?It?s her, Brooke. I saw a picture. No doubts.?

?I really hope you find her. Just remember what I said, about asking for help if you need it.?

?I haven?t forgotten.?

?There?s danger, isn?t there?? she said, anxiously.

?A bit,? he admitted. He finished the last of the coffee, put down the empty Pink Panther mug and turned to go. ?You be careful, won?t you??

?Don?t worry about me.?

?That?s the stupidest thing you?ve ever said to me, Ben Hope. Of course I worry about you. You drive me completely nuts with worry sometimes.? Her cheeks had flushed red, and Ben was taken aback by the depth of emotion in her voice. She stepped quickly over towards him, put her arms around him and pressed her ear to his chest. Then looked up at him, and there was a tear rolling out of her eye and across the curve of her cheek. He reached up and gently dabbed it away with his fingers. Kissed her gently on the forehead. Then moved his mouth down and kissed her cheek, tasted the salty taste of the tear. Her skin felt soft against his lips.

She tensed and pulled away from him. ?Don?t play with me,? she said quietly.

He frowned. ?I?m not.?

?I know you don?t like me,? she said.

?What are you talking about? Of course I like you. I like you a lot.?

?But not the way I like you, Ben. Get it now?? The words seemed to come out against her will, as if they?d been kept submerged for a long time and she hadn?t meant for them to come bubbling up.

He said nothing. Just looked at her, and could see the anguish in her face. It was a look he?d never seen before. It quickly turned to an angry blush, and she stepped away from him and went back to her coffee.

?Shit. I shouldn?t have said that. Forget it, OK??

Ben couldn?t find the words for what he wanted to say. Before he had a chance to speak, Sabrina walked into the room, bringing a wafting scent of soap with her.

?I?d better be going,? he said. ?I?ll be in touch.?

Chapter Forty-Two

Ben dropped the travel-stained Audi off at the rental place at Heathrow, boarded a flight for Brussels, and less than an hour later he was firing up his Mini for the drive to the Black Forest.

By late afternoon he was arriving in the town of Offenburg near the French?German border, a postcard-perfect little place surrounded by vineyards and filled with quaint old timber-frame houses and churches, outdoor markets and flower gardens. He checked into a small hotel, showered and then went down to the lobby to scour a regional business directory for local firms selling anything related with ceramics. There were a few arts and crafts shops around Offenburg, a gallery and a local pottery somewhere just outside the town that looked promising. By the time he?d worked up his list, the hotel bar was opening. He was first in. Downed a glass of Schnapps and then hit the road, deciding to start with the closest place and work his way outwards.

As detective work went, this was doing it the old-fashioned way, the hard way. In each of the ceramics and crafts shops he went to, showing the people there the picture taken by Lenny Salt that he?d transferred onto his phone, he got either a suspicious look followed by an offhand ?never seen her? or a completely blank stare. Then he tried the art gallery, but a guy in a suit who might have been a funeral director informed him that they dealt only with paintings.

The warmth of the day was cooling as the sun began its downward dip in the sky, and the wind was picking up. Ben?s list was running a little short by now, but there was still the pottery shop on the edge of town. He found it easily enough, a kilometre or so into the peaceful countryside.

He?d been expecting something in keeping with the neat, prim little town nearby. This wasn?t quite what he?d had in mind. The place was thirty yards back off the road at the end of a rutted driveway. As he stepped out of the car, some rangy chickens pecking in the dirt scattered and ran. A rusted sign for the pottery creaked to and fro in the breeze, and the stone buildings were just a year or two from dereliction, with the roof sagging dramatically in the middle. He walked around the building. The only sign of life about the place was the singing of the birds in the trees overhead. Weeds tufted up thickly through the cracked paving, and when he peered through the grimy window panes he saw nothing but uninhabited rooms littered with junk.

A little further up the road, Ben came across a farmhouse and knocked on the door. There was a furious barking of dogs inside, and then the sound of locks and bolts being opened before the door swung ajar and a little old man with a white beard squinted up at him and asked what he wanted. A Jack Russell terrier snarled at Ben from behind his legs.

?It closed down six, seven months ago,? the old man said when Ben asked him about the pottery place. ?Empty now.?

Ben showed him the picture. ?I wondered if you might have seen this woman there??

The old man screwed up his face and peered at it, his nose almost touching the screen. ?She might have been one of them. Might not. Hard to say, I don?t remember too good. There was a bunch of them in the place. Young people. They ran it together. Like hippies.?

?You mean like a co-operative??

?Something like that,? the old man said with a shrug.

Ben asked if he knew who owned the building. The old man shrugged again, then shut the door and Ben heard the rattle of the locks and bolts.

He looked at his watch. It was getting too late in the day to make the kind of calls he needed to make to track the owners down. He dragged his heels back to the car and drove off.

So far, things weren?t looking too promising. Maybe a forty per cent chance that this was even the right place. And a ninety per cent chance that its former occupants could be just about anywhere in Europe now.

Missing scientists. An SS general with a strange secret. A snatch attempt against a wealthy industrialist. And now some kind of bohemian commune that sold ceramics out of a semi-derelict farm shop in the Black Forest countryside.

He spent that night staring up at the ceiling of his hotel bedroom and counting the minutes until dawn. He drifted off sometime before first light, and woke to the rays of the sun creeping up the flower-patterned wallpaper by his bed. He threw off the covers, dressed quickly and grabbed a coffee in the breakfast room, waiting impatiently for the day to start. As soon as the hands on his watch hit 9 a.m., he started phoning round estate agents.

His enquiries drew blanks all the way. It seemed that whoever had let the co-operative make use of the building hadn?t gone through an agent ? or at least not one in the region. Maybe a more casual agreement, then, cash only. Maybe the place had been rent-free. It couldn?t be worth much to live there.

But whatever the arrangement, someone had to be paying local taxes on the property. Which meant that somewhere there was a record on file that would lead him to the owner and then ? with a bit of persuasion ? to the people who?d last lived in it.

He checked a map of Offenburg and found that the Rathaus or town council office wasn?t far from his hotel. The sun had disappeared behind iron-grey clouds and there was a chill in the air as he walked through the streets. The Rathaus was an imposing red and cream building on the corner of a street of neat old timber-framed houses. He pushed through the main entrance and walked across the reception foyer to the desk, where he spoke to an austere-looking woman with thin lips and dead eyes who seemed to enjoy informing him that unless he was a police officer or a licensed private investigator with proper ID to show her, there was no way she was going to disclose the identity or home address of the owner of the former pottery outside Offenburg. He stared hard at her for a long moment, until a flicker of nervousness appeared in those lifeless eyes. With that small victory won, he turned and pushed back out of the main entrance.

Out in the street, he looked up at the building. Below the arched clock tower was a balcony, and the stonework around the windows was ornately sculpted in classical German style. But he wasn?t admiring the architecture. He was thinking about how easy it would be to get in there after dark, and find the records himself.

Easy enough. Fuck it. He hadn?t come all this way to be put off by a sadistic petty bureaucrat. He walked away, already putting together his plan in his head. It wouldn?t be the first government building he?d broken into.

