She nodded. ?Of course, back then I?d never heard of Kammler. But he was telling Karl what an amazing discovery it was. Amazing and worrying, and how he?d been sitting up nights reading the stuff, becoming obsessed with it. I could hear Karl?s voice on the speakerphone. He told Maximilian that if this stuff was even half true, he?d be out of business and that it was best to lock it away and not let anyone else see it. He was kind of joking, but I could tell that Maximilian was taking it really seriously. He was scared.?

?I don?t understand. What was it about the Kammler documents that was spooking him so badly??

They?d reached the office. Storm left them to go sniffing round the buildings, and Ben led Ruth inside.

?That?s what I?m going to show you,? she replied. ?And it?s going to blow your mind.?

?I?ve heard that before,? he said, thinking of Lenny Salt.

?Just wait and see.?

Ben fired up the laptop on his desk. As it whirred into action, he ran his eye over the pile of mail that was stacked up beside it. He was about to sweep the whole lot aside when he noticed the official Steiner logo on the envelope.

?That looks familiar,? Ruth said.

Ben tore it open, remembering the letter that Dorenkamp had mentioned. It was from Steiner?s lawyer. An invoice for forty thousand euros in respect of damages incurred to property during Ben?s brief period of employment. The letter finished tartly by warning that ?If the outstanding sum is not paid promptly within fourteen days, there will be further legal action and possible criminal charges.?

He tossed it down on the desk. Ruth read it and whistled. ?Even at my worst, I only managed to smash a few of his windows. What the hell did you do??

?I had an argument with a smoke alarm. Now let?s see what you have to show me.?

?Get ready,? she said. ?When you see this, everything you thought you knew about the modern world is going to change.? She sat in the swivel chair and he watched over her shoulder as her fingers rattled over the keys. She quickly entered a website URL and a box flashed up on the screen asking for a password. She rattled the keys again and hit ENTER, and the site opened up. Its design was basic, homemade, and Ben realised right away that its only function was as a repository for data files, secure storage for large amounts of information that could be accessed only by a chosen few.

?This is access only,? she said. ?Not open to the public. Rudi created it, and we uploaded all our research stuff onto it. I?ve never shown it to anyone on the outside.? She scrolled down an index of files, all with coded names that made no sense to Ben. ?You?re a big boy,? she said, selecting one and clicking on it. ?I think you can handle it if I throw you right in at the deep end.?

As Ben watched, a video file loaded up onscreen and then began to play. The video seemed to have been filmed in some kind of warehouse. Bare brick walls, concrete floor.

?You?re looking at a storage facility on the edge of Frankfurt,? Ruth explained. ?We hired it cheap, no questions.?

?Who?s filming this??

?I?m holding the camera. Franz was there too, operating the gear. A few other guys, too. All witnesses to what happened there.?

?Franz, the potter??

?He wasn?t always a potter. He was my colleague at Frankfurt University, where we were both teaching applied physics at the time this was filmed.?

As Ben watched, the camera panned slowly across a massive bank of equipment that looked as if someone had salvaged it from a 1950s military base or the set of some antiquated science-fiction movie. Lights flashed, the display of an oscilloscope glowed green, the needles on gauges pulsed up and down. Banks of diodes and buttons and dials, wires trailing everywhere. The equipment was emitting an electrical hum. The camera panned across to reveal more of the warehouse, and more equipment wired together across twenty yards of the concrete floor.

?This was all stuff we bought as junk, borrowed or stole wherever we could and rigged up ourselves,? Ruth explained. ?There?s a Van de Graaff generator, a bunch of tuning capacitors, and that thing there that looks like a giant dumbbell is a Tesla coil. Nothing fancy or expensive. That?s the beauty of it.?

Ben didn?t reply, watching without comprehension of what he was seeing. In an empty space a few metres from the machinery were two large items that could only be described as scrap metal. One was a huge rusting cast-iron hulk of an old mangle that looked as though it had been dragged out of a river and probably weighed over seventy kilos. Next to it was a truck axle and differential, complete with double wheels. Beside the axle lay a small dark object that Ben couldn?t make out at first, then realised was a plain black baseball cap.

?What is this all about?? he asked.

?Just watch.?

Some voices could be heard offscreen from behind the camera. Then someone went ?Shh? and the room fell into a hush. The hum from the equipment grew louder. Lights began to flash faster. The readouts on the dials went wild.

?It?s starting,? Ruth said. ?You?re going to be amazed.?

Ben watched closely.

Nothing was happening.

?I don?t see anything so spe?? he began.

And his voice trailed off in mid-word and his eyes opened wide as the baseball cap, the truck axle and the enormous mangle all suddenly sailed weightlessly up into the air.

Chapter Forty-Nine

The items hovered there, levitating without support. Ben stared hard at the screen, searching for tell-tale wires that might explain how this trickery was being done. But there were no wires, and what happened next made his jaw drop. While the baseball cap and the mangle floated in mid-air, the massive truck axle started to rotate slowly around on an invisible pivot. Then it suddenly took off, flashing across the warehouse faster than the eye could follow and smashing itself into the far wall with a loud crash and a cloud of masonry dust. A solid lump of metal, half a ton or more, zipping through the air like a lightweight arrow.

Propelled, apparently, by nothing.

At that point, the video clip came to an end, the image of the axle?s impact freezing on the screen. ?We turned everything off then,? she said. ?Aborted the experiment. We couldn?t control the movement or direction of the objects, and it was just too dangerous to continue. Then we packed up the gear and got the hell out of there before the warehouse owners discovered the damage to the wall.?

Ben tore his gaze away from the screen and turned to her. ?This isn?t for real,? he said. ?It?s got to be faked.?

?Come on. Open your eyes. To fake that on camera would cost millions. It would take the kind of CGI special effects technology they use in the movies. Did that experiment look that well funded to you? No, Ben, this is real. And there?s more.?

He looked at her, studied her face for traces of a lie and could see she was absolutely serious. ?OK. That was impressive. But what the hell was it??

?It?s not a magic trick,? she replied, allowing a smile. ?It?s scientific reality. What I?ve just shown you was the most successful AG experiment Franz and I ever achieved.?

?AG??

?Anti-gravity. The next one we did was a disaster. Nothing worked properly. Soon after that, the university cottoned on to what we were doing and found out that we?d borrowed some equipment from their labs without permission. We got sacked for conducting dangerous, unorthodox experiments ? for which read experiments that the academic establishment and its corporate paymasters don?t want the world to know about.?

Ben shook his head in confusion. ?Hold on. I thought that what you were going to show me had to do with the Kammler papers ? stuff dating back to the 1940s.?

Ruth tapped the screen with her finger. ?That?s exactly what this is, Ben. Harnessing hidden energies, tapping into the power of the ether. That?s what Kammler?s work is all about.?

?It sounds more like science fiction. Something from the future.?

?Wrong. Scientists have been talking about it for centuries. Benjamin Franklin said in 1780 that ?We may learn to deprive large masses of their gravity, and give them absolute levity for the sake of easy transportation.??

?How did you get into this stuff?? he asked, still reeling from what he?d just seen and fighting to make sense of it.

?Remember I told you how I?d overheard Maximilian?s phone call that time, when I was a student? Well, this is the stuff he was telling his brother about. As soon as my vacation was over and I went back to university, I started digging through every science text I could find that could explain what it was all about. Of course, the tutors did all they could to discourage me. It was years before I started seeing the deeper implications, and understanding that this radical, incredible thing was based on a complex phenomenon called Zero Point Energy.?

?I?ve never heard of it.?

?Not many people have. That?s for two reasons. One, because the physics of it makes Einstein?s relativity look like first-year maths. Secondly, because there are a lot of rich folks out there who stand to gain if this thing stays a secret. Zero Point Energy is, basically, free energy.?

He pointed at the screen. ?So you?re saying Kammler?s research was to make stuff float about??

?There?s much more to it than that,? she said. ?OK, I?ll try to make it simple. As Einstein showed, we need to think of the universe and everything in it as an infinite soup of energy. Including you and me. We might think we?re real and solid, but in reality we?re just floating clouds of electrons. All that?s stopping us from falling apart, or disappearing through the floor, is the interaction of electromagnetic forces. We?re literally made up of and surrounded by gigantic, limitless amounts of energy.?

Ben frowned, absorbing the ideas.

?Now, when it comes to trying to exploit natural resources for human civilisation, our technology is limited to using the crudest methods imaginable. Fossil fuels are inefficient, wasteful and harmful to the planet. And they?re running out fast. But imagine if we could tap into the natural energies that surround us, literally pulling power out of the ether. We?d be rewriting the future of the planet. Each home with its own little Zero Point Energy reactor, providing unlimited power for heat and light. Free. Safe. Clean. No more toxic by-products to dispose of. No more gases pumping into the atmosphere, no more radioactive waste sitting at the bottom of the ocean. For the first time since the industrial revolution, humans would actually be living in harmony with the Earth instead of destroying it.?

?I get you, but I still don?t see what this has to do with Kammler.?

?Kammler was the inventor of something called the Bell,? Ruth explained. ?A very special and completely unique device, commissioned by Hitler in 1943 or 1944 and built by Kammler?s team of SS engineers and scientists. Not much is known about it, except that it was in development in a secret facility somewhere in Eastern Europe during the final years of World War Two. Whatever it was, it was so potent that it had to be kept locked inside a vault. Witness reports from the time claimed that it had strange powers, interfered with electrical equipment and emitted a weird blue light when it was turned on. Based on what we know about Kammler?s research from leaked information at the time and vague references in some of his correspondence to fellow SS engineers, there?s a very good chance that he was building some kind of Zero Point Energy reactor.?

?Reactor??

?An instrument capable of extracting raw energy from the ether and converting it into usable power. Like electricity, but not artificially generated. Straight from nature. What we can create ourselves is a pale imitation.? She paused. ?But when Kammler disappeared in 1945, in the very last days of the war, so did all trace of his invention. Nobody knew where it was, whether it had even survived. US Intelligence spent years searching for it, but never found it. The same goes for his research papers, containing the secrets of his invention.?

?But you think Steiner found them??

?That?s right, Ben. I believe that?s what he found by accident and has locked away ? you can easily see why this stuff would be a threat to him. And from what he said that day on the phone to Karl, I think he knows not only the secrets of the Bell, but where it might be ? its hidden resting place since 1945.?

?Let me get this right,? Ben said. ?You?re saying that this Bell was a machine capable of drawing the energy out of thin air and converting it into usable power? Like a nuclear reactor, but without the need for fuel, and with no waste products??

Ruth nodded. ?The future of our planet.?

?It?s a little hard to imagine the Nazis as the inventors of a wonderful green technology that could save the Earth,? Ben said. ?Especially as they were in the middle of losing a war at the time. I?d have thought they had other things on their mind than green ideology.?

?There are other theoretical applications. Like the potential to create a super high-speed anti-gravity aircraft. There?s some evidence that the Nazis might have been doing just that. And then there are other things, too.?

?Such as??

?We?re talking about energy, Ben. A limitless force of nature. If you control its release, harness it, you have a safe, clean reactor that can go on churning out endless amounts of power for all eternity. But if you speed up the process and let the energy come pulsing out much more strongly, you have something else altogether.?

Ben?s stomach gave a lurch. ?A bomb.?

?Infinitely more powerful than the effect of merely splitting the atom. While the Americans were developing the first nuclear weapons, they had no idea that their enemies were working on something that could potentially have made Oppenheimer?s atom bombs look like kids? fireworks by comparison. It?s safe to say that when Hitler gave Kammler?s SS Special Projects Division carte blanche to develop this technology, it wasn?t because he cared about the future of the environment. It would have given him the power to obliterate half of Europe. He could have won the war in a day.?

?So isn?t it just as well that the Kammler research stays safe and secret??

Ruth shook her head, resolute. ?No, Ben. The planet deserves it. Whatever dark side there may be to Zero Point Energy, it?s no different from any other natural resource. Take electricity. You can use it to provide light and warmth and make people?s lives better; or you can use it to fry a man in a chair. If we can just control that energy responsibly, we really do have the key to saving the planet.? Her eyes were bright with excitement as she talked. ?Think of it. The end of our dependence on fossil fuels. The total breakdown of the evil business empires based on raping the environment.? She smiled darkly. ?Including Steiner?s. He has billions tied up in the aerospace and oil industries. Imagine the catastrophic losses he?d suffer if this technology broke through into the mainstream. Greedy capitalist bastards like him, plundering the planet?s natural resources and holding them for ransom, would become as extinct as the dinosaurs.?

Ben now understood why Steiner had lied about the real nature of the documents in his safe, inventing the Holocaust denial angle to put any enquiring minds off the track.

?I think I get it,? he said. ?This is really just about you and him. You wanted your revenge on him, for what he represents to you.?

?No, Ben. I want what?s best.?

?Really? That?s why you and your radical friends decided to get tooled up with real guns and start playing at being kidnappers??

?It was a long time before we even considered that kind of desperate measure,? she protested. ?Years of trying everything we could think of. Like the guy in Manchester I tried to talk to. I?d heard through the grapevine that he was this big Kammler expert. I flew all the way over there to see him, and??