But until dark, all he had on his hands was more time to kill. He couldn?t bear the thought of sitting it out in the hotel, and he didn?t feel like exploring the town much either. He walked back to where he?d parked the Mini, threw himself behind the wheel and punched the little car out through the traffic into the countryside. But if he?d thought that driving around aimlessly was going to help him get his mind off things, he knew right away that it was over-optimistic. As he drove, the road in front of him became the tunnel of his thoughts and he could feel despondency wrapping its arms around him. A weight of emotion settled heavy in his chest. Had he lost Ruth forever? Was this just going to fizzle out?

Up ahead on the winding country road, he saw a line of horse riders, four of them, moving in single file, and he instinctively slowed the car and edged out to the left to pass them without scaring their mounts. He glanced at them as he purred by in second gear. The string was led by two women on big hunters, followed by a teenage boy on a grey and a little girl of about nine bringing up the rear. She sat astride her sturdily-built pony as if it was the most treasured thing to her in the world.

The leader gave Ben a nod and mouthed a thank you as the Mini passed by. He waved back glumly, put his foot on the pedal and accelerated gently away.

Then, fifty yards up the road, he stopped the car.

He looked back in the mirror. Watched the easy ambling gait of the big hunter up front, the sway of the rider?s hips astride the saddle. Heard the clip-clop of horseshoes on tarmac.

The riders came closer, and he pretended to be searching for something in the glove box but was watching them all the way. As they trotted past the car, he stared again at the little girl.

Not at her. At what she was wearing. Zipped up tight to her neck was a little green fleece jacket with an equestrian logo on it.

His fingers were trembling a little as he took out his phone and scrolled up the picture of Ruth standing there looking cold and windswept on the library steps in St Peter?s Square in Manchester.

She was wearing the exact same type of fleece that the little girl was wearing. Same logo, same cut, same colour. He?d been too busy trying to make out her features to pay attention to the clothes. But now he realised that she was wearing exactly the kind of equestrian gear that the Ruth of his memories would have grown up wanting to wear.

With Ruth, it had been horses, horses, horses. What had started out as a fun activity for her at the age of four had quickly turned into a serious passion. By the age of seven, she?d been an accomplished junior rider with a whole wall of trophies and rosettes, and the dream she always talked about of becoming a champion show jumper had been looking more realistic with every new competition. The house had always been full of little riding boots and hats, bits of tack, horse pictures and books, hoof picks and all kinds of other equestrian paraphernalia. Those were the memories that made Ben smile.

Then his mind drifted to the ones that didn?t. The memory of coming home from North Africa as a family of three and knowing that it was his fault. Of his mother, her face a mask of agony as she lay sobbing on Ruth?s bed, clutching a little riding jacket as though Ruth was still inside it. Of the terrible months that had passed before his father had finally gathered up all the boots and riding hats, her tack and her saddle, and sealed them inside a packing case.

Ben returned to the present. Thought of the person Ruth was now. Whatever her life story had been, whatever the reason why she?d never tried to find her lost family, was there a small part of her that was still the Ruth he?d known? A part of her that still loved horses, wanted to be around them?

Further up the road was a little white sign on a post. He couldn?t make it out from that distance, but when the line of riders reached it they turned right up a track and out of sight.

He slipped the car into gear and followed. The sign at the side of the road bore a picture of a horse and the name of what appeared to be some kind of equestrian centre. Pulling up at the entrance to the track, he saw the riders pass through an open gate and up towards a large yard surrounded by stable-blocks. Behind the stables was an office with a car park, and he drove in and pulled up on the gravel next to a 4?4 hitched to a trailer.

Stepping out of the car, he looked around. He?d been in a hundred of these kinds of places with his sister. The smell of hay and straw, horse feed and manure filled his nostrils as he walked over towards the office. The two young women in boots and jodhpurs who were sitting at a desk over mugs of coffee and sharing a joke about something looked up at him as he stepped inside. One was about seventeen, stumpy with bad skin, and gazed at him through thick glasses. The other might have been a couple of years older, more self-assured, and gave him a smile. On her jacket was a name tag that said ?Hannah?. She had the broad shoulders and slender waist of a serious rider. An instructor, he thought.

He showed them the picture on his phone and asked if they knew the person in it. Blank looks, an exchange of rapid German, and they shook their heads.

?Can you tell me if there are any other stables or riding schools in this area??

The stumpy one went on staring at him through her glasses, but Hannah smiled again and said there were four. Politely ignoring the seductive looks she was giving him, he jotted down the details.

?Shame I can?t drive you there myself,? she said. ?I?m working. But we?re having a barbecue here tonight, if you fancy coming along.?

These German girls. He politely declined.

It took him two hours to drive around the countryside and find the first three places on his list. More horsey smells and sounds, more young women in riding gear. No sign of Ruth and nobody who seemed to know her. The peak of energy that had surged through him was beginning to wane again.

His spirits sank even more as he drove up to the last place on the list, eleven miles out of Offenburg, in the early afternoon. The establishment looked more like a country club than a riding school. The horses in the neatly-fenced paddocks were gleaming Arabs and thoroughbreds, and two little guys in uniforms jumped out to rake up the tyre tracks he?d left in the gravel.

He thought about driving off, then shrugged and slammed the door and wandered about the buildings. A talented young rider was cantering around the sand school with her feet out of the stirrups and her arms out like a plane. Grooms were leading nervy horses up and down the yard. Everything very slick, professional and expensive.

?Can I help you?? said a voice in German, cutting sharply across the stable-yard, not too friendly.

Ben turned to see a guy walking up to him who looked like a managerial type. Late forties, balding, gut and glasses and the angry red face of someone in a state of permanent belligerence.

?Maybe you can.? He showed the guy the picture on the phone. ?Do you know her??

The manager stared at it for a second, frowned and then glanced up at Ben. ?Who are you??

?I?m her brother,? Ben said. It sounded weird to hear himself say it.

?You?re her brother?? the guy echoed doubtfully. ?You know her??

?This is a members-only establishment,? the guy said. ?You are trespassing.? He snapped his fingers.

Ten yards away in an open stable, a very large groom in a blue overall was standing up to his knees in soiled straw and piling it into a barrow with a pitchfork. He was well over six and a half feet tall, and it seemed that whatever time he didn?t spend mucking out horses, he spent pumping weights the size of truck tyres. At the sound of his manager?s snapping fingers he instantly jumped to attention and strode over, trailing bits of straw and clutching the pitchfork like a gladiator?s trident in his meaty fist. He stopped at his boss? shoulder and grinned down at Ben. His hair was cropped in a buzz-cut and his face looked like it had been beaten out of Kevlar, with eyes so far apart it was impossible to focus on both at once.

?You have thirty seconds to get the fuck out of here,? the manager said. ?Unless you want Johann to put his fork up your arse.?

Ben looked up at Johann and thought about how he?d go about breaking the guy in half. Violence was one option. Reasonable was another. He decided to go with reasonable.

?Johann, maybe you know her?? he said, and held up the phone for him to see.

Johann said nothing. The wide-set eyes darted at the picture, then back at Ben.

?Now get out,? the manager said with a smirk. ?Johann, make sure he leaves.?