?And he never turned up to the meeting,? Ben finished for her. ?I know about Lenny Salt. If it?s any consolation, I don?t think he?d have been much help to you.?

?Then I tried to get in touch with this colleague of his called Julia something. Julia Goodman. But she never got back to me. Meanwhile, whenever we weren?t trying to earn our living selling Franz?s art or doing a bit of private science tuition here and there, we were scraping together money to hire equipment and premises to run more experiments. We kept hoping that we?d crack it. But there was something missing. We just couldn?t quite get it to work consistently. One time in twenty, we?d get a positive result, and even then we couldn?t work out why it was happening.? She sighed. ?In the end we sat down and realised we had no choice but to get hold of what Maximilian had in his safe. But it wasn?t for lack of trying every other possible alternative. We didn?t actually want to be criminals.?

?Couldn?t you just have sneaked the keys out of his pocket like all rebellious kids do??

?You don?t understand. I haven?t been back to that house for nearly eight years. I?m the estranged daughter, remember?

The crazy one who dropped out of society and went off on some crusade to save the Earth. Why do you think Dorenkamp told you there?d never been any Steiner children? I?m officially disowned, dead and forgotten. All I have is some money that?s left from the Geneva apartment and the allowance they gave me.?

?You said you were close to Silvia and Otto, though. They might have helped you get inside the house.?

?Uh-uh. No way would I have done that to Silvia. She?s a bad liar and Maximilian would have sussed her out right away. But I did try to work on Otto.? Ruth smiled. ?Poor, sweet Otto. It was about a year ago, I called him on his mobile, managed to persuade him to leave his golf clubs alone for a few hours. We met up for lunch in Bern, and I told him about these old papers of vague scientific interest that I wanted to look at. All he had to do was to go into Maximilian?s study, open up the safe and photocopy them for me. But Otto?s weak. He got cold feet, backed out. The big soft chicken?s totally dominated by his uncle. So that didn?t work either. Like I said, soon after that we realised we were all out of options. We thought, fuck it, go for it.?

?Dressing up like Nazis ? I take it that was just a red herring for the police??

She shrugged. ?We?ve all been active in green circles. Half our names are probably down on police files. They?d come knocking on our door pretty fast if a bunch of greenies started trying to take down the likes of the great Steiner. So we figured that with the Kammler SS connection, the best possible front would be to pass ourselves off as something the complete opposite of what we really were, some kind of neo-Nazi terror group. It wasn?t hard to find the swastika badges. There were eleven of us involved, all committed. The first time, we almost got him. We were unlucky.?

?I heard what happened.?

?Then the second time, we had an even better plan. We spent ages working out every detail. But, as I recall, someone interfered.? She shot him a look.

?I?m glad I did, Ruth. You were risking your freedom, even your life, just because you believed that a bunch of documents written by some obscure Nazi loony almost seventy years ago was the key to saving the planet.?

?It?s not a question of belief, Ben. These are facts.?

?I think you?ve been smoking too much of that weed of yours. You?re stacking an awful lot of faith on this mumbo-jumbo.?

?That?s neat, coming from someone who studied theology. You believe in a god that nobody can prove exists, that nobody?s ever seen, and who never shows himself. I show you something real, and you choose to dismiss it without a second thought.?

?I don?t know what I saw just now.?

She snorted, glaring at him, her temper rising fast. ?Yeah, it?s easier just to close your eyes. Anyway, I don?t care if you believe me or not. You wanted to know why we tried to kidnap Maximilian, and now you know. So maybe now you?ll let me go back home.?

?To do what? To sell pottery? Or to pin your little Nazi badges back on and try to kidnap him again??

?We?re not going to stop trying. This is important.?

?I don?t like what you?re doing. What if someone had been hurt, or killed? You weren?t shooting blanks that day.?

?It wasn?t meant to go that far,? she said. ?I swear it.?

?You?re throwing away your life.?

?I don?t need your approval.?

?You might think you got away because you were clever, well trained and well rehearsed. The fact is, you were just lucky. If I?d been properly in charge of a close protection outfit that I?d had the opportunity to train and equip the way I wanted instead of just having to make do with amateurs, you and your friends would all be in prison now awaiting sentence. And if you keep trying, that?s what you?re going to come up against. You?re going to get caught, Ruth. Ever been in a cell? I don?t think you?d like it. If you thought Steiner was cramping your freedom, wait until you get a load of Interpol.? She said nothing.

?And that?s not all,? he went on. ?While you?re running around playing your little games and dabbling in things that should be left well alone, people are being kidnapped and murdered for real. Julia Goodman, the woman you tried to contact??

Ruth frowned.

?Dead,? Ben said. ?Along with another of her colleagues who was heavily into this Kammler stuff, someone by the name of Michio Miyazaki.?

She?d clearly heard the name, from the way she flinched.

?And have you heard of a man called Adam O?Connor? He?s missing, and so is his young son. Whoever?s out there doing this stuff is armed and means business, and it?s clear that someone is paying them to take an interest in all this.?

?Someone like who? Maximilian??

?I don?t know,? he said. ?But I do know that anyone connected with this Kammler research is a potential target. Which includes you and your cronies, too. You?re way out of your depth. You need to back right off.?

?Thank you for the lecture. But I?ll take my chances. I can look after myself. I?ve done it for long enough. And I?d rather believe in something, and suffer the consequences, than not believe in anything at all.? She looked up at him hotly. ?So can I go now? Or am I your prisoner??

?I ought to keep you locked up until you see sense.?

?Fuck you. You?re just as bad as him.?

He could see the look in her eye. The argument was spiralling out of control, and the last thing he wanted to do was alienate the sister that he?d only just found again. He stepped towards her, put his hand on her arm. ?I?m sorry,? he said. ?You know I?d never stand in your way. If you want to go, go. Call Franz and tell him where you are. Or take the Mini. Here. It?s yours.? He dangled the keys out in front of her.

She snatched the keys furiously out of his fingers, and he realised he?d already pushed her too far.

?Fine,? she snapped. ?I?m going to get some rest, and then I?ll leave tonight.?

He pointed over to the trainee accommodation block. ?Pick any room you want. The sheets are all fresh.?

Without another word she turned away from him, wrenched open the office door and slammed it shut behind her. He watched her strut angrily across the yard, then powered down the laptop and left the office too.

There was no sign of Storm outside. Ben walked alone to the house, feeling frustrated. He was hoping to find Brooke sitting reading in the kitchen. She was becoming more and more part of the place. But there was no sign of her there, nor in the living room.

Then he heard the sound of someone moving around upstairs. Following the sound, he found the door to his quarters open. Brooke was crouched down on the rug, sweeping shards of glass into a dustpan. He saw that she?d been clearing up the debris. Broken chairs were piled in the corner, and the pictures that hadn?t been destroyed were back on the walls. She?d gathered up the bits of broken glass from the smashed frames and propped them up neatly and safely out of the way against the wall near the sofa.

She hadn?t seen him, and he watched her from the doorway. Kneeling there with her thick hair tied back loosely over her shoulders, she looked so serene and calm. He thought of the last time they?d been here together in this room, that evening spent sitting on the rug eating Marie-Claire?s chocolate cake and drinking wine. It seemed so long ago now.

?Hi,? he said.

She looked up, and smiled back.

?Clearing this place up is my job,? he said. ?You shouldn?t have.?

?Something to do while I stayed out of your way for a while.? She stood up, dusting off her hands. ?Anyway, it wasn?t as bad as it looked. She didn?t wreck quite everything.?

He walked into the room, closed the door behind him.

?You look shattered,? she said.

He sat on the sofa, and she walked over and sat next to him. He leaned back, closing his eyes, and for a few precious moments he was able to switch off and enjoy the soothing atmosphere of her presence. When he opened them, Brooke was watching him with a pained expression, like someone bursting to make a confession.

?Ben, I have something to say.?

He straightened up. ?What?? he asked, suddenly worried.

?I?ve been thinking ? and maybe this isn?t the right time to say it ? but I?m not sure I should come here any more.?

He was silent as her words sank in.

?What I said to you in London. About the way I felt. The way I feel. I shouldn?t have said that. But I can?t pretend I didn?t say it, any more than I can pretend it?s not true.?

?I don?t want you to stop coming here,? he murmured. He looked in her eyes. Very slowly, he reached out and stroked her soft cheek. Then, even more slowly, with his heart beginning to thud faster, knowing he was crossing a bridge he couldn?t uncross, he leaned forward and kissed her.

This time, Brooke didn?t pull away from his embrace. They moved closer together. The kisses started off gentle and soft. Then, as their breathing quickened, the kisses became deep and passionate. She reclined back on the sofa, clutching at his clothes, pulling him down on top of her.

And then the door burst open with a juddering crash and two men in black tactical gear carrying silenced Skorpion machine pistols stormed into the room.

Chapter Fifty

In the split second before anything else happened, Ben was already reacting. As he whipped round he locked on to the two pairs of eyes in the black tactical masks and he saw the intent in them. He?d seen that look plenty of times, the deliberately unthinking stony look, like the expression of a shark, that passes across a paid killer?s eyes in the instant before he does his job. The clearing of the mind, removing all doubt, all hesitation, any last vestiges of humanity. No prisoners, no discussions. Gloved fingers were on triggers. Actions were cocked, safeties set to FIRE. The fat, stubby silencers were trained right on them.

The silence of the room gave way to a flurry of muted gunfire, like the ripping of corrugated cardboard, as both shooters opened up simultaneously. But by then, Ben had Brooke shielded with his own body and he was kicking out with his legs while hurling his weight against the backrest of the sofa. Bullets thunked into its wooden frame as it toppled over backwards. Their bodies sprawled on the floor as a swarm of splinters and ripped pieces of foam flew around them.

There weren?t many good things about being on the wrong end of a Skorpion Vz61 submachine pistol in the hands of a man who knew how to use it. But even the most effective shooter couldn?t do much about the combined effect of a rapid 850-round-a-minute rate of fire with the limited capacity of its standard ten-round box magazine. One quick dab of the trigger, a flurry of recoil against the shooter?s palm, and the machine would have rattled itself empty. In a shade under three-quarters of a second, it was all over. That made the compact Skorpion an ideal assassination weapon. Walk into a restaurant with one under your jacket, go striding up to the target?s table as he sits there innocently chewing on his steak au poivre, and before anyone knew what was happening the job was carried out and you were walking out of the place with a corpse in your wake. And a quick, clean assassination was exactly what these guys had had in mind for Ben and Brooke.

The problems arose when that opening gambit failed to claim its victim; and they intensified considerably when the intended victim was within arm?s reach of an improvised weapon of their own and had the reflexes and the instincts to press their advantage while the assassins were too busy dropping their empty magazines and slamming in new ones to notice that the odds had shifted against them.

As Ben rolled across the carpet he found himself a foot away from the broken picture frames that Brooke had gathered up. His fingers closed on a big triangular shard of glass and he skimmed it like a Frisbee, across the top of the overturned sofa and straight at the shooter on the left, a fraction of a second before the guy was able to let off another burst of fire.

The glass whirled sideways through the air and caught him on the side of the neck, where the flesh was exposed between the collar of his combat vest and the ski mask. Its jagged edge ripped through the jugular vein like the blade of a meat slicer. The man?s mouth opened into a screaming red hole in the mask and his left hand flew across his body to the gaping slash in his neck that was already spraying a livid jet of blood across the room. His knees crumpled under him and the muzzle of his Skorpion flailed out wide. As the shock almost instantly started shutting down his central nervous system, nerve endings overloaded with signals from the brain, his fingers twitched involuntarily.

And touched off the trigger of his weapon just as it was pointing at the other shooter?s side. The weapon jerked under recoil, twisting upwards as though it had a life of its own. Ten rounds of 9mm raked the second shooter from thigh to chest, punching through every major organ on its way up. The man was dead before he hit the carpet.

The shooter with the slashed neck was the second to fall. He rolled and writhed and screamed as blood jetted under high pressure from his wound.

Even before he was down, Ben was up and over the upset sofa. He leapt across the room and landed in a crouch. Snatched up the fallen Skorpion that was still loaded and cocked. The guy he?d sliced was quickly bleeding to death. The rug was saturated with a spreading red stain, and squirts of blood were still pulsing weakly from the severed artery.

Ben could have made it easy for the guy, used the Skorpion to bring a quick end to the pain and terror of his last few moments of life. But having a loaded weapon in his hand was more important than showing mercy to his would-be killer.

Brooke was clambering out uncertainly from behind the fallen sofa. Ben ran to her. She was unhurt but visibly shaken as she gaped in horror at the bodies on the floor, the guns, the blood. He took her in his arms and held her tight for a second, both of them way beyond words.

Then he thought of Ruth and his guts turned to ice.

* * *

Just a minute before, Ruth had been sitting on the bed in her room, talking to Franz on the phone. She could tell from his voice that he?d been sick with worry.

?I?m sorry I didn?t call you sooner.?

?Where the hell are you, Luna??

?France. Don?t worry, it?s all fine.?

?You were kidnapped by this fucking maniac and now you tell me it?s all fine? Have you any idea??