Ben slipped the phone back in his pocket, turned and headed back towards the car park with Johann?s muscular escort a pace behind him.

?You don?t have to see me out,? he told the big guy. ?I?m not here to cause trouble. I was just looking for my sister, that?s all.?

Johann?s wide, flat face seemed to twitch, as though the effort of thinking was like turning over a big truck engine inside his head. Ben looked at him, and saw that behind the scowl were the eyes of a child.

When the giant spoke, the voice was deep and slow. ?Your sister?? he rumbled.

Ben had his hand on the Mini?s door handle. He nodded. ?That?s right, Johann. My little sister.?

?You look like her,? Johann said.

Chapter Forty-Three

Ben stood and stared at the big man. ?What did you just say??

Johann blinked. The wide-set eyes darted sideways at the stable-block, as if he were scared of getting into trouble with his boss.

?It?s OK, Johann. You can talk to me. You know her, don?t you??

Johann dipped his chin to his muscular chest and gave a slow, solemn nod. Ben believed him. The poor guy didn?t have enough upstairs to tell a lie.

?I take care of Solo,? Johann said. ?She keeps him here.?

Ben had to hold the Mini door handle tight to stop himself from rocking on his feet. ?She comes here to ride??

Johann gave another slow nod. ?Most afternoons. She is not here yet. Maybe she will come.?

?Does she drive here??

Nod.

?What kind of car does she drive??

?Big silver car. Like that one.? Johann raised one of his massive arms and pointed at a top-of-the-line Range Rover parked four cars down from the Mini.

?Listen to me carefully, Johann. It?s my sister?s birthday today, and I have a present for her. I want it to be a nice big surprise. So when she arrives here, do not tell her that her brother was here. Do you understand??

Nod.

?What is it you?re not to say??

?That you were here,? Johann repeated carefully. ?Her brother.?

Ben took out his wallet and shelled out a couple of twenty-euro notes. ?This is for you, Johann. You?ve helped me more than you know. You?re a good guy.? He left the big man standing there looking at the money in his palm as he drove off.

Back on the main road, he found a layby within sight of the equestrian centre but shaded by enough overhanging foliage to mask his car. A perfect spot to sit and wait and watch the gates. He settled back in the driver?s seat and lit the first cigarette.

Time passed. People came and went. The Jaguar X-type turned out of the gates and disappeared down the road. A while later, a black Subaru 4?4 towing a double trailer arrived. Some riders passed Ben?s layby, returning from a hack, the horses sweated up. Ben sat and smoked, two cigarettes, then three, keeping low in the driver?s seat.

He?d been sitting there for just under two hours and his watch was edging its way towards four thirty when he saw the silver Range Rover come up the road. Just one occupant. The car slowed for the gate and the indicator flashed, and as it turned in he got a brief but clear view of the driver. A woman, white polo shirt, short blond hair, wraparound shades.

Ben stubbed out his cigarette. His mouth was suddenly dry and his heart felt like he?d just done a three-hundred-metre sprint.

The Range Rover rolled up the drive towards the stable buildings, tyres rasping on the gravel, and pulled into the car park.

His first instinct was to drive in after her, go right up to her and talk to her. Tell her who he was. Just come right out with it. ?Ruth, it?s me. Your brother Ben. Remember me? Where have you been the last twenty-three years??

But that was just his heart talking. The part of him that was still able to think rationally through the swell of emotions that was surging through him knew that the situation was a little more complicated than that.

He scanned the layout of the land. The equestrian centre consisted of the central buildings complex with the office, the stables and tack rooms and the main house, the paddocks and sand school, and a big prefabricated metal building that looked like it might be an indoor riding m?nage. Maybe a dozen acres in all, but long and narrow. While the paddocks and riding areas were fenced with white wood, the outer boundary of the property was ringed with hedges. Most of the way round, what lay beyond the hedge was pine woodland. The trees extended all the way along the side of the road where he was parked, and there was just a single strand of barbed-wire fence between him and several hundred yards of thick, uninterrupted cover that would allow him to move unnoticed around the perimeter.

He got out of the car, shut the door quietly and crossed the road. There was nobody about. He peeled off his leather jacket and laid it over the barbed wire. Swung one leg over and then the other, slipped the jacket back on and made his way into the trees.

It didn?t take him long to track around the edge of the equestrian centre. Staying well back in the sun-dappled shadow of the trees, he had a good view of the place. Good enough to see the angry manager strutting across the stable-yard, yelling at one of the staff. Good enough to notice the gentle giant Johann over at the dung-heap, discreetly tucked away behind the stable-blocks, emptying his wheelbarrow of soiled straw.

And good enough to spot the woman who was his little sister leading a shiny, well-groomed, expensive-looking chestnut gelding over towards the big metal building. She?d put on a riding hat and boots, and the horse was saddled and bridled. He watched her go in through the tall doorway. Waited a few seconds. Stepped out of the trees towards the hedge. Hesitated. Was this a mistake? Maybe, but he was way beyond recall now.

In three seconds he was over the hedge and running low across the stretch of clipped grass to the side of the indoor space. He skirted round its edge, pressed his back flat against the shiny corrugated wall and glanced around the corner to see if anyone had spotted him. Nobody had. In the distance, the manager was walking back towards the office, talking on a phone. The grooms and other staff carried on unsuspectingly with their business.

Ben slipped inside the building. The interior was like any other large industrial prefab construction, with H-section steel pillars and riveted joists holding up the high roof. The sand-filled arena at its centre was laid out with a course of jumps and brightly lit by neon strip-lights. Around the edges of the arena were rows of seats for spectators, all empty, the outer rows in shadow. He stayed back, near the wall.

And watched from the gloom as Ruth led her horse out across the sand. She seemed relaxed, and completely oblivious of his presence. The horse stood calmly as she tightened up his saddle girth, then she put her left foot in the left stirrup and nimbly mounted him. A gentle nudge of her heels and he trotted off. She guided him briskly round the edge of the arena, picking up pace and warming the horse?s muscles before putting him over the jumps. A grin spread across her face. She looked totally in her element.

More than ever, Ben wanted to step out of the shadows and go to her. But he held back, and the pain knotted up his stomach and his throat and tears prickled his eyes. She was so much the same Ruth he?d known back then, but also so different. He watched for twenty minutes as she expertly took the horse round the jumps, faster and faster and higher and higher. She cleared each pole faultlessly, just the way she?d always done as a little girl. Then she dismounted, gave the horse a warm hug and led him away.

By the time she was halfway back towards the stable-blocks, Ben was already over the hedge and working his way round through the trees to his car. Another half hour passed before he saw the silver Range Rover pull out onto the road and drive off. He followed it.

Now it was time to talk.

The Range Rover led him through the countryside. She drove at a steady fifty, slowing only to pass through a village, then over a narrow stone bridge across a stream. There was nothing about her driving that made him think she?d spotted the Mini following her. After eight kilometres he saw her indicator come on, and she turned into a rough lane. He hung back, and saw the Range Rover go bumping forty metres down the lane and then turn in through a gap in the wild, unkempt bushes.