?Look, things are complicated. It wasn?t what it seemed like.?

?This guy trashed the house and tied me and Rudi up in the shed.?

She sighed, rubbing her hair. ?Yeah, I know, babe. I?m really sorry that happened. You OK??

?No, I?m not OK. I?ve been going crazy. What are you doing in France??

?Listen, I?m coming home and I?ll explain everything to you. Just don?t worry about me, OK? And don?t worry about the guy either. Everything?s cool. See you really soon.?

She?d put the phone down and gone back to fretting about the argument she?d had with her brother. Part of her wanted to go and find him, make up with him; another part was too proud to.

Other thoughts, too. I am not Luna Steiner. I?m Ruth Hope. It felt very strange, thinking that. Alien, yet somehow it made her glow inside.

The heavy thump from somewhere outside her door jolted her alert.

There it went again. Thump, crash. It was coming from inside the block.

She jumped off the bed and ran to the door. She was about to yank it open and step out when she heard the noise again. And then again, making her heart race with fear. Something was wrong here.

She turned the handle, slowly, cautiously, opened the door a crack and peered out.

Two guys in black were working their way systematically along the corridor that ran up the middle of the block, kicking down doors as they went and aiming small black automatic weapons into the empty rooms. In that moment, she understood intuitively that the adrenaline that was starting to speed through her body, making her hands shake and her knees go to jelly, was the instinctive fight-or-flight reaction of a prey animal in the presence of a predator. They were hunting for someone, and she knew that someone was her.

She?d opened the door just a millimetre too wide. One of the men turned and saw her. A yell as he alerted his buddy, and all at once they were dashing up the corridor towards her.

She burst out of the room and ran for her life. Right up ahead, beside the door marked ?TOILETTES?, was the emergency fire exit. She grabbed the handle of the heavy door and ripped it open with a grunt. The two gunmen opened fire as they ran, two brief chattering bursts that strafed the wall and punched jagged, splintered holes through the wood of the exit door just inches from her body. She slammed the door shut and staggered out of the building. Found herself in a little walled yard on the other side with archways leading off it. She glanced around her, looking for a way to the main house. She had to find Ben. Where was he?

The emergency exit door opened and the two men in black came striding purposefully out, their weapons reloaded, glancing grimly around for her, motioning to one another. She darted through one of the archways, hoping they hadn?t noticed her.

Then she skidded to a halt and let out a cry of fear as the man with the double-barrelled shotgun came out of nowhere and she was staring into the twin muzzles not three feet from her face.

Ben had emerged from the house and out into the hot sun just in time to see the second pair of black-clad intruders disappearing through the door into the trainee accommodation block.

He broke into a sprint. He had the Skorpion in his hand and the four spare magazines he?d lifted from the dead men in his pocket, but he still felt vulnerable as he ran across the cobbles, keeping low, skirting the edge of the buildings. No telling how many more intruders there were, and how they?d managed to get past Le Val?s security guys. No time to stop to think about why they were here and what the hell was happening. And no time to get to the underground armoury room, just a few yards away under the innocuous-looking brick hut between the trainee block and the purpose-built gym. He had enough military hardware stored away inside the armoury?s safes to hold off an entire regiment ? but it might as well be a thousand miles away.

Brooke was right behind him, fierce and determined with the second Skorpion cupped in both hands. Ben had spent enough time on the range with her to know she could handle a gun and he trusted her to back him up.

He darted through the open doorway into the accommodation block, Brooke following. Saw the doors kicked open off the corridor, the bullet holes in the far wall and the emergency exit, and ran that way with his blood chilling in his veins as he thought of his sister. But every room in the building was empty. There was no sign of her, nor of the attackers. He ripped the exit door open so hard that he almost tore the handle off. Burst out into the little walled yard that separated the back of the trainees? block from Jeff?s bungalow. The yard was empty too.

He froze as the two loud shotgun blasts boomed out from beyond the wall. At first he thought someone was shooting at him. Then he realised the shots had been for someone else. He raced towards the sound, his mind suddenly flooded with terrifying images. Convinced he was going to round the corner and find Ruth?s body there. Torn up with buckshot. Vital organs shredded. Her blood spilling out across the ground. He almost cried out in horror. It was the kind of blind panic that he knew was liable to get him killed in battle, but at that moment he didn?t even care.

He sprinted out of the walled yard, through one of its archways and round the corner through the back passage that ran around the wall of the bungalow. Up ahead was the little lean-to where Jeff kept his Land Rover. Ben whipped around the corner with the Skorpion thrust out in front of him and his finger tightening on the trigger.

Stopped dead in his tracks. Looked down and saw the bodies of the two men in black lying there a couple of yards apart. One sprawled on his back with a red hole a foot across where his heart and lungs used to be, shattered bits of rib poking through the carnage. The other propped up against the garage wall with his legs splayed out at impossible angles and his upper and lower halves only loosely connected by quivering intestines. A huge red flower of blood was painted up the wall behind him. At close range, there wasn?t much that was more devastating than a shotgun.

?Ah, Jesus,? Brooke said, catching up and seeing the mess.

Ben looked up from the corpses to see Ruth standing there, looking small and frightened with her hands to her face. Shocked, but safe.

Beside her, cradling the shotgun, was Jeff Dekker. He nodded to Ben as he broke open the action to eject the smoking spent shells and quickly inserted the fresh pair that he was holding between the knuckles of his left hand.

?I should come home early from holiday more often,? he said laconically. ?There I was, sunshine and sand and beautiful girls everywhere, and all I could think about was this place. Couldn?t rest for a second. If I?d known you were having a party I?d have come back even sooner.?

?Glad you showed up,? Ben said.

?Not sorry I kept this old twelve-bore in the toolshed, either. Thought it might come in handy for rats. I hate bloody rats.? Jeff used the shotgun barrels to point at the corpses. ?So what?s the story on these guys??

?Two more in the house,? Ben said. ?No idea who they are.?

?I don?t suppose they?ll tell us much now.?

Ben was walking over to Ruth when the bullet came out of nowhere and caught him in the chest. Somewhere through the bursting white flash of pain, he heard Brooke?s distant scream. He staggered back two steps and keeled over in the dirt.

Chapter Fifty-One

Ben felt his body hit the ground, felt the breath burst out of his lungs with the impact. The pain in his chest was crippling. He fought for air, and sounds became a dull booming in his ears. As if from some remote place, he watched the others scatter in slow motion and dive for cover as gunfire blasted across from the Dutch barn next to the house. Bullets raked the ground near him, kicking up sprays of dust.

This is no time to die, he thought as he lay there. But for some reason that his mind couldn?t grasp, he wasn?t dead. He?d been down just a couple of seconds when he realised that his senses were already bouncing back, sharpening, focusing. He willed his body to move, and it did. Ignoring the pain that stabbed through his upper body, he rolled over and wedged himself in the gap between the bungalow and the lean-to.

A moment?s silence as the shooters across the way reloaded, then another ripping rasp of silenced full-auto fire came from the barn and bullets sang off the wall right by his head.

He put his hand to where he?d been hit, felt the wetness seeping into his shirt. But it was cold, not warm, and when he looked at his hand there was no blood and the moisture on his fingers smelled like petrol.

He understood then what had happened. Another life gone, he thought grimly.

He risked a glance around the corner of the lean-to and saw a movement inside the shadows of the barn. Two men, same black tactical gear and ski masks. They were using the parked Mini Cooper as cover, scanning left and right across the yard with their weapons. Burst, reload, burst. It was a good vantage point, giving them an open view of the whole place. Jeff and the women were pinned down in the alley beside the bungalow a few yards away. Anywhere they tried to move, they?d be out in the open.

?Shotgun,? Ben called out to Jeff. An instant later, the weapon slid along the ground to within two feet of his reach. He stretched out a hand, then jerked it back as bullets ripped up the dirt. One of them whacked into the shotgun?s stock, splinters flying.

He said a prayer and then threw himself out into the open. Hit the ground with his chest, and the pain seared through him again. His fingers closed on the shotgun and he snatched it up as he rolled out of the way of another spray of bullets that chewed up the spot where he?d been a millisecond earlier. He fired as he moved. Forty yards or so was a long shot for a double-barrelled shotgun, but he saw the window of the Mini vaporise into a cloud of glass fragments and one of the shooters spin away with a shout. Ben rolled again, let off the second barrel upside down on his back.

The Mini exploded violently with a deafening ?BLAM?, its back end kicking upwards with the force as the steel shot pellets ripped into its fuel tank and sparks ignited the petrol. An orange fireball blasted out of the barn, bits of torn planking tumbled across the yard. The blast caught one of the shooters and just about tore him in half before he was lost in the thick black smoke that belched from the blazing car. The other was on fire as he came staggering out into the open. He dropped his weapon, went down on his knees and collapsed and started thrashing about desperately to put out the flames that were licking up his legs.

Ben scrambled to his feet and sprinted across the yard to the fallen man. Able to see him clearly for the first time, he noticed the secondary weapon the assassin was carrying strapped to his back ? a high-performance crossbow with a mounted quiver full of murderous razor-tipped bolts.

Jeff got there a second later, and stared at Ben with an expression that said ?Why are you alive?? Ben reached into his breast pocket and showed him. The Zippo lighter was dented in the middle, squashed almost flat from the impact of the bullet. Jeff grinned.

Ben started stamping out the flames that were licking around the intruder?s clothing.

?Let the bastard burn,? Jeff said.

?I want to talk to him.? Ben kicked a few more times, rolling the man over to quell the flames. He tore away the crossbow and looped its strap over his own shoulder, then pulled off the guy?s smouldering combat vest and tossed it away. He started searching him roughly, not caring how much he hurt him in the process.

In a pouch on his belt he found a digital Nikon. He activated the camera and quickly found what he was looking for. An image came up on the screen. It was him and Ruth as they?d sat in the ruined church in the woods talking. He touched a button and saw another shot of the two of them walking back to the house. Now he understood what Storm had been growling for back there. The intruders had been casing the place before the attack, hiding in the woods.

He tossed the camera away and rifled again through the guy?s belt pouch. The only other items in it were a phone and two photographs. One shot of himself, lifted from the Le Val website, and one of a slightly younger Ruth with a smile and long hair.

?So you came here to kill the two of us,? he said. The man?s eyes looked up at him through the slots in the ski mask.

Brooke ran past them towards the barn, carrying a fire extinguisher to kill the blaze before it took over the whole building. She waded in through the smoke, dousing the flames with foam. The Mini stopped burning, thick foam dripping from blackened metal. Then, as Ben was about to start questioning the prisoner, she let out a cry of horror and threw down the extinguisher. She?d seen something in the barn. Ruth ran over and saw it too, putting her hands to her mouth.

?The dogs. They?ve shot the dogs.?

Ben ran over and felt sick at the sight. Four German Shepherds were piled in a lifeless heap in the corner of the barn, their bloodied bodies pierced through with crossbow bolts. Lying slumped over the top of the pile was Storm. Drops of blood plopped from the aluminium shaft that was protruding from his shoulder, splashing down into the red pool on the concrete floor.

Ben could hear Ruth sobbing behind him as he put his hand on the dog?s body. Just the tiniest flicker of movement. He checked the animal?s pulse. It was there, but it was weak. Storm?s eyes half-opened and looked right into his, as if he were saying ?Don?t worry about me.? He tried to raise his shaggy head, but the effort was too much. He licked Ben?s hand, then his eyes closed and he fell unconscious.

?Will he make it?? Brooke asked.

?I don?t know.? Ben turned and walked back towards the prisoner. Crouched down beside him and whipped off his mask. ?You speak English?? he asked him quietly.

The man nodded, squinting up with his teeth bared and his eyes glazed over with pain.

?Who sent you?? Ben asked. He spoke quietly, calmly. The rage was turning from hot red to a steady, controlled white.

No response.

?Ever been on a farm before?? Ben asked him.

Another nod, confused this time.

?Then maybe you?ve seen those machines they use to shred up sawn branches? Big whirring blades, chew through anything??

The guy just stared. His eyes bulged. Sweat was pouring down his face.

?I have one of those machines,? Ben said to him. ?Right over there in the toolshed. If you don?t tell me who sent you here I?m going to lower you slowly into it, feet first. You have three seconds to reply. One.?

?Fuck you,? the guy said through clenched, bloodied teeth.

?Two.?

The look of defiance melted a little, but not that much. ?I don?t know!?

?You don?t think I mean it, do you? Three.? Ben stood, grabbed the guy?s ankle and jerked his body round brutally and started dragging him across the ground towards the toolshed. The guy kicked and struggled, yelling ?No! No!?

?Fire her up, Jeff,? Ben said. Jeff trotted ahead to the shed, yanked the tarp off the shredder, stooped down to prime the carburettor and then pulled the starter cord. The engine spluttered into life. As Ben was dragging the guy inside the toolshed, Jeff grabbed a coil of rope from a nail on the wall and flung one end over a beam. Ben took a fistful of the guy?s hair, jerked him into sitting position on the concrete floor and looped the other end of the rope roughly around his chest. The machine whirred away next to them, blades gnashing like teeth, ready to devour anything that was thrown into its rusty maw and spew it out in little chunks from the outlet pipe underneath. Ben tugged the end of the rope and it went taut across the beam. Pulled a little harder, and the guy was lifted a few inches off the floor. Then a few more.