He left the Mini in the shade of a tree, grabbed his bag from the passenger seat and started walking. By the gap where she?d disappeared was a lopsided sign in German that he translated to read ?ceramics workshop?. Peering around the corner, he saw the Range Rover parked in front of a long, low-slung whitewashed cottage. Someone had been practising their artwork on the side wall of the place ? a spray-painted swirl of colours that he guessed was meant to look psychedelic. Dangling chimes tinkled in the soft breeze, and bees hummed among the flowerbeds. So far, so not the kind of place he?d have expected to find a cell of neo-Nazi terrorists.

Someone else was home. Next to the ticking Range Rover was a rusty VW Golf, and a battered Honda 750 motorcycle sat by an outhouse with a cat sleeping on its saddle.

Ben moved silently through the garden. The place had obviously been a smallholding once, but now most of the outbuildings were disused. A block-built garage that at one time would have housed a couple of tractors had been converted into a pottery workshop, with a potter?s wheel and a long bench, both covered in clay dust. The flue pipe from the cold, ash-dusted kiln poked up through the tin roof. Swirly-coloured glazed plates and jugs and cups and vases crowded an industrial shelving unit against the wall. Ben didn?t see any clay busts of Hitler up there.

He moved on. A nylon washing line hung between the corner of the house and a disused poultry shed, and a glance at the clothes on it told him that two women lived here, someone Ruth?s build and someone a good bit heavier. Plus, judging by the different sizes of men?s jeans hanging out to dry, at least two males.

He slipped back around the side of the poultry shed as the front door of the house suddenly opened.

Footsteps walking his way. Then a scrawny young guy in a sleeveless T-shirt, with long hair and a patchy beard, walked within a foot of him, stopped and turned and stared with saucer eyes. His mouth opened to yell in alarm.

Ben didn?t let him make a sound. The guy was quick and easy to subdue; four seconds later he was lying unconscious among the dried-out droppings on the henhouse floor. Ben crouched over him, studying him. No shaven head. No swastikas on the neck or arms. He opened up his bag, took out two plastic cable-ties and bound up the guy?s wrists and ankles. Tore off a five-inch length of silver duct tape and stuck it tightly to his mouth.

Leaving the bag next to the unconscious body he stepped out of the poultry shed and slipped round to the rear of the house. Knocked on the door, three loud raps, then darted quickly back around the corner. After a few seconds? delay, the door opened and another man stepped out onto the cracked patio.

?Hello? Someone there??

Ben peered out from around the corner. This guy looked a few years older than his bearded friend, maybe thirty-two. Good looking, short dark hair, a denim shirt splotched with dried clay. The potter. Ben found himself wondering if this was his sister?s boyfriend. Better than the other one, at least, it occurred to him ? and then he scolded himself for thinking such absurd thoughts at a time like this.

The guy was heading back inside when Ben came up behind him without a sound and took him down with a stranglehold that was just hard and long enough to make him pass out without doing any lasting damage. He glanced round, then dragged him to the poultry shed and dumped him there beside his buddy. Quickly trussed and gagged him, then got to his feet and closed the unconscious bodies inside. Two down.

At that moment, the front door flew open and a third person appeared in the doorway. Someone too quick and too sharp for Ben to duck for cover. But by that point, he didn?t want to hide from her any more.

?Franz, where did you?? She stopped mid-sentence, and stared at him. He stared back.

Face to face with his sister Ruth.

Chapter Forty-Four

Time seemed to pause as they stood there, frozen, eyes locked. They were just five yards away from each other, and it was the first really good view he?d had of her face. Her eyes were exactly the same blue he remembered from so long ago, but sharp now. The soft, round features of childhood were long gone, and had left behind them a certain hardness. The set of her jaw spoke of a strong will and a tough attitude. Another man would have found her attractive, her lean runner?s build, the broad shoulders and trim waist. In all the pictures Ben had of her as a child, her hair was long and thick and lustrous. Cropped the way it was now, it gave her a severe look. But somewhere behind that dangerous, edgy exterior, she was still the Ruth he?d thought about every day for twenty-three years.

For a long second he looked into her eyes. Long enough to pray for a glimmer of recognition in there. He saw none. Then that suspended moment suddenly ended; time seemed to restart. She bolted back into the house.

Ben ran after her and managed to get his foot in the door before it slammed violently shut in his face. He crashed it open, pressed through the doorway, made a lunge for her arm. She darted out of his grasp, whirled around and with a scream she aimed a vicious kick at his groin. If he hadn?t reacted in time and twisted out of the way, he?d have run straight into it and been crippled in agony.

Even in that moment, he couldn?t help but admire her feistiness. Quick as a panther, she grabbed a wooden chair by the rungs of its backrest and jabbed the legs at his face. He ducked the blow, caught one of the spars. The cold part of his mind that had been forged through hard combat and even harder training told him he could ram the chair back at his opponent and smash their teeth in, end the fight there and then. He pushed that thought away, tore the chair out of her grip and dropped it.

She ran through another doorway and into a kitchen. On a wooden surface cluttered with saucepans and jars of utensils was a block of knives. In one fast movement she drew a long carving knife out of its slot and threw it at him. He twitched out of the way, felt the wind of the blade past his cheek, heard the hollow thunk and the judder of the blade as it embedded itself point-first in the doorframe a few inches to the right of his head.

Then she was escaping through the kitchen, bursting through a bead curtain and down a narrow corridor. He sprinted after her and saw her fly into a bedroom, slipping on bare varnished floorboards as she made for a single bed in the middle of the room. She somersaulted across it, dragging half the bedclothes with her as she rolled to the floor on the other side.

No way out of the room. She?d cut off her escape route.

But when she ripped open the bedside table drawer and came up from behind the bed with a pistol in both hands, he understood why she?d made for this bedroom. Fight before flight. Definitely his sister.

The numbing crack of the shot filled the small space. He threw himself down and hit the smooth floor, sliding feet first. Crashed into the bottom edge of the bed and flipped it violently up on its side, shattering the bedstead and jamming her between the mattress and the wall. She let out a muffled cry, and the pistol went tumbling out of her hand.

Ben was up on his feet before she could do anything, and tore the bed aside. She threw a punch at him, but she was disoriented by the impact and he easily slapped it aside.

It was time to finish this.

Every so often in his life, Ben had to do things he hated doing. This was one of the worst. With the heel of his right hand he delivered a short, hard, stunning blow to the side of the neck. She went limp and crumpled, knees buckling under her. He caught her before she could fall to the floor.

?I?m sorry, Ruth.? He laid her down on the broken bed, checked her pulse. When he was sure he hadn?t done her any lasting harm, he picked up the fallen pistol, made it safe and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he grabbed her arms and flipped her body up over his shoulder.

He hadn?t known exactly what his plan was as he followed her home, but now he realised there was only one option open to him if he wanted to get her somewhere quiet and have it out with her. He was going to have to smuggle her back over the border into France and west to Le Val. And he needed to move fast. He was pretty certain there were more than three of the gang living here. Sooner or later, someone was going to return home, and he didn?t want to be there when they did. He might not be so lucky if four or five of them jumped him at once ? especially if they were armed.

He carried his sister out to the poultry shed. Her two friends, the handsome one and the scrawny bearded one, were still out cold. He laid her very carefully down next to them and used more of the cable-ties to bind her wrists and ankles, taking care not to pull them so tight against her flesh. Then he taped her mouth and ran to fetch the car.

A body was a tight fit inside the boot of a Mini. Not the best car in the world for this purpose, he thought as he lowered her gently inside the cramped space, but he guessed that was something the designers hadn?t felt the need to consider. He did his best to position her comfortably for when she woke up, then slammed the lid.

He stared pensively at the back of the car. Sighed, bit his lip, shook his head. No, that wasn?t going to do at all. He had a long drive ahead, and it was a confined space in there with very little ventilation. He?d only just found her. The last thing he wanted was to suffocate her.

?Fuck it,? he said out loud. Opened up the boot, slipped the pistol out of his pocket. Thumbed off the safety, picked the best angle and emptied the rest of the magazine into the inside of the metal panel. The 9mm bullets punched neat round holes through the shiny green bodywork. Fourteen of them. When he closed the boot lid a second time, it looked like a colander ? but at least she?d be able to breathe.

He walked back to the poultry shed, thinking about what he was going to do about the other two. If they?d been the kind of shaved-headed hard-nuts who normally went about wearing swastika badges, he might just have left them to rot where they lay. But these guys were different. Something else was going on.

He trotted over to the house, yanked the carving knife Ruth had thrown at him out of the doorframe, and snatched a black felt pen from the table where the phone was. He used the knife to cut the ties around the handsome one?s wrists, then reached into his bag for another tie and attached the guy?s left hand to the bearded one?s ankle. He tossed the carving knife a few yards across the garden, so that they?d see it when they came to. The good-looking one would be able to use his free hand to cut himself and his friend loose, but not before they?d had to drag themselves several very difficult yards over the ground. That should delay things a bit.

One of the principal advantages of committing crimes against criminals was that they tended not to call the police to complain about it afterwards. But in Ben?s experience you could never be too careful, and that was what the felt pen was for. He rolled the bearded guy over on his back and used it to write on his forehead.

ICH WEISS WER SIE SIND.

I know who you are, in big bold letters from temple to temple. The message ought to get them thinking. Ben smiled grimly at his handiwork, then got to his feet and ran back to the car, mapping out in his mind the best route into France without going through border checkpoints.

Chapter Forty-Five

On the way back to Le Val, Ben?s phone rang. It was Brooke.

?Just wanted to check in and see how things were going.?

?Things are ? interesting,? he said.

?Where are you??

?On my way home. I should be there by midnight.?

?Did you find her?? Brooke asked after a pause.

?Yes. I did.?

?And it?s definitely Ruth??

?It?s definitely Ruth.?

?I don?t know what to say, Ben.?

?You don?t have to say anything,? he replied.

?So what?s happening? Where is she now??

?Here with me.?

?She came with you??

He hesitated. He?d already lied once to Brooke about his sister in the last few days, and he wasn?t about to do it again. ?She?s in the boot,? he said simply.

A moment?s shocked silence on the line. ?What did you just say??

?I said she?s in the boot. But she?ll be all right. She?s tough.?

?Ben, do you realise what you?re telling me? That the sister you lost because someone kidnapped her is now a prisoner in the back of your car because you went and kidnapped her back? This is insane. You can?t go around snatching people.?

?I didn?t kidnap her. I rescued her. That?s what I do. I got her out of there, and now I?m taking her home and she and I are going to have it out.?

Another long silence on the other end. Then Brooke said firmly, ?Right, that?s it. I?m coming over. I?ll be there in the morning.?

?I can deal with it, Brooke. Stay put.?

?No, Ben. I seriously don?t think you can. I think you need help. Maybe more than she does. Have you lost your mind??

?What about Sabrina? You can?t just leave her there on her own.?

?Sabrina will be fine. She can take care of herself.?

?I don?t think??

She cut across him. ?See you at Le Val.? Then, before he could protest, she ended the call.

He drove on into the night, thinking about his cargo in the back and how he was going to handle the situation when he got to the house. He had to admit he was flying blind now. No situation he?d ever found himself in before came remotely close to this.

Just before midnight, he arrived at the Le Val security gate and saw the figure of Raymond come out of the gatehouse. He and his colleagues Claude and Jean-Yves were the three-man local security outfit Ben had hired to man the gates and patrol the perimeter. Ben rolled down the window and greeted him, trying to look as natural as possible without hanging around long enough for the guy to spot the bullet-riddled back end of the car or hear its occupant moving about inside. Raymond didn?t notice anything.

Ben?s heart thumped as he drove on through the gate. This was it. He wasn?t looking forward to the inevitable confrontation.

He parked the Mini inside the Dutch barn, and stepped outside to scan the buildings. What he was about to do didn?t require an audience, not even a close and trusted friend like Jeff Dekker, and Ben was glad that this was happening while he was out of the picture. The whole place seemed deserted, apart from the four German Shepherds, led by Storm, who?d been sleeping in a nest of straw at the back of the barn and now came trotting over to the car to investigate. The dogs quickly picked up the scent of someone in the back.

?Leave,? he commanded them in a low voice, and they instantly backed off and retreated to a distance, watching intently with cocked heads and pricked ears as he opened the boot.

Ruth?s eyes glittered in the moonlight, glaring up at him with rage and hate and fear like those of a cornered wildcat. She kicked and writhed as he bent down and lifted her out of the confined space, carried her over to the house and up the stairs to his private apartment. Once upstairs, he used her feet to shove the door shut, then laid her on the sofa and left her there struggling against her bonds while he went to attend to the windows. The whole house had sturdy wooden shutters that could be locked from the inside. Ben had fortified them with heavy-gauge steel wire, and only a really determined intruder with a sledgehammer would have got through them. He didn?t think she could get out too easily, just in case she tried. He secured each window in turn, dropped the keys in his pocket, then fetched a bottle of mineral water from the cupboard and set it down on the low table by the sofa.

Then he kneeled down beside Ruth, gently peeled the tape away from her mouth and ignored the raging stream of abuse she fired at him as he snapped open his clasp knife and carefully sliced the plastic cable-ties around her wrists and ankles. She immediately tried to jump to her feet, and he shoved her back down. She sat glaring at him, rubbing her wrists.

He offered her the mineral water, and she grabbed it from him, took several long swallows and then dashed the bottle in his face. Her eyes blazed as she yelled at him in German. ?Du Scheisse, warum hast du mich hier gebracht??

Why have you brought me here?

He replied in English, and they were the strangest words he?d ever spoken in his life, a surreal moment that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. ?It?s me. Ben. Your brother. I?ve brought you home.?

She stared at him for a long moment, her face wild and full of suspicion. ?You?re not my brother,? she screamed at him. Just a trace of a German accent. ?What is this, some kind of twisted fucking joke??

Ben?s throat felt very tight. ?You?re Ruth Hope. You couldn?t possibly be anybody else.?

?You?re a fucking liar,? she yelled. ?What have you done with Franz and Rudi??

?Relax. Your little Nazi friends are fine. Probably licking their sores and pacing up and down wondering where you are.?

?Nazis,? she spat. ?We?re not Nazis.?