That must have been when he realised they were absolutely serious about feeding him to the shredder. ?OK! OK!? he shouted in panic.

Ben let go of the rope and let him slump back down. He unslung the crossbow. Bracing it between his chest and the floor, he yanked the bowstring all the way back with a click. Felt like a hundred and fifty pounds of pull. That probably gave the bow a velocity of over three hundred feet per second. He fitted one of the razor-tipped bolts and pointed the ungainly rifle-like weapon at the guy?s face.

?Talk,? he said.

There was no hesitation now. The man spoke a single name. ?Steiner.?

Ben felt his mouth go dry.

His finger hovered over the crossbow trigger.

?Let me go now,? the man pleaded. ?I swear I?ll never come back here again. I?ll tell them you?re dead. You and the girl, the way it was meant to be.?

?The girl in the photo. Steiner ordered her dead??

The guy nodded. Ben looked in his eyes and believed him.

?Just let me go. I swear.?

?You shouldn?t have hurt my dogs,? Ben said.

And fired the bow. The weapon recoiled in his arms as it launched the bolt with a thwack.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Rory looked up from the corner of his cell where he was sitting when he heard the tinkle of the key in the lock. When he saw it was Ivan, his fear ebbed away as quickly as it had mounted.

This time Ivan had one of the guards with him, one of the most surly and taciturn ones, but said something to him that made him stay out in the corridor while he came into the cell and half-closed the door behind him.

?I brought you something to read,? Ivan whispered with a nervous glance behind him to make sure the guard couldn?t see. He reached into his jacket and brought out a tattered comic book.

Rory took it, grateful to have something to while away the hours with. He?d been here so long now, and the way day merged into night, he was losing all track of time and going slowly crazy. Ivan stood over him, smiling benevolently.

?Something else for you,? he murmured, handing the boy another chocolate bar.

Rory quickly hid the chocolate and the comic under his mattress, the way Ivan had told him to. Then he turned to the man, looking up at him with big, inquisitive eyes.

?Do you know where my dad is?? he asked him.

?I have not been able to find out much,? Ivan whispered. ?That man Pelham??

?Shh.?

Rory spoke more quietly. ?That man Pelham said he was coming.?

Ivan lowered his voice a notch further. ?Pelham cannot be trusted,? he said. ?Don?t believe him.?

?I don?t understand,? Rory whimpered. There were times when he felt near the edge of hysteria, and that mood had welled up inside him more and more readily since the torture. It was as though some vital part of his inner core had been ripped out, leaving him as fragile as a sickly kitten.

?If Dad?s not coming,? he sobbed, ?why am I here? What do they want with us anyway? When am I going home?? Tears streamed down his face.

Ivan laid a hand on his shoulder and looked earnestly into his eyes. ?Do not be so scared. I promised I would take care of you. And I will.?

Rory sniffed and smeared the tears away with his grimy sleeve. ?Are you in contact with the other special agents??

Ivan looked back at the door, then nodded, smiled and put a finger to his lips. ?When it is time,? he whispered, barely audible, ?I will give the signal and they will come for us.?

?Can?t it be now??

?I still have work to do,? Ivan said. ?It?s not over. But soon.? He cleared his throat, gesturing at the door. In his normal voice he said, ?You are to come with me. Time for your shower.?

Rory jumped up. The trips to the shower block were the only times he got out of the cell. In a world so limited and confined as his new environment, even something as simple as walking a few hundred yards through the dingy corridors to stand on cracked ancient tiles and get doused with lukewarm water from a rusty tank was something to look forward to.

Out in the corridor, the guard followed them. Ivan?s hand was on Rory?s shoulder all the way to the shower block, and the boy felt a little more protected with him there. As long as that terrible woman didn?t come back to get him, he knew he could make it through this. He imagined how it would be when Ivan?s special agent colleagues came storming through the place, taking out the guards one by one. How they?d drag the woman out from hiding, and put a gun to her head and blow her away. How Rory would watch, and smile to see it happen. After what she?d done to him, that would serve the witch right.

Running the scene through his mind as they walked, he looked round and up at Ivan with a conspiratorial smile. Ivan winked and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

They reached the shower block. Ivan opened the creaky door that led through to the washroom. A row of rusty metal shower heads fixed to the ceiling corresponded with a row of floor drains. It was a pretty Spartan arrangement. Ivan muttered something to the guard, who went off on some errand. Then he got the water running for Rory, turned it up as lukewarm as it would go, and left to give him some privacy.

Rory stripped off his clothes, bundled them on the side and stepped under the water. There was a rough piece of old soap lying on the floor, and he used it to lather himself up.

Ivan stood for a few moments around the corner, listening to the patter of the water on the tiles. Then he peeked furtively out into the corridor. He?d sent Mikl?s looking for Boris, and he knew that Boris was off duty and had gone off with some of the others to the nearest town, twenty kilometres away, to get his fill of beer and whores. Which meant the stupid Mikl?s would spend ages scouring the place, and he had time on his own.

Ivan slipped into a small room off the shower block that was used as an office. Inside the room was a desk, heaped with papers.

But he ignored it. Walked quietly over to the wall. Hanging from a hook was an age-faded framed print of Adolf Hitler, posing in uniform with the Nazi flag behind him and, below, the slogan ?EIN VOLK, EIN REICH, EIN F?HRER? in gothic script.

He raised a trembling hand to the picture. Lifted the edge of the frame away from the wall.

A smile crept over his face and his heart began to beat faster.

He moved his eye to the peephole through to the shower block.

He watched as the naked boy soaped his smooth, young body. First the upper half. Then the lower half.

Ivan groaned softly to himself and started unzipping his trousers.

Meanwhile, down in the bowels of the mountain, inside the chamber behind the vault door, Adam felt the rising panic of desperation as he faced the task he?d been set.

?I don?t think?? His words died in his mouth. He laid his hand on the cold metal shell of Kammler?s machine.

Pelham was leaning against the wall a few feet away, watching him. They?d been there for hours.

?What don?t you think?? he said calmly.

?I?m not so sure I can get this thing to work,? Adam groaned. ?I just don?t get it. It?s just? it?s mind-boggling.?

Pelham pointed at the makeshift worktop that had been set up against the wall, and the laptop onto which they?d loaded the research files retrieved from Teach na Loch.

?You told me that once you had your notes, you?d be able to make it work. It?s cost me a lot of trouble getting them for you.?

?I know what I said,? Adam said, fighting to keep his voice steady. ?But this goes way beyond anything I ever imagined. My notes are useless.?

?You?re playing for high stakes, Adam. It would be wise not to forget that.?

?You think I?ve forgotten? I?m doing my best, goddamnit.? Adam glared at him, then looked back at the machine. It sat there silent, mysterious, unyielding, on its concrete plinth in the middle of the vault. The cold, smooth black metal shell gleamed dully in the lights. It seemed to him that the thing was taunting him, deliberately holding back the dark, terrible, wonderful secrets that were contained inside. Secrets that, he was beginning to fear, its inventor might have taken to his grave. The thought made him want to retch. He lashed out his foot at the bell-like casing.

Pelham peeled himself away from the wall and walked up to him with his hands in his trouser pockets. Adam could see the shoulder holster under his suede jacket, and the butt of the pistol he carried inside.

?Then your best will just have to be better,? he said.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Ben and Jeff leaped in the Land Rover and went skidding down the drive. They found Raymond and Claude unconscious, trussed up in the security hut near the main entrance to Le Val with tranquilliser darts in them. There was no sign of Jean-Yves, until they found the man bundled in the bushes two hundred yards away along the perimeter. All three men were unharmed apart from the effects of the powerful dope that the intruders had used to overpower them. Ben and Jeff loaded them into the Land Rover and carried them back to the house.

It took a few hours to clean up Le Val. Before anything else could be done, the bodies of the six intruders had to be disposed of. That was the easy part. In a sleepy rural area with a population of less than one person per acre of land, where the police very seldom needed to involve themselves in the locals? affairs, barring the occasional theft of a goat or a chicken, dead men could be made to disappear quickly, privately and permanently.

When that was done, it was time to start on the place itself. Jeff helped Ben to roll up the blood-soaked carpet and rug from the house, carry it downstairs and burn it. The bullet damage in the house and trainee block was going to have to wait.

The dogs were grimmer work. All but Storm were dead, and Ben buried them in the field behind the house while they waited anxiously for Drudi. The retired vet from Palermo was the kind of man who would ask no questions and keep his mouth shut. After he?d carefully removed the crossbow bolt from Storm, he gave his prognosis. No major organs had been affected. Storm had a long recovery ahead of him, but he was going to make it. Ben and Brooke carried the bandaged, heavily tranquillised German Shepherd into the kitchen and made him a bed out of blankets.

As they sat with him a while, Brooke unbuttoned Ben?s shirt to take a look at his chest. There was an ugly purple rectangle on his pectoral muscle where the shape of the Zippo had been imprinted into the flesh by the bullet?s impact. The bruise was going to be spectacular.

She held him tight, tearful and fragile now that the shock of that day?s events was beginning to set in.

?I thought you were dead,? she whispered against his shoulder. He rocked her gently in his arms, kissed her hair. He didn?t want to have to leave her, not now, not ever. But he knew he?d have to. He had unfinished business to take care of, and that meant a trip to Switzerland.

Ben and Ruth touched down at Bern airport first thing the next morning, and after a fast drive up through the mountains in a rental BMW they arrived at the gates of the Steiner residence. The uniformed security personnel on the gate recognised Ben, and there were some amazed glances at Ruth as they were quickly waved through into the estate.

?So, what?s the plan?? she asked as they drove on down the private road and the ch?teau came into view through the trees.

?Straight in the front door,? he replied. ?Do what we have to do, then get out of here.?

?What are you going to do to him??

?What he deserves.?

As Ben was pulling the BMW up in front of the main entrance, the familiar shape of Heinrich Dorenkamp came scuttling down the steps to meet them. The man had obviously just got the call from the security gate and he looked rattled.

Ben and Ruth climbed out of the car. Dorenkamp stopped in his tracks and stared at her. ?So it was true what they told me,? he said. ?It is you.?

?Long time no see, asshole.? Ruth shouldered past him, following Ben up the steps towards the house.

Dorenkamp ran after them. ?What are you doing here?? he asked nervously.

?Making a social call,? Ben said. ?Where is he??

?You can?t see him.?

?Don?t get in the way, Heinrich, or I?m going to walk right over you. Where is he??

?There is a meeting underway. He doesn?t know you?re here.?

?Good,? Ben said. ?That?s the way I like it.? They?d reached the top of the steps. He shoved through the door and into the reception lobby, shoulder to shoulder with Ruth as they marched across the shiny floor and past the glittering warhorse. Dorenkamp stood helplessly in their wake.

?This place hasn?t changed one bit,? Ruth said. ?Then again, some things never do. Where are we going??

?Conference room. This way.? Ben pointed towards the main stairs.

A minute later they were on the second floor. Ben recognised the grand double doorway of the conference room. He went in without knocking.

Steiner was sitting at the top of the long table. Seated down its length to his left and right were a dozen men in grey suits and at varying stages of middle age, obesity and baldness, hunched over open files and whirring laptops that showed colourful flow charts and graphs and columns of figures. The man at Steiner?s right elbow had been in the middle of saying something when Ben and Ruth walked into the room. He shut up. Thirteen pairs of eyes stared up in alarm. Steiner?s face turned chalk-white, and his jaw dropped open.

?Meeting?s over,? Ben said. He jerked his thumb back at the door. ?Everybody out.?

Silence up and down the table. Steiner?s associates all turned to him. His pallor had turned to beetroot-red. He swallowed, hesitated, then gave a stiff nod. The twelve men instantly got up from their seats, hurriedly gathering up their papers and closing down their laptops, stuffing them into briefcases. They filed out timidly past Ben and Ruth, looking down at their feet, none of them daring to say a word.

As the last of Steiner?s colleagues shuffled out, Dorenkamp appeared in the doorway. ?Sir, shall I call security?? he asked his boss.

?There?ll be no need to do that,? Ben told him. ?But you can get Frau Steiner and Otto up here right now. Double quick.? He snapped his fingers.

?W-why?? Dorenkamp stammered.

?Because we?re having a family reunion,? Ben said. ?And I want everyone to hear what the Great Man has to say for himself.?

Dorenkamp left, and they heard his jittery steps echo away down the hall as he went to attend to his duty.

Steiner was still staring wide-eyed at Ruth. The look of noble pride had completely melted away.

?You have a lot of explaining to do, Steiner,? Ben said.

?I know,? Steiner murmured with a weary nod.

?And then you?re going to pay for what you?ve done.?

Steiner said nothing. Ruth was looking at him like he was something she?d scraped off her shoe.

After a few moments? silence, there were footsteps outside the door, and then it swung open and Silvia Steiner walked into the room. She looked just as well-groomed and elegant as Ben remembered, in a grey linen trouser suit and a gold necklace. She was followed by Otto, dressed as though Dorenkamp had fetched him straight from the golf course. Ben wouldn?t have been surprised if he?d still been clutching his driver.