?I think you?d better start talking to me, right now.?

?Fuck you. He sent you, didn?t he??

?He??

?My fucking father. Where is he?? She looked about her, as if expecting someone to walk into the room and readying herself for the confrontation.

?I don?t know who you?re talking about,? he protested. ?What father??

?I?m Luna Steiner,? she yelled. ?Do I need to spell it out for you, arschloch? My father is Maximilian Steiner. And last time I saw you, you were his bodyguard.?

Chapter Forty-Six

It was as though all the air had been sucked out of the room. Ben found it hard to speak.

?The Steiners don?t have any children,? he said weakly.

Her face reddened. ?Who told you that?? she demanded. ?That lick-spittle Dorenkamp? Or my bastard pig of a father? Of course they?d say that, wouldn?t they? I?m the dark little secret they want to keep quiet. Easier to pretend I don?t exist.?

Ben reeled with confusion. ?Listen to me. You are my sister. When you were nine years old??

But she didn?t let him finish. Her arm flashed out. On the windowsill behind her was the old naval paraffin lamp he still used sometimes when the storms took out the power. She grabbed it and hurled it at him. It was a heavy lump of brass, and it could have put a dent in his skull if he hadn?t ducked out of the way. It smashed into the chest of drawers behind him, splintering the wood.

?You let me out of here right now!? she shouted.

?Not until we talk and straighten this whole thing out. If you?re Steiner?s daughter, then why were you trying to kidnap him??

?I need to go to the bathroom.?

?After. What about Adam O?Connor and his son??

?I don?t know what you?re talking about. Let me go.?

?Why did you want the Kammler papers??

She stared at him, her rage suddenly giving way to suspicion. ?What did that bastard tell you about Kammler??

?Steiner? I think he told me a pack of lies.?

She snorted. ?Why am I not surprised??

?And you?re going to tell me the truth. I want to know what?s going on.?

?Why the fuck should I tell you anything? Let me go to the bathroom, unless you want me to piss all over this pretty rug you have here.?

?All right. You go. But the door stays open.?

?So you can watch??

?I don?t want to watch my sister taking a piss.?

?I?m not your sister, buddy.?

He grabbed her arm as she strode towards the bathroom, and jerked her round to face him. She tried to get away, but he held her tight.

?That scar on your arm,? he said. ?You want me to tell you how you got it? You were seven years old. We were burning leaves. You, me and our father. Not Maximilian Steiner. Our father, I?m talking about, Alistair Hope. You tripped and fell against the incinerator. Do you remember??

She said nothing. Her whole body was tense.

?Maybe you remember Polly? She was your horse. A Welsh mountain pony, twelve hands, grey. And then there was your fluffy toy dog. You called him Ringle-the-Wee and you wouldn?t be parted from him. I still have him.? He pointed. ?I have a whole box of your things, there under my bed. Things I?ve kept all these years. Do you want to see them? Will that make you believe me?? He ripped his wallet out of his back pocket, opened it and took out a passport-sized picture. ?Look at this. It?s you, about a week before you disappeared. I?ve carried it with me everywhere since.?

Ruth glanced at the picture, then stared at him defiantly. ?Stick it up your ass. Go tell it to your boss.?

Anger seized him then, and he shook her violently. ?Steiner didn?t send me. He?s not here. We?re not in Switzerland, we?re in France. Normandy, at my place. Steiner doesn?t know you?re here.?

?Let go of my arm. You?re hurting me.?

He held her tighter. ?I came looking for you because I wanted to save you, Ruth.?

?Save me!?

?From yourself, you stupid little idiot. I don?t know what crazy stuff you?re into. I just know that it?s going to end with you getting arrested or killed, all right? But if you want, if you really want, I only have to call Steiner and he?ll send someone right over to pick you up. I?m sure he?d be very interested to meet the woman who?s been trying to kidnap him. I might even take you there myself.?

Her eyes were full of alarm at his words. She twisted furiously against his grip. ?Let go of me!? she screamed at him.

He did, and she ran to the bathroom and slammed the door in his face, threw the bolt on the inside.

He thought about breaking the door down, then relented and stood there helpless with his head hanging. Maybe he needed to back off a little.

Perhaps Brooke was right ? he couldn?t handle this alone.

Feeling suddenly a hundred years old, as if every last drop of strength had been drained out of him, he left his quarters and locked the door. She couldn?t escape from in there. Even if she broke through the shutters, it was a long drop to the concrete below, and there was no way she could climb down.

He trudged wearily down the stairs, snatched a bottle of whisky from the kitchen, carried it back through to the dark hall and sat with it on the bottom stair. He could hear the sounds coming from the landing above. It hadn?t taken her long to figure out she was locked in. As he cracked open the whisky, she was already pounding furiously on the door, screaming to be let out.

Then, as he was into his second gulp, the smashing began.

He could only imagine what was happening up there. He sat there staring into the darkness and sipping the whisky, and after a while the sound of his possessions being hurled and broken into pieces just washed over him. He closed his eyes, felt his head nod. And gave in to it.

When he awoke, slumped uncomfortably on the stairs with just the half-empty bottle for company, the house was silent and sunlight was streaming through the hallway from the fan light above the door. He got to his feet, stretching and rubbing his back, and staggered through to the kitchen hoping that a strong coffee would drive away the sharp ache that had set up camp in his temple.

Someone else was awake, too. As he made his way down the hall the pounding and screaming started again upstairs. The sound of glass shattering. Another lamp, or maybe the mirror.

Let her get on with it. There couldn?t be much left up there that wasn?t already broken, anyway.

He was sitting at the kitchen table five minutes later, burning his tongue on scalding black coffee, when he heard the diesel chatter of a taxi pull up outside. The front door opening, familiar footsteps in the hall. He turned to see Brooke walk into the room.

?I told you you didn?t have to come,? he said. ?But it?s good to see you.?

?You look terrible. Where is she??

He pointed upwards. ?Can?t you hear??

?What?s she doing??

?Smashing the place up. She?s been doing it on and off since last night.?

?I need a coffee,? Brooke said, rubbing her eyes. ?I was up at five to catch the plane.?

Ben got up and poured her a cup. ?She says her name?s Luna, and she?s Steiner?s daughter,? he told her.

?As in Maximilian Steiner, the guy she was trying to kidnap??

He nodded. Another crash came from upstairs. More screaming.

?Why would she do that?? Brooke asked, puzzled. ?I don?t know what?s going on,? he said. ?I?m going up there to talk to her.?

?I?ll come too.?

?No way, Ben. You?re staying here. Don?t interfere with this.?

?She?s wild. She could hurt you.?

?I know what I?m doing.? Brooke gulped down her coffee and left. Ben heard her climbing the stairs. Her soft knock and her voice saying, ?Luna? Can I come in?? before unlocking the door. Then it clicked shut and he heard no more.

The two women were alone up there a long time. After ten minutes the smashing and yelling had become much less frequent, and after twenty it had stopped altogether. Ben knocked back cup after cup of coffee, pacing up and down in the kitchen and fighting the urge to go creeping up the stairs and listen at the door.

What the hell was happening? That was his sister up there ? no doubt about that. And yet, she was ? or said she was ? Steiner?s daughter. Steiner?s adopted child? It was feasible, but the possibility was dizzying.

Questions poured through Ben?s mind. Had Steiner known of the connection all along, and somehow contrived to hire him for that reason? But that seemed impossible. Shannon would have had to be in on it too. Deliberately provoking Ben into hurting him, one unlikely event tripping the next like a line of dominoes. Absurd. So what was the answer?

Consumed with frustration and impatience, he just had to do something. He still had a card in his wallet with the main office number of the Steiner residence. He snatched up the phone and punched the keys, and asked for Heinrich Dorenkamp.

When the man came to the phone, Ben came right to the point. ?You told me the Steiners didn?t have any children. Were you lying to me??

A pause. ?I ? ah??

?Did the Steiners adopt a child? A girl of nine, more than twenty years ago? Yes or no, Heinrich? It?s simple.?

?I?m afraid I cannot help with your enquiry,? Dorenkamp said in a stiff tone. ?I am very busy at the moment. Goodbye.? And hung up.

Ben was about to redial the number and get nasty when he heard the door open behind him and turned for the second time that morning to see Brooke walk in.

He glanced at his watch. She?d been up there for nearly two hours. She looked tired as she pulled up a chair and sat down.

He looked at her. ?Well??

Brooke sighed. ?Well, we talked. She listened to what I had to say. And? ?

?And??

?And you were right all along, Ben. She?s who you said, and she knows it. I think she knew it before I got here. Things you said to her last night, things that only her brother could have known.?

?So now I?m going to talk to her,? he said. ?There?s something else, Ben. The situation?s stranger than you think.?

?Meaning what??

?She was convinced that her brother was dead.?

Chapter Forty-Seven

Ben pushed open the door to his quarters and kicked aside the debris that littered the floor. Everything that could be broken, overturned or torn down, had been. Brickwork showed through the plaster where a chair had slammed into the wall. The chair itself lay in splintered pieces on the carpet. The place looked as though a tank had driven through it.

?I?m sorry about the room,? said Ruth quietly from behind him. He turned and saw her sitting in the corner, hugging her knees. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face drawn.

?It?s OK,? he said. ?I?d have done a lot worse. Not a stone left standing.?

?You and I,? she said. ?We?re Hopes.?

?I?m glad you?ve come round to thinking so.?

She paused. ?I can?t believe this is real. My brother?s supposed to be dead.?

?It?s been tried,? he said. ?But it hasn?t happened yet.?

?I don?t know anything about you.?

He nodded. ?We have a lot to talk about. And I think we?d better start at the beginning.?

?I could use some air,? she replied.

?You want to take a walk??

* * *

The sun was shining brightly, just a whisper of a breeze stirring the treetops, as Ben took his sister into the forest that surrounded the Le Val facility. They barely spoke as they walked. He knew the paths through the woods better than anyone, better even than the wild boar and deer that had created many of them, and he led her deep into the woods towards the old ruined church. Storm trotted along behind Ben, keenly sniffing out the scents in the undergrowth.

They reached the ruin. Too much time had passed since his last visit to the place, and it was overgrown with wild-flowers now that summer was approaching its height. Ben pulled back a hanging curtain of ivy and led Ruth through the crumbling archway. He sat down on a mossy stone, and she settled in the long grass at his feet as Storm went scouting around the walls.

He couldn?t stop himself from staring at her. He was scared to blink in case she disappeared.

?It?s weird, isn?t it?? she said, half-smiling. ?Us being here like this.?

He nodded in agreement. ?Very weird. Can you talk about what happened to you?? he asked cautiously. After years of the worst speculation, it was a terrifying question to ask.

?I know what you?re thinking,? she said. ?I?ve heard about what?s done to the children the slavers take.?

?I?ve seen the things that are done to them.? He didn?t even want to think about it.

?It didn?t happen to me,? she said. ?Nobody raped me. Nobody drugged me. Really. I?m OK.?

He breathed out a long, long sigh. Like letting out twenty-three years? worth of pent-up pain. He said nothing for a few moments. Took a pack of Gauloises and his Zippo out of his pocket and offered her one.

?I don?t smoke cigarettes,? she said.

?Don?t tell me. You prefer the other stuff.? She shrugged. ?It settles my nerves. I don?t smoke it a lot though.?

Storm was scratching at the mossy earth at the foot of the wall, on the trail of a scent. Suddenly he stopped, stiffened, as if listening out for some imperceptible sound far beyond the range of human hearing. His shaggy hackles rose, and a long, low growl rumbled from his throat.

?Go and lie down,? Ben commanded softly. The dog glanced at him, then obeyed.

Ben lit a cigarette, clanged his lighter shut and dropped it back into the breast pocket of his denim shirt. ?Do you remember the day you disappeared?? he asked Ruth.

?It was a long time ago. It?s like a dream.?

?Start at the beginning,? he said. ?Tell me everything.?

She leaned back against the rough stone wall. ?I remember being with them. The kidnappers. I remember being inside a car, or a truck. It?s not so clear any more. They took me across the desert, and we met up with these other men. Like a rendezvous, in a tent pitched out there in the sand seas, the middle of nowhere. There was money on the table. I think they were meeting up to sell me on, you know? But then they started arguing. A fight broke out. One of them had a sword.? She chuckled. ?It was probably just a knife, but I remember thinking how huge it looked. He took it out, and another man shot him. They were so busy fighting, nobody saw me slip away. I ran and ran. I was scrambling up and down all these dunes that went on forever. I remember how hot the sand was. It burned my hands and feet. But I kept going, because I was so scared they were going to catch me. But then I remember hearing this strange noise behind me, like a roaring. I turned and saw what looked like a giant wave coming towards me.?

?A sandstorm,? Ben said.

She nodded. ?I just ran like hell. The roaring got louder and louder. Then I saw this old van, buried up to its wheels in the sand. God knows how long it had been left abandoned there, but it saved me. I managed to climb in the back before the storm hit. That?s all I remember for a long time.?

Ruth paused. ?I woke up lying in a soft bed of blankets and skins. I was in a Bedouin tent. Faces looking down at me, of the people who?d found me after the storm. I was ill for weeks, from dehydration and shock. They tended me, nursed me and fed me, and then I just stayed with them.? She smiled wistfully. ?They were kind, wonderful people. They called me ?Little Moon? in their language.?

?Because of the scar??

She pulled back her sleeve and ran her finger along the white crescent shape on her skin. ?My little moon.?

?How long did you stay with them??

?Three years, more or less. I don?t really know. We moved around, setting up camp here and there. They sold camels, skins, beads. Never in one place for long.?

He shook his head in amazement. ?And all that time, we were searching frantically for you.?

?I often thought about you. All of you, but especially you, Ben. I cried myself to sleep every night for the first year. But, you know, time passes.?

?And children adapt,? he said.

?And so that?s how it was for me. My new life, my new family. But I guess that they knew they couldn?t keep me forever. A little white girl growing up among the desert people, someone would have noticed sooner or later. And someone did.?

?The Steiners,? he said.