The PA was about to creep away when Ben called him back inside. ?I want you here too, Heinrich.? Dorenkamp hesitated, then walked in and shut the door behind him.

Otto slouched nervously to the back of the room and leaned against the wall next to the French windows. He smiled uncomfortably at Ruth and gave a little wave. ?Hi there, cousin.?

But Silvia was the one Ben was watching. She let out a gasp as she saw Ruth there. ?Luna!? They embraced tightly. Tears were in Ruth?s eyes as she hugged her mother, and Ben could see the love that was there.

Silvia turned to her husband with a look of complete confusion. Steiner said nothing, just hung his head. Then Silvia turned to Ben with a frown of recognition. ?What is going on here?? she breathed.

?Let me introduce someone to you,? Ruth said to her. ?This is my brother Benedict. The one he?? she pointed at Steiner ??told me died in a plane crash. Does he look dead to you??

Silvia gaped at Ben a moment longer, then turned aghast to her husband. ?Is this right?? she said softly. ?Max, is this true? This man is her brother??

?Yes, it?s true,? Ruth said hotly. ?He lied to you, to me, to everyone.?

?Max, please say something,? Silvia muttered. She seemed unsteady on her feet for an instant, and had to lean against the table for support.

Maximilian Steiner said nothing for a long while. Then he heaved a sigh and pressed his hands flat on the table. ?What she says is true. I lied. I knew there was a brother still living. I paid to have the story of the plane crash fabricated.? He looked at Ruth. ?And years later, when you hired your own investigator, I protected my lie by buying him off too. I?m sure you have already worked that out for yourself.?

?But why, Max? Why?? Silvia burst out. ?Good God, does this mean her real parents are still alive too? That we took their child??

?They?re dead,? Ben said. ?You didn?t take anyone?s child.?

?But they didn?t die the way I was brought up to believe,? Ruth said. ?All my life. Just lie after lie.?

Steiner held up his hands. ?Can I speak? Can I explain?? He paused, searching for the right words. ?Very well. I admit that I have been untruthful. But I did it only to protect you, Luna.?

?Forget Luna,? she said. ?My name?s Ruth. Protect me? From what??

?To protect you from the terrible knowledge that your real mother took her own life over the shock of your loss. And that your father?s death was a direct result of it also. How could I burden a child with such guilt??

Silvia was staring at him in utter horror, her fingertips white on the backrest of the conference chair she was leaning on.

?I lied to you too,? Steiner told his wife gravely. ?I thought I was doing it for the best. Perhaps I was wrong. I can see that now.?

?You deprived our child of her own brother,? Silvia said slowly. ?You say you wanted to spare her pain. But you brought her up believing this person she loved was dead. How could you have done such a terrible thing??

?I knew who he was,? Steiner said, motioning at Ben. ?My sources told me that he had gone wild. Joined the army. A reckless and wayward young man, not yet twenty. I thought for a very long time about contacting him. But how could someone like that have taken on the responsibility of a child? He could have been killed in action, and then she would have suffered the pain of his dying anyway, but worse.?

?How very fucking noble of you,? Ruth said.

Tears had formed in Steiner?s eyes. ?And we loved her,? he said to Silvia. ?I saw how happy you were, from the moment we found this beautiful little girl living in the desert and brought her into our lives. After what we had gone through, I couldn?t bear that my dear wife could lose another child.?

Silvia Steiner slumped against the table with her head in her hands, weeping openly. Ruth ran over to her and held her. ?What?s he talking about?? she asked. ?What child??

Dorenkamp spoke for the first time. ?He is referring to little Gudrun,? he said solemnly. ?You never met her. She died, aged seven.?

?She fell off the pony I had bought her for her seventh birthday.? Steiner was staring down at the tabletop as he spoke, talking barely above a whisper and fighting to keep his voice steady. ?Her neck was broken. She was paralysed. The doctors believed they could save her. But shortly afterwards she slipped into a coma. Nine days later, she was dead.?

Ruth looked as though she?d been slapped. ?You knew about this all along?? she asked Dorenkamp. Dorenkamp nodded.

?And you, Otto??

Otto was still standing by the window, looking down at his feet. ?I?m sorry,? he mumbled. ?They told me never to tell you about it.?

Steiner looked at Ruth with red-rimmed eyes. ?Why do you suppose we never allowed you to have a pony, no matter how bitterly you wanted one? I was only trying to protect you. That is all I have ever done.?

?It?s why you insisted on the Flash-Ball weapons,? Ben said. ?You knew that one of the gang trying to kidnap you was your adopted daughter.?

Steiner nodded sadly. ?I was terrified that she would be harmed if I sanctioned the use of lethal firearms. It?s also why I tried my best to keep the police out of it. I hoped we could resolve the situation and come back together again as a family.?

Silvia looked up, wiping her tears away. She pointed at Ben. ?Max, when you hired this young man. You knew who he was??

Steiner shook his head vehemently. ?I promise you, I was completely unaware of it. When the team leader, Captain Shannon, was injured, the name he gave me for his replacement was Benjamin Hope. I noticed the similarity with the name Benedict, but I put this down to mere coincidence. It was not such an uncommon name, after all. But then, one night after I had sacked the team, you, Silvia, made a remark to me that made me think again.?

?I remember,? Silvia sniffed. ?I had been trying to place his face. He looked so strangely familiar to me. We were getting ready for bed, when it suddenly occurred to me that the person he reminded me of was our own Luna.?

?So you did more poking around,? Ben said to Steiner. ?All you had to do was check out my website.?

?That is what I did, and I soon realised that Captain Shannon had misinformed me about your name. I thought back to what I had seen that day in the woods ? the way you let the kidnapper escape so easily, as though you had suddenly been stunned by something you had seen. It seemed strange to me, and stranger still that this could have been the result of mere incompetence as I had initially assumed. Why would a man of such skill and training have done such a thing? Only when I discovered your real name did I realise the truth.?

?And you never thought to share this with me?? Silvia asked him.

?He wanted to tell you,? Dorenkamp replied. ?It was me who warned him against it.?

?We decided to wait and see what happened,? Steiner explained. ?I had a feeling that Luna?s brother would go searching for her. That is his expertise. If anyone could find her, it would be him. I thought it would help to bring our family back together.?

Ruth?s eyes were narrowed with fury. ?Don?t listen to his bullshit, Mother. He wanted Ben to find me so that he could have us both killed. The easiest way to cover up all his lies and take me out of the picture at the same time. Nice and neat.?

Steiner?s eyes opened wide as he listened to her words, and the colour drained from his face. ?No,? he quavered. ?You don?t understand. I love you. I wanted you back. I ? I swear I would never harm you. On my mother?s grave ??

Silvia slapped him across the face. ?What did you do, Max??

?Nothing!? Steiner protested. ?I don?t know what she?s talking about. I never??

?Six professional assassins were sent to my home in France,? Ben said, looking hard at him. ?Their mission was to kill the two of us. They?re not coming back. Before the last one died, he told me Steiner had sent him. And I know he was telling the truth. Men tend to do that, when they?re about to have their legs chewed off.?

Steiner said nothing.

?Lie your way out of that one, Maximilian,? Ruth spat at him. ?You fucker.?

?It?s the truth,? said a voice behind them. They all turned.

Otto had stepped away from the window. ?It?s true,? he repeated. ?Steiner did send them.? He pointed down the length of the conference table at his uncle. ?But I?m not talking about that sack of shit over there. It wasn?t that Steiner. It was the Steiner that everyone forgets about. This one right here. Me.?

Then Otto dipped his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a .380 Beretta. Pointed it right at them and the strange little smile on his face spread out into a grin.

Chapter Fifty-Four

?Have you gone totally insane?? Ruth yelled.

Otto?s grin broadened even more. ?Actually, I?ve got you to thank for this, cousin. Remember that time you came to me, wanting me to help you steal the old man?s papers out of his safe? Well, that got me thinking. What was there about a bunch of antique documents that could be so valuable? Why was the old fucker keeping them a secret? So I had a little sneak peek and made a few photocopies. Very interesting. And I wasn?t the only one who thought so, either.?

?You stupid bastard, Otto,? Ruth shouted. ?You have no idea what you?re messing with.?

Otto?s eyes bulged in sudden anger, the grin evaporating. ?Don?t call me stupid,? he screamed. ?Everyone thinks I?m stupid. Otto the loser. Poor Otto, have to humour him.? He jabbed his chest with his left thumb, still holding the pistol steady in his right fist. ?But I?m the fucking smart one here. I know important people. People who respect me for just how fucking smart I am. So you call me stupid one more time and I?ll kill you all right now.?

His rant had left him breathless. He wiped the spittle from his mouth with the back of his free hand, then went on.

?Yeah, that?s right. I talked to people. Put the word out. And it wasn?t long before I got a call. See, golf isn?t just about hitting balls. It?s about networking. Getting shit done. When you lot think ?Oh, there?s Otto out there playing his silly little game again,? guess what? I?m organising. Planning.?

?Planning kidnap and murder,? Ben said quietly. The connections were flying together in his mind now. ?Using the Steiner resources and transport links to move people around the world.?

?I?m a businessman,? Otto smirked. ?So we did business. They wanted the documents, they got them faxed through pronto. They paid me a lot of money. Trusted me to run the show. So that?s what I?ve been doing. Snatch a few fucking science geeks. So what? Who?s going to miss them anyway??

Ruth groaned. ?Jesus, Otto. Who are these people??

?I don?t think he even knows the answer to that,? Ben said. ?You think they?d trust him with that knowledge? They?re just using him, setting him up to take the rap if anything goes wrong. As soon as they?re done with him, they?ll swat him like a bluebottle. But he can?t see that. Can you, Otto??

Otto shrugged. ?There you go again. Underestimating me. But that?s OK, because you?ll all be dead pretty soon anyway.?

?So where does a guy like you hire a mercenary team? What did you do, reply to an ad in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine? Some rag-tag crew floating about Eastern Europe looking for easy work? You should have picked better.?

?Oh, you really think you know it all, don?t you??

?I know a lot,? Ben said. ?I know that these associates of yours are holding a young boy hostage to coerce his father into working for them. I know that whoever is payrolling this is after the weapons technology in those Kammler documents. I?m pretty sure you found the location of the Bell. And I also know that you can still make this all OK. Just put the gun down and tell me where your people are keeping Adam and Rory O?Connor.?

Otto sneered at him. ?Somewhere you?ll never find them.?

?Do what he says, Otto,? Dorenkamp implored. ?It?s the only way.?

?Yes, Otto,? Silvia said. ?Put the gun down.? She moved towards him tentatively.

Otto swung the pistol in her direction. His fingers were twitchy on its hard black rubber grip. ?Back, bitch.?

She stared at him, and at the weapon he was pointing at her. ?Am I dreaming this? You would pay to have your own cousin murdered??

?Luna?s not the only one in this family who listens in to other people?s conversations,? Otto said. He wagged a finger at Dorenkamp, then at Steiner. ?I know you?ve been plotting to cut me out so I don?t take over the business when you retire.? The finger pointed across at Ruth. ?And that you wanted to reconcile your differences with this little twit here, and make her your heir over me. Me! She?s not even your flesh and blood. What, am I the one who fucking ran off, spat in your face, tried to kidnap you for Christ?s sake? No. I was loyal to you. All these years, I?ve been taking your shit. Then what do I hear? I could hardly believe my fucking ears. That the long lost brother is back and he?s going looking for his little sister. How sweet.? He grinned. ?And how convenient for me. All I had to do was wait and watch, and send in the Ninjas at the right moment. Problem solved.?

Ben took a step closer to him. Watching the muzzle of the .380. Assessing the distance and Otto?s reaction time. If he could get a few steps closer, he might be able to get the pistol off him. ?Didn?t quite work out that way, did it?? he said. ?Not for you, and not for your Ninjas either.? Another step.

But Otto wasn?t that stupid. ?Back off, Major Hope.? Ben stopped.

Otto looked pleased. ?Not so dangerous now, are you? Fine, so you managed to get out of it first time round. But a smart guy like me always has a Plan B. Why do you think I agreed to come up here today? Because I?m some little heel-hound at your beck and call that you can just order about? Think again. I came here to kill you all. And then I?m going to shoot myself.?

?Otto!? Silvia screamed.

?Don?t worry, Aunt Silvia. I?ll be fine. I?m just going to put one in my arm. Nothing too bad.?

?You wouldn?t want to spoil your golf swing,? Ben said. He took another half-step forward.

?Everyone will think mad Major Hope came back for revenge,? Otto went on. ?He couldn?t bear that he?d been sacked like that. You know what these Special Forces people are like. Maniacs. Psychopaths who live to kill. I heard the shots. Came running to see what was going on, and he shot me in the arm but I managed to get away to call the cops. Then he blew his own brains out before they could catch him.?

?Leaving you the only heir to the Steiner billions,? Ben said. ?You really are a clever guy, the way you?ve thought this out.?

?You?d better believe it,? Otto said.

?Really. I?m impressed.? Keep him talking. Two more steps, and he could chance it. He didn?t care any more about taking a hit.

But the chance never came. Ruth had been standing there, to Ben?s right and just behind, listening in dumb horror. She suddenly stepped forward and walked quickly towards Otto, holding out her hand. ?That?s enough. Just stop, right now. Hear me? Give me the g??

The deafening report of the .380 filled the room. Ruth spun round from the impact of the bullet and fell to the floor.

Silvia let out a screech of horror. Dorenkamp stood frozen for a fraction of a second and then dived under the table for cover.

Otto backed away towards the window, his eyes bulging at what he?d done, clutching the gun with both hands.

Ben gaped down at his sister?s prone body. Saw the quick spread of the blood through the material of her blouse.

But before he could react, he heard a roar of fury. Maximilian Steiner had said nothing for a long time and hadn?t moved a muscle. Now he was on his feet. Kicking out his chair from behind him and charging around the side of the conference table at Otto.

Otto fired from the hip. Steiner staggered and kept on coming, and Otto fired again. Blood flew, but the billionaire?s momentum couldn?t be stopped by a small-calibre bullet. He slammed bodily into his nephew. The little black pistol spun out of Otto?s grip and bounced across the floor as the two men crashed through the window with a splintering of glass and wood. Steiner drove Otto out onto the balcony. His fists were locked around his neck and he was shaking him violently, shoving him up against the white stone balustrade.

Ben fell to his knees beside Ruth. She wasn?t moving. His hand was shaking uncontrollably as he felt for a pulse. Don?t-die-don?t-die-don?t-die. When he felt it his heart did a backflip. Silvia threw herself down on the other side of her daughter?s body and he had to push her out of the way as he feverishly checked to see where the bullet had hit. Ripped open the neck of her blouse and saw that the blood was welling up from a clean round hole in her shoulder. His fingers were slick with it as he felt for the damage. No bone fragments in the exit wound. The jacketed round had passed right through.

Silvia was wailing. Ben shook her with his bloody hands. ?Call an ambulance. Now.? Then Ben was on his feet.

Just in time to see Steiner throw Otto right over the stone balustrade.

Ben reached the edge at the same moment that Otto?s cartwheeling body hit the glass dome of the conservatory that was directly below the conference room window. He crashed right through it. Right down into the ornamental fountain below.

He never hit the water. His fall was abruptly halted by the bronze tines of Neptune?s trident. Impaled like a trout on a harpoon. The spikes pierced through his belly and ribs and jutted out through his back. Otto screamed and thrashed for a few seconds, and then his body fell limp. The water of the fountain was turning rapidly pink as Ben looked away.

Maximilian Steiner lay collapsed on the balcony beside him and the blood began to spread across the stone floor.

Ben ran back inside for Ruth.

Chapter Fifty-Five

When the three ambulances shrieked out of the Steiner residence gates, Ben was riding with his sister, and he clutched her hand in his all the way to Bern. She drifted in and out of consciousness as the sedatives the paramedics had pumped into her took effect. Not long before they reached the hospital, her eyes fluttered open and she looked drowsily up at him from the stretcher.

?This was all my fault,? she murmured. ?It was me who told him about it. None of these things would have happened if??

?Don?t talk,? Ben said.

The ambulances screeched into the emergency room bays. Paramedics threw open the doors and Ruth was rushed out and wheeled hurriedly down white-lit corridors towards the operating theatre with her drip bag swaying on its stand. Ben walked with the gurney as far as the hospital staff would let him. Steiner was up ahead, the blood soaking fast through the sheets that covered his body, tubes in his mouth and nose. Two doctors burst out of a double doorway at the end of the corridor, one male, one female, already prepped for theatre.

?We?ll take it from here,? the female doctor said, raising a hand to halt him. Ben stood back and watched as Steiner and Ruth were wheeled through the doors and out of sight.

Then all he could do was pace anxiously up and down in the waiting room as people came and went around him. Every second of waiting seemed like a week. After forty minutes, Silvia Steiner arrived. Her eyes were puffy and red as she joined Ben in the waiting area and perched herself on the edge of one of the chairs.

?Heinrich and I have just finished talking to the police,? she said. Her voice was husky from crying and weak with emotion, but as she went on there was a note of fierceness that Ben hadn?t heard before. ?I told them that our nephew was insane with jealousy because he thought he was being denied his proper inheritance. He took a gun and tried to kill his cousin, and he would have killed us all if Max hadn?t acted to defend us. Then there was a terrible accident and Otto fell off the balcony.? She reached for a handkerchief, dabbed her eyes and composed herself. ?That?s what I told them. And I made sure that Heinrich said the same. That will be our story. The whole story,? she added.

Ben looked at her and admired her strength. Not just hers. ?Your husband?s a hero,? he said. It sounded strange to hear the words coming from his own mouth. He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.

?Your name has been left out of it,? she told him. ?This is a family matter. Although I suppose you are family now, in a way.?

He thanked her. Just at that moment, the female doctor who?d talked to Ben earlier came striding up the corridor. The first piece of news was good. Ruth was fine. There had been no complications, no major damage. Her arm would be in a sling for a few weeks but would heal perfectly.

?My husband??

?I?m sorry to say that Herr Steiner suffered a minor stroke on the operating table,? the doctor replied gravely. ?We?re doing everything we can. He?s in intensive care right now.?

?When can I see him??

?Not yet. But soon. Please try not to worry.? The doctor smiled and tried to look reassuring, then turned and hurried away.

Silvia Steiner fell back into her chair. Ben crouched beside her. ?He?ll be OK,? he said. ?I?m sure of it.?

?Pray for him.?

?I will. And you look after yourself, Silvia.? She looked at him tearfully. ?You?re going?? He nodded.

She gripped his arm. ?You go. Finish this.?

?I need to get into Maximilian?s safe. Do you have the combination??

She shook her head. ?But Heinrich does. You tell him that I said to provide you with anything you need. Anything. He won?t give you any trouble.?

Before she?d even finished saying it, Ben was heading for the exit.

?You take care,? she called after him, but he wasn?t listening.

The Steiner residence was a hive of police and forensic teams. The media were already at the gates, and pretty soon they?d be swarming all over Heinrich Dorenkamp for a statement about the tragedy that had seen Otto Steiner, heir to one of Europe?s biggest fortunes, fall to a horrible death. The newspapers and TV would be full of it that night and probably for the next week, until a fresh disaster came along to turn everyone?s heads the other way.

Silvia had been right. Dorenkamp didn?t even try to resist Ben?s request to see inside the safe. Five minutes after walking into the foyer, Ben was sitting alone at the billionaire?s Louis XIV desk, reading a sixty-page bound sheaf of waxy, yellowed papers that few eyes had seen since 1945. Each faded page was headed with a Nazi imperial eagle perched on a wreathed swastika, and the official seal of the SS.

Ruth wouldn?t have been disappointed. The documents had it all. Detailed diagrams and cutaway drawings of the mysterious Bell, showing all its bizarre internal workings. Column after column of technical data whose meaning Ben couldn?t even begin to decipher. Grainy photographs of what looked like some kind of enormous underground factory, a maze of tunnels and galleries, shafts and chambers, together with comprehensive plans of its layout. Everything he could have asked for was right here.

As well as some things that he didn?t need to know, but found himself reading with a chill in his spine. Buried near the back, yellowed and faded with age, was a written military order dated 1944, and Ben?s German was good enough to work out what it was. It was an order sanctioning the building of the secret facility under the supervision of the Kammlerstab, the general?s own personal staff. This hadn?t just been some disused munitions factory that Kammler had commandeered for his own use. The whole mammoth construction development had been undertaken for the single purpose of housing his special weapons project and keeping it a deadly secret from the outside world.

Two names were signed at the foot of the page. The upper scrawl belonged to Reichsf?hrer Heinrich Himmler, Head of the SS.

Underneath it was an ugly, spiky flourish of a signature. The ultimate sanction. The mark of Adolf Hitler himself.

The next few pages were a detailed report on the construction of the secret facility, showing plans of the temporary railway that had carried trainload after trainload of forced labourers from the concentration camps to work on the project. Among the figures in the right margin were statistics of the number who had died, from exhaustion or disease, or from electrocution or drowning or tunnel cave-in, during the build. Tens of thousands of them, their unspeakable suffering reduced to an anonymous typed entry in a report, and all just so that Hans Kammler could keep his machine hidden from Allied Intelligence. The place had been a death camp in its own right.

Ben had read enough. He put the papers down on the desk. Reached for Steiner?s phone and called Jeff at Le Val.

?What?s happening?? Jeff asked.

?Plenty. I?ll explain when I see you. Is Brooke still there??

?She?s back in London,? Jeff said. ?Left this morning.?

?Is she OK??

?She?s worried about you. Listen, someone called Sabrina phoned, asking about Adam and Rory.?

?That?s what I?m phoning you for, Jeff. I need your help.?

?Thought you?d never ask,? Jeff said.

?I?m asking. Get over to the airport PDQ. I?m sending a private jet to collect you. You can?t miss it. It?s got the name Steiner written on the side in great big letters. I?ll be waiting for you in Bern, and I?ll brief you in the air.?

If Jeff was surprised, he didn?t react. Or maybe nothing Ben did surprised him any more. ?Do I need to bring anything??

?Just yourself,? Ben said. ?And as much tactical raid gear from the armoury room as you can stuff into two big holdalls.?

?Sounds like fun. Where are we going??

Ben picked up the sheaf of documents, flipped a couple of pages and looked again at the faded map that had been drawn by SS General Hans Kammler sixty-five years earlier.

?We?re going to Hungary,? he said. ?To a hidden Nazi base inside a mountain.?

Chapter Fifty-Six

The luxury interior of a private jet seemed like a strange place to unzip two big eighty-litre NATO-issue grey canvas holdalls containing a small armoury of light weapons and munitions, survival gear, woodland-camouflage combat clothing, gloves and boots. The equipment spilled out over the plush carpet and Ben ran through it all. Jeff had chosen well. He nodded. ?Perfect.?

By the time the jet had reached its ceiling altitude and was speeding eastwards towards Budapest, Ben was filling Jeff in on everything. Their destination was the largest mountain range in Europe: the Carpathians. K?rp?tok in Hungarian, a rugged rocky arc that stretched for hundreds of miles beyond its borders through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, the Ukraine, Romania and Serbia. It was in the western Carpathians, buried in a desolate spot in the north-eastern corner of Hungary near the border with Slovakia, that General Kammler had built his secret facility sixty-five years ago. There it had remained, untouched, unexplored, virtually unknown. Now it was time to bust it wide open.

There was no telling what they were going to meet there. Otto Steiner might have hired a team of ten, or there could be a hundred armed mercenaries there holding the O?Connors. That was something to worry about when they got there.

It wasn?t long after Ben had finished briefing Jeff that the fast jet touched down on a specially-reserved runway at Budapest Ferihegy International Airport. Steiner?s influence had a lengthy reach, and Heinrich Dorenkamp wasn?t slack in obeying the orders he?d been given. Ben and Jeff carried the two holdalls to a private room where a sober official handed over the keys to a Porsche Cayenne Turbo 4?4.

The high-speed non-stop bullet train from Budapest to the remote city of Miskolc took one hour and forty-five minutes. Ben meant to beat that time, and the big 4.8-litre car was the tool for the job. They carved eastwards across the country with their cargo on the seats behind them. Dusk was settling and the full moon was on the rise over the plains and forests as they bypassed Miskolc and began the winding journey upwards through the foothills of the towering mountains, stopping every so often to check the copy of Kammler?s map. Upwards and upwards through dense woodland, the road carried them far away from any town or village until it had narrowed to a track. The Porsche was as good off-road as it was on tarmac, and they were jolted from side to side as Ben hammered it over the rutted ground, the powerful headlights picking out every rock and pothole.

Jeff pointed through the windscreen. ?There. The old railway.? Through the overgrown grass and brambles it was still possible to see where the earth had been banked to make way for the tracks ferrying the trainloads of death camp prisoners to their new home ? for many of them, the journey to their grave. The rails themselves were long gone, hastily removed by the SS Building and Works Division in the closing months of the war before their presence could draw the eye of Allied aerial reconnaissance scouts. It had been many, many years since organised transport had come this way.

But someone else had been here, and recently. As the way became narrower and wilder through the tunnel of the trees, the Porsche?s headlights threw pools of shadow into tyre tracks in the dirt. It looked as though a number of vehicles had used the route, four-wheel-drives and maybe a car with a wide wheelbase or some kind of van.

Ben eyed the map spread out on the dashboard. Kammler?s drawings had been every bit as precise as could be expected from a man who was not only a trained engineer but a megalomaniac and a ruthless perfectionist. Everything was right. The co-ordinates were dead on. There was no question that the ominous black shape they could now see looming up ahead through the gaps in the trees, its rocky crags reflecting the light of the full moon, was Kammler?s mountain. They were close.