?I remember when I first met them. We?d travelled near an oasis to fill up with water. I was playing in the bushes with some of the other kids when this huge bus came along. The kids all ran over to it. I knew I wasn?t supposed to, but I ran over as well. At first we all thought it was a tourist bus, but then when we got up close, we realised it was just these two people and their driver. All tourists seemed like rich folks to us, but this was just incredible. They were giving out toys and money to the kids, and we were all going wild. I was so excited, I didn?t notice that my head garb had slipped down. That was when Silvia saw my hair, and my blue eyes. I remember her watching me, pointing me out to him.?

?Maximilian.?

She pulled a face. ?Prick. Then, anyway, next thing I knew, there was this whole discussion going on, and everyone was crying and saying I had to go. After that, everything changed for me. For the second time, I was taken from everything I?d known, my friends, my new family. Suddenly I?m on a plane to Europe, and then a helicopter and this amazing fairytale house, and I?m wearing these new clothes. It was winter there, and so cold. A whole different world. From a poor Bedouin urchin to this little twelve-year-old rich kid.?

?So then Steiner adopted you,? Ben said. ?And he named you Luna, taken from your Bedouin name. Except that he must have cut a few corners and greased a few palms to make the adoption possible.?

?Oh, he?s very good at that.?

?So what should I call you? Are you Luna, or Ruth??

?Everyone?s always known me as Luna. I hardly remember what it?s like to be Ruth any more.? She shrugged, smiled. ?But maybe I need to start learning to be her again. I?d like you to call me Ruth.?

At that moment, the dog got to his feet, his lip curling back to show his fangs. Another long, low growl. He was intently focused on something behind the trees.

?Quiet,? Ben called over to him. Storm let out a little whimper and lay back down.

?What?s bothering him?? she said, peering over towards the trees.

?There?s probably a boar in there or something.? There were more important things on Ben?s mind than whatever was preoccupying the dog. ?Why did you think I was dead??

?I was brought up believing it. That?s what Maximilian told me. He said there?d been this whole investigation. That he?d used every bit of his influence to find my family, and that what had come out was that my parents and my brother had been killed. I was only a kid. What was I supposed to think? At the time, I just accepted the reality I was presented with.?

Ben narrowed his eyes. ?Killed how??

?An air crash, in India. A small tourist plane smashed into a mountain. He showed me the press cuttings. I saw it clearly. It was all there. Alistair Hope, his wife Kathleen and their son Benedict. He couldn?t have got that wrong, could he??

?No,? Ben said. ?I don?t think there was any mistake.? Rage was building inside him. Steiner?s wealth gave him the power to fake just about anything he wanted. But to deliberately fabricate a lie of this magnitude ? why would he do such a thing?

?I don?t understand,? she muttered. ?When I was seventeen I wanted to find out more about what had happened. Maybe I didn?t totally trust Maximilian, I don?t know. I hired a private investigator from Bern to trace information about you all. He came back to me with exactly the same stuff Maximilian had.?

Ben said nothing.

Realisation crossed her face like a passing shadow. ?The bastard got to him. Paid him off. Shit. I should have thought of it. More lies.? She shook her head.

?The question is why,? Ben said. ?Why has Steiner pretended all these years??

?Are our parents still alive, Ben?? she asked suddenly, excitement flaring for a brief moment.

He sighed. ?No. He wasn?t lying about that. They?re dead. But it wasn?t a plane crash.?

?What happened to them??

It was hard to say it, but he told her the truth about their mother?s suicide and their father?s subsequent pining away. She paled as she listened, and buried her face in her hands.

?I hate him,? she said. ?I hate that evil bastard. I?ll get him for what he?s done to us all.?

?What about Silvia?? he asked. ?You think she was in on it too??

Ruth shook her head vigorously. ?He lies to her about everything. Even after all these years, he?s got her believing the sun shines out of his ass. She gave up everything for him, to live in that mausoleum. So, no, I don?t think she?s in on it. She?s a good person, not like him. I was close to her once. I wish I still could be. My cousin Otto, too. I miss them.?

?What happened between you and Steiner??

She shrugged. ?I grew up, and he couldn?t deal with it. There was endless fighting. He wouldn?t let me breathe. I couldn?t do anything, couldn?t have a horse, couldn?t do this, couldn?t do that. The more he tried to control me, the more I rebelled against him. Hanging out with people he disapproved of, smoking dope, getting involved in environmental causes, going on marches. He was probably afraid I?d cause a family scandal. In the end he gave me an ultimatum. Either toe the line or get out. I got out.?

?From teen rebellion to kidnapping,? Ben said. ?That was a big step up.?

?Yeah, well, you know why I took it. Because of the Kammler papers.?

?You?re going to have to explain all this to me.?

Her lips curled into a dark, grim smile. ?OK, but I can do better than just explain. I can show you. Have you got a computer??

?In the office.?

?Let?s go. There are things you need to see. Then you?ll understand.?

Chapter Forty-Eight

They left the ruined church and started making their way back along the leafy path through the woods. There was a closeness between them now that hadn?t been there before, and it warmed him more than the June sun streaming through the trees.

?How much do you know about science?? she asked him as they walked slowly side by side.

?Just what I?ve picked up here and there,? he answered.

?You never studied it, then??

?I studied theology, then war. Why??

?I studied science,? she told him. ?Physics. University of Geneva was where I took my first degree. When I graduated I went to Bonn for my PhD.?

He stared at her in surprise. ?How does someone with a science doctorate end up selling pottery??

?Because I happen to give a shit about scientific integrity. Science is meant to be the pure pursuit of knowledge for the good of the planet and its occupants, you know? But of course that?s not the way it works. Like when a big telecommunications corporation uses bribes and threats to suppress studies that prove carcinogenic effects from mobile phone radiation. Or when astrophysics research projects get mysteriously shut down because someone inconveniently showed up major flaws in the Big Bang Theory. Little things like corruption and hypocrisy, I kind of have a problem with. I?d rather be helping Franz to sell his art than be part of that fucking machine. All it does is serve the establishment.?

?You?re an idealist,? he said.

?Something wrong with that??

?Not at all. I?ve had the same problem all my life.?

?Then you understand why I quit my career. But before that, it was my whole life. I was eighteen when I went away to Geneva. Maximilian hated me being away from home, but he was pleased I was following in his footsteps.?

?How so??

?You didn?t know? Before he made all his money, way back, he trained in chemistry and physics. Was pretty talented at it, too. That?s what got him started in business ? when he was a student he patented a heart drug that got taken up by a big pharmaceutical company and made him rich. Anyway,? she went on, ?off I went. I had everything money could buy. Maximilian bought me a luxury apartment in Geneva. I had a sports car, a fat allowance. Everything except freedom. He wouldn?t let me have friends or go to parties with the other students. He always seemed to know what I was doing, like he was having me followed. Insisted I always came straight home for vacations and couldn?t leave until term began again. That?s why I was there, the summer after the end of my first year, when I overheard the phone call.?

?What phone call??

?Between him and his brother Karl. Not long before poor old Karl died. Shame, I liked him. Maximilian had been collecting antiquities for years by then, and he was telling his brother about these documents he?d found by chance at some auction.?

?You mean the Kammler papers??