Ben killed the lights, driving by moonlight. After another couple of minutes he swung a right off the track and bumped the car through the undergrowth until it was masked by foliage. He and Jeff got out, pulled out the holdalls. Waited for their vision to acclimatise to the dark, then started preparing for the task ahead. They didn?t speak as they went through the old routine that had once been their whole way of life, pulling on the woodland camouflage clothing, lacing up their boots, re-checking and dividing up the weapons. The armament was simple but effective: two silenced Heckler & Koch MP5 machine carbines, two Browning pistols and two slim, double-edged, black-bladed killing knives in leg sheaths. In addition to that, Ben carried a cut-down Ithaca combat shotgun across his back while Jeff slung a stubby grenade launcher round his shoulder.

Aside from the weaponry and ammunition in their packs, they each had a coil of slim, lightweight but very strong rope, which they slung diagonally around their bodies. Sub-vocal radio mikes and earpieces allowed them to communicate across a distance in the softest of whispers. The final piece of equipment for each of them was the ex-military Gen 3 zoomable night-vision goggles that attached to a head harness. Capable of operating in virtual zero-light conditions, the goggles turned the world a grainy, surreal sea-green.

The two men set off, moving like ghosts in single file. They made their way cautiously along the track, scanning far and wide ahead of them as they walked. The ground was rising steadily upwards, the wild forest slowly thinning out as they approached higher ground and the base of the mountain.

Ben couldn?t stop thinking about what they were going to find there. Were Adam and Rory O?Connor still even alive? He battled his doubts away to the back of his mind and walked on. His goggles illuminated the way ahead in an eerie glow. He could sense Jeff?s presence behind him, but the only sound he could hear was the beating of his own heart and the gentle sigh of the mountain breeze through the branches.

The crack of a twig and a rustle of foliage at two o?clock. Ben froze, raised his MP5.

The bear?s eyes glowed like green torches in Ben?s goggles as it stopped in the middle of the path and turned to look at them. Then it ambled on unhurriedly, its shaggy coat rippling as it walked. It slipped into the trees on the other side of the track and disappeared.

?Shit,? Jeff?s whisper chuckled in Ben?s ear.

They kept moving. The ground was sloping ever upwards and the gaps in the trees were getting wider. The mountain towered overhead.

Ben operated the zoom facility on his goggles, and the magnification of the grainy image in his eyepieces expanded from xl to x10. He slowly, carefully scanned the terrain. Nature could do so much in sixty-five years to alter a landscape. The ravages of the weather, landslides, vegetation growth. It was hard to associate the crisp lines of Kammler?s technical drawings with the rugged landscape in front of them.

But then he did a double-take, and held his breath as he zoomed in closer. Yes, there it was. Carefully blended with the tangle of overgrown bushes and brambles, visible only to someone who was looking for it, a thick sprawl of military camouflage netting veiled a rocky alcove right at the base of the mountain about sixty yards up ahead. He stared at it a moment longer, then zoomed the goggles back down to xl magnification.

The question was, what was behind it? If it corresponded to the drawings, it was the twenty-foot-high steel doorway carved into the mountain by Hitler?s slave army a lifetime earlier.

More tyre tracks were visible in the decayed leaf matter underfoot as they crept closer to the hidden entrance. Ben kneeled and put his hand to the ground. Fresh mud, the tread marks clearly imprinted. Someone had been here within the last twenty-four hours.

Jeff?s voice rasped in Ben?s earpiece. ?Whatever you do, don?t move.? Ben froze, then turned his head very slowly to see Jeff pointing to a spot an inch from the toecap of his boot.

The tripwire was barely visible in the dirt, just a short section of it raised up enough to catch on an unsuspecting intruder?s foot. It was almost certainly wired to a silent alarm somewhere inside the facility. Someone was definitely in there, and they didn?t want to be found.

It took them almost half an hour to cover the last few yards, checking every inch of ground as they moved. Then, breathless with tension, they finally reached the camo netting. And carefully, very carefully, peeled back its edge.

Ben nodded in satisfaction. Sixty-five years? worth of brambles and moss and ivy had been recently clipped away to reveal the tall steel doors, exactly as in the drawings but now craggy and pitted with corrosion. He ran a gloved finger down their central edge and saw where some of the rust had flaked away from being opened. Moving his hand across to one of the massive hinges, he found it sticky with fresh grease.

But even if they?d been able to open them, going brazenly in through the front doors to face an unknown force of opposition wasn?t an option Ben wanted to consider. When he?d studied Kammler?s plans back in Switzerland, he?d spotted another way in that he liked a lot better. With just one reservation ? one he didn?t want to think about.

He stepped carefully away from the entrance. Now that he had his bearings, he had a pretty good idea of where to look. About two hundred feet up the mountainside and about three hundred feet to the left, the goggles on maximum zoom picked out what looked like the mouth of a rusted-out old oil drum protruding from the rocks, partially obscured by a shrub. He signalled to Jeff to follow him.

When they reached the oil drum, Ben saw he?d been right. It was the mouth of a chimney, six feet wide, and from Kammler?s drawing he knew that its shaft drilled straight down about two hundred feet through solid rock to a chamber below. It had been hard to tell from the faded handwritten labels on the drawing what the purpose of the chamber was. He said nothing to Jeff as he unslung the rope coil from his shoulder and secured one end to a big rock. He tested the knot, then dropped the other end of the rope down the shaft. Jeff did the same as Ben climbed over the lip of the chimney and lowered himself down slowly fist under fist, clasping the rope between his boots to control his descent. He swayed from side to side as he went down, touching the metal sides of the vertical tunnel. Everything was a uniform green in his eyepieces, but he knew that if he flipped them up he?d be in total blackness. He glanced up, and saw Jeff?s boots overhead as he slid down after him.

It was a long way down through the claustrophobic space, and after a couple of minutes Ben?s arms were screaming. He worried about running out of rope and finding himself dangling helplessly over an unknown drop. But the rope kept coming, and after another thirty seconds he knew he was getting near the bottom from the indescribable stench that was rising up to meet him.

?Something stinks pretty bad down here,? Jeff?s voice said in his ear.

It was a combination of every bad smell in the world. Burnt animal grease and decaying matter left to fester in water that was beyond stagnant. Putrefaction and filth of a kind that Ben didn?t even want to imagine. Just as the smell was as bad as he thought it could get, it got worse. Moments later his feet splashed down into something that felt like mud. Cold liquid squelched thickly up around his legs and into his boots. He swallowed, fighting the bile that wanted to well up in his throat.

He let go of the rope and let his arms dangle by his sides to let the muscles recover. He was standing in what appeared to be a square stone-built chamber about thirty feet across. The squelchy soup was up to his knees. He looked down. It didn?t seem like mud, but it was thick and cloying.

Then he looked up. And saw the rats. Hundreds of them, scuttling along the edge of the stonework above the surface. Dropping down and swimming through the filth, their long tails wriggling behind them.

Jeff landed beside him, rubbing his hands. His face was contorted in disgust behind the goggles. ?What the fuck is this place??

Ben didn?t reply. He raised one foot with a sucking sound and started trying to wade towards the nearest wall. Embedded in the stone, steel rungs led up to the iron grate of a hatchway ten feet or so above their heads. He prayed it would be open.

Something hit him softly between the shoulders. He heard a high-pitched squeaking in his ear, and instinctively reached over his shoulder. His gloved fingers closed on something soft and furry. He flung the rat away, saw it twist in midair, its jaws snapping. It landed with a splash. Then another was scuttling up his leg, biting at his clothes. He lashed out and felt its back break.

They started wading quickly towards the edge, sloshing through the filth as fast as they dared without tripping and falling into it. Something nudged Ben?s knee. At first he thought it was another rat, but then he looked down and realised.

There were things in the liquid. Things that had lain undisturbed for a long time had suddenly started floating to the surface as their feet churned up the sediment at the bottom.

The human skull bobbed away from him, staring sightlessly up at him in the green vision of his goggles. It was scorched and blackened and rat-gnawed, missing its jawbone. A bullet had shattered everything above the left eye socket. The teeth were torn out.

Then Ben felt something give way with a wet, brittle crunch under his boot. He stumbled. Another skull floated up, crushed and black and burnt. Then a section of rib cage, like the remains of an old boat. He kicked them away in disgust.

It was what he?d feared from studying the plans of the facility, and now he saw that his suspicions had been right. The chamber was the crematorium for the slave workers who had perished building Kammler?s secret domain. The undiscovered mass grave of tens of thousands of nameless victims of the SS general?s brutality. They were standing on human remains. Stacks of charred bone. The piled ash of burnt flesh and clothing, mixed with rainwater seepage over the years to create a sickening mulch.

They splashed through the horror. Ben?s fingers closed on the bottom rung of the ladder and he hauled himself up the wall, closely followed by Jeff. There were gagging sounds in his earpiece as he reached the hatch, and he didn?t know how much longer he could keep from vomiting himself. He muttered a prayer, pushed his fingers through the iron grating and gave it a hard shove.

It didn?t move. It was either rusted shut, or it was locked from the inside. They were shut in here with the dead.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Far away from where Ben and Jeff were trapped inside the crematorium chamber, separated by millions of tons of solid rock and a maze of tunnels and corridors, Adam O?Connor was on his hands and knees on the concrete floor of the vault, surrounded by dismantled electronic components, mechanical linkages, magnetic coils, bits of wire. A chaotic mess of spanners and screwdrivers and soldering irons and voltmeters lay scattered around him.

He hated the machine almost as much as he hated the woman who?d tortured his son. All his rage, all his frustration at the situation he?d been plunged into against his will, were obsessively focused on it. His shirt stuck to him with sweat. Days of beard growth covered his jaw, and his eyes were stinging from lack of sleep. His trousers were worn through from kneeling on the rough concrete, his hands were lacerated from all the rusted bolts he?d had to slacken in the confined space of the machine, his fingers covered in burns from soldering the thousands of corroded connections he?d found. Any one of them could have accounted for the fact that, so far, he just simply could not get the fucking thing to work. Every time he found a new problem his heart would soar, thinking this is it; only to sink again when he fixed it and put everything back together again, hit the big red activation knob ? and the machine still just sat there.

Silent. Dead. Laughing at him. Just like it was now. Adam would have punched the loathsome thing, but his knuckles were too bruised and swollen from the hundreds of times he?d already done that.

He turned round and looked at Pelham. Every hour that Adam spent down here working on the Bell, Pelham was right there with him. Except that while Adam toiled and sweated and chewed his lip in terror of what was going to happen if he failed, Pelham had taken to lounging in a big armchair he?d had brought down for him, coolly reading newspapers and magazines while sipping on a long drink.

?This is hopeless,? Adam croaked. ?It?ll never work.?

?You?ll keep trying,? Pelham said without looking up. He flipped a page of the magazine he was reading. Took another sip of his drink.

?This thing is scrap metal. And even if it didn?t have mice living in it, and every linkage wasn?t seized solid, and every damn wire wasn?t crusted up with corrosion, and the valves weren?t rotted away to nothing, I still couldn?t make it work.?

Pelham put down the magazine. ?We had an agreement, Adam. And frankly, your attitude is starting to wear out my patience.?

Adam dropped the spanner he was clutching and staggered to his feet, racked with cramp. He advanced on Pelham, enraged by the man?s obtuseness. ?Listen to me. I?m not fixing a broken boiler here. This thing isn?t like some household appliance that you just plug in. It?s the most arcane piece of scientific hardware I?ve ever seen, and you?re asking me to fix it with bits of crap from the local toolshop. I can?t work in these conditions. I need a lab. I need more people. I need proper equipment. Maybe if we could just break the whole thing down and analyse every component, we could??

?This is it,? Pelham said, motioning at the room. ?This is as good as it gets. Live with it.?

?You don?t understand how complex this thing is,? Adam shouted.

?You?re supposed to be the expert,? Pelham said. ?That?s why you?re here.?

Adam could feel his face turning crimson as his shouts reverberated around the inside of the vault. ?And if I can?t get it to work, then you know what? You know whose fucking fault that?ll be? Not mine. Yours, asshole. Your fault, because if you fuckers hadn?t killed my colleagues, if Michio and Julia were here with me now, the three of us might have figured it out. The way things are, you can do what you want, but you?ll never see this thing working. Understand? It can?t be done. So why don?t you just pick up the phone and tell your employers, whoever the fuck they are, that it?s over? That?s it. And then you?re just going to have to let me and my son go back to our lives.? By the end of the tirade his shouts had diminished to a sob. He couldn?t talk any more.

There was silence in the vault. Adam steadied himself against the machine, panting.

Pelham spoke softly. ?You?re tired, aren?t you, Adam? Your nerves are ragged. You feel weak and confused and you don?t know how you can go on.?

Adam?s head sagged. He screwed his eyes shut and felt dizzy. He was one breath away from bursting into tears. ?Yes,? he whispered. ?If I could just sleep a while. Please. Then I?ll keep trying. I promise. Forget what I said. I?m sorry. I?m just so tired.?

Pelham got up from his armchair, walked calmly over to Adam and put an arm benignly around his shoulders. ?Can I tell you a story? I was a soldier once. Not your normal infantryman. We were something? special. Our selection training was very intense. You wouldn?t believe the things we had to do. Just when we thought we?d been tested to the absolute limit, they moved it to the next level.? He smiled. ?You can?t imagine what it feels like to be hunted like an animal, can you? Alone in the dark, running scared, no food except what you can catch with your bare hands, no shelter, no sleep for days on end. But that?s what they did to us. They were teaching us to stretch the limits of what we thought possible, and those days taught me the most valuable lesson of my life. I learned that those extremes of fear, pain, fatigue were my friends, because they concentrated my mind. Made me find reserves of strength within myself that I?d never dreamed of. That?s how I kept going. I made it through.? Adam stared wordlessly at him.

?But not every man passed the test,? Pelham went on. ?Some were broken. They gave in. And you know what they said, those losers, as they were being carried off, crying like babies? ?I?m tired.?? He paused. ?What I?m saying is, I could let you go back to your cell right now, so that you could spend the next ten hours sleeping. But the truth is, Adam, I don?t think it?s going to help you to give in like that. Deep down, I think you have the strength to keep going. You just need help to find it within yourself.? He walked away from Adam and went over to the table beside his armchair. On it was a radio handset.

?What are you doing?? Adam said numbly.

Pelham picked up the radio. ?Irina, this is Pelham. Respond, over.?

A pause, then a fizz of static. Reception was poor inside the mountain. But then Adam heard the woman?s voice reply and he felt his knees going weak.

?Fetch the boy,? Pelham told her. ?Bring him down to the vault. You know what I?m saying. Over and out.? He turned off the radio.

?No,? Adam said. ?No, no. You don?t have to do this. I?ll?? Pelham pointed at the machine. ?You?ll make it work, believe me,? he said. ?When she?s cutting your son?s face off, five minutes from now right here in this room while you watch, I guarantee that?s going to concentrate the mind wonderfully. Let?s see how tired you are then.?

Chapter Fifty-Eight

?Again. On three.?

Dangling side by side from the filthy rungs of the ladder, Ben and Jeff kicked against the iron grate of the crematorium hatchway one more time. The dull clang resonated through the chamber.

?I?m going to puke,? Jeff mumbled.

?Again,? Ben said. They?d been trying for what seemed like forever, and he could only hope that nobody had heard the noise. They swung their weight back from the hatch, then lashed out in unison.

This time, the clang of their boots on the iron grate was mixed with a screech as hinges rusted solid for over half a century gave way and the hatch moved. Not much, just an inch. But it moved, and Ben felt the relief scorch through his veins like whisky.

?We?re nearly there. Once more.?

The final kick sent the hatch crashing open.

?You go first,? Ben said, and Jeff wasted no time in clambering past him and crawling out of the hole. Ben followed. After a few feet he was able to stand, and looked around him through his night-vision goggles.

They were in the rough-hewn stone anteroom from where the SS soldiers must have flung the bodies of the dead before sloshing gasoline over them and setting them alight. Maybe towards the very end, when the soldiers needed every drop of fuel to escape the approaching Soviet troops, they hadn?t bothered burning their victims at all, but just shot those still alive in the back of the head and turfed the corpses into the hole to rot.

Ben thought about Don Jarrett, the Holocaust denier. Another trip to Bruges suddenly seemed like a very good idea.

If he ever got out of this.

Up three pitted stone steps and they were in a passageway. The air was dank and foul, but it felt like pure oxygen after the obscenity of the crematorium. The passage wound onwards. They unslung their weapons and flipped off their safeties as they came to an unmarked doorway. Ben counted one ? two ? three. A deep breath and they pushed through.

The light hit them. Across the corridor in which they found themselves, cobwebbed lamps strung together by loose wires threw a dim, yellowish glow that was unbearably bright with their goggles. They flipped them up, blinking to adjust their vision.

There was nobody about. They turned left and kept moving. They were on full battle-alert now, in that state of heightened awareness in which every muscle was tight, every nerve jangling and the mind racing with constant anticipation of what could be waiting around every corner. Life never felt more vivid than when death was just an instant away.

A door opened up ahead. Voices. Two men. Ben and Jeff pressed themselves flat into a shadowy alcove in the wall. Footsteps approached, and as the voices grew louder Ben could hear the two men were speaking Croat.

?I?m not gonna take much more shit from that bastard Pelham,? one of them was complaining bitterly sotto voce, as though he thought Pelham might be listening.

?Relax,? the other one said in a more laconic tone. ?Think of the money.?

?No fucking amount of money is worth being stuck in this hole. I hate this place.?

The men walked past where Ben and Jeff were hidden in the shadows, close enough to smell their body odour. The complaining one was stick-thin inside a rumpled leather jacket, with a facial twitch and long, greasy hair scraped back in a thin ponytail. The laconic-sounding one wore a khaki cold weather field shirt that looked like Russian military issue. His shaven head glistened in the lamplight.

Ben glanced at Jeff. He peeled himself silently off the wall as his fingers moved down to the hilt of the killing knife that was strapped to his thigh and drew it out of its sheath. Jeff was right at his side as they crept noiselessly but quickly up behind the men. The bald guy was Ben?s. Ponytail belonged to Jeff.

Then they struck. Hard and fast. Ben clamped his hand over the bald guy?s mouth and jerked his head back and stabbed the knife into his throat. In the movies, it zipped as easily through flesh as a hot knife through butter and left a clean, straight red line from ear to ear. In real life, to cut through the tough gristle and cartilage of a man?s windpipe you had to saw brutally. Close your mind to what you were doing and keep sawing like crazy through the horrific mess until the blood was spraying out over your hand and the air was hissing out of the guy?s lungs with that eerie gurgling sigh that you knew was going to haunt your dreams forever. Hold on tight until the victim?s death struggles diminished and you could wipe the bloody knife clean on his clothes and move on and hope you never had to do anything like that again. Till the next time.

Ben and Jeff dragged the bodies into the shadows. They were in, and they were committed now. It was starting.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Irina Dragojevi? stood back from the cell door as she watched her tall companion turn the key in the lock. Pelham hadn?t said much on the radio, but he hadn?t needed to. She had a very clear idea of what he wanted, because they?d already discussed the contingency plans. They were very persuasive, but the truth was she had no interest whatsoever in the outcome. The slim knife in the sheath on her belt was whetted and honed past razor-sharpness. When she thought about what she was going to do with it, and how nobody was going to stop her this time, her breath caught. The feeling was almost sexual. It dulled the throbbing ache in her arm where the bullet had creased it that day in Ireland. It made her feel whole and serene.

As she watched the cell door swing open, she heard that small, distant voice in her mind again.

Why do you do the things you do, Irina? Why?

There?d been a time, years ago, when she?d heard those voices often, and had been greatly troubled by them. But that had been before she?d come to see things clearly, to appreciate how beautifully simple it all was. The voice had no power any more. The power was all hers.

The tall man stepped inside the boy?s cell. Irina went in behind him. She stopped. Narrowed her eyes as her colleague turned to stare at her in bewilderment.

The cell was empty. Rory O?Connor was gone. Irina grabbed the radio.

Ivan?s fingers were painfully tight around Rory?s wrist as he led him quickly through the stone corridors. The man had barely said a word since he?d come bursting into his cell two minutes before, seemingly in a desperate hurry to get him out of there.

?Where are we going?? Rory asked.

?Somewhere safe,? Ivan told him. ?Things are beginning to happen.? He was frowning as he kept an ear open for fresh activity on the crackling radio handset in his jacket pocket. ?Come, we must go faster.?

?They?ve come for me? The other agents??

Ivan nodded. Tugged on his wrist. ?Move faster.?

?Please, Ivan. Tell me what?s happening.?

?Pelham sent Irina to fetch you, to hurt you again. I heard it on the radio. You are lucky. I was closer. I got there first.?

Rory shuddered and felt the colour drain from his face. He looked at Ivan and realised he?d never felt such a bond with anyone before. Except for one. ?Where?s my dad?? he asked.

?Waiting for you on the outside,? Ivan said. ?Keep moving.?

Rory gulped air. He was going to get out of here. He was going to see his father. It would soon be over.

The radio fizzed into life. Through the spit and hiss of static, Rory listened to the exchange between the man called Pelham and the woman and his heart began to thump faster.

?I want him found!? Pelham yelled from the tinny speaker, and then the voices dissolved back into white noise.

?I won?t let them find you,? Ivan reassured him. ?You are with me now. We are friends, no??

?Yes, Ivan.?

They kept walking. Ivan was glancing furtively around him all the time, keeping an even tighter grip on Rory?s wrist as he led the boy down passages he?d never seen before. ?Quickly,? Ivan kept saying. ?Quickly.? They came to a flight of steps leading downwards into murky shadows. Ivan turned on a flashlight and lit the way ahead. Down and down through a shaft that was carved out of the rock. It was echoey, and Rory could hear the steady plop of dripping water.

?Is this where we?re meeting the other agents?? he asked breathlessly, and heard his voice reverberate off the walls.

Ivan didn?t reply.

Then the staircase ended abruptly, terminating in an unfinished cul de sac. In the torchlight, Rory could see the pickaxe marks that scarred the rock face. The floor was littered with debris and old tools that had lain there so long, they?d rusted away to almost nothing. It was as though whoever had been digging the tunnel out of the solid rock had just stopped working one day, put down their tools and gone. He wondered what had happened. But more than that, he wondered why Ivan had brought him here. He turned and frowned up at his friend.

Ivan smiled in the beam of the flashlight. ?We are safe down here,? he said as he put a hand on the boy?s shoulder. ?It is just you and me now.? Then he moved closer. His lips parted.

Rory stared for a second, and then he realised Ivan was trying to kiss him.

Chapter Sixty

Adam O?Connor was cackling like a lunatic as Pelham paced the vault with the radio in his fist.

?What do you mean, he?s gone?? The man?s composure had slipped away completely, and he was shouting in rage.

?He isn?t here,? said the woman?s voice through the spitting static.

?How could he have got out??

?I don?t know,? she replied.

Pelham yelled into the radio, ?I want him found!?

?Go for it, son,? Adam giggled to himself. ?We?ll show these bastards.?

Pelham threw the radio down and stormed over to him. ?Oh, you think this is funny, do you, Adam??

?The look on your face,? Adam laughed at him. ?You should see yourself right now. Your little world is just falling down around you. How?re you going to explain this to your boss, asshole??

?Laugh at this,? Pelham said. He reached his hand across his chest, pulled out the pistol that he wore under his jacket and cocked the action with a sound that rang around the stone walls. He aimed it in Adam?s face. His jaw tightened.

?Shoot me then, jerkoff,? Adam taunted him. ?Let?s see you make the machine work after I?m dead.?

The gun wavered.

?I?m all you?ve got,? Adam went on, waving his arms like a wild man. ?You?re not going to shoot me.?

?Wrong,? Pelham said. He dropped his arm eighteen inches and squeezed the trigger. The pistol flashed and boomed in his hand.

Adam felt his leg get kicked out from under him and collapsed to the concrete floor, clutching his thigh. The blood began to pump out through his fingers. He pressed hard, desperately trying to stem the flow. He felt no pain, not yet. But he knew it would come. ?You shot me,? he mumbled in shock.

Pelham stood over him with the smoking pistol dangling loose at his side. ?I could have shattered the femur or split the artery and made you bleed to death,? he said calmly over Adam?s screams. ?Next time I will. Get on your feet. Let?s try this again.?

Rory twisted frantically away as Ivan?s mouth sought his. He felt the material of his sweater rip in the man?s fingers. Backed away against the wall, bewildered and hurt. He?d thought until this moment that Ivan was his friend. Suddenly he was alone again.

Ivan came at him, and Rory lashed blindly out with his foot. The kick caught Ivan squarely in the groin. Rory stood rooted in horror for a second as Ivan dropped the torch and fell to his knees with both hands clapped over his testicles and his eyes rolling back in agony. The boy grabbed up the fallen flashlight, turned and ran as hard as he could back up the winding staircase. He could hear Ivan?s cries of pain and rage echoing up the carved-out shaft. Rory kept running like the wind. After what seemed like just a few seconds he could hear Ivan giving chase. He burst out of the mouth of the stairway and out into the lamplit corridor. He was lost now, his breath rasping in his ears, his heart in his mouth, no idea where to turn. The sole was flapping off his right trainer from where the kick to Ivan?s groin had torn it half away from the shoe?s upper. He pulled the shoe off and tossed it aside.

He could hear Ivan?s running footsteps behind him, but a quick glance over his shoulder told him the man was out of sight down the twisty passages. Rory came to another junction in the corridor. Big signs on the wall that he couldn?t understand. He turned right and kept going, hobbling on just one shoe for a few more yards until he knew he had to lose that one, too, or risk stumbling and twisting his ankle. He bent down and gripped the toe and heel of the shoe and yanked it off. The floor was cold and hard through his thin socks.

Rory stopped. Backed up a few steps to where he?d passed a round hole in the wall to his right. It was some kind of shaft, big enough for him to crawl into and hide. He shone the torch into the curving tunnel, put his hand to it and felt a breath of air caress his fingers. Maybe it led somewhere, and anywhere was better than here. He quickly climbed into it and started crawling as fast as he could down its length. Rusty metal under his hands and knees, not rock. It was a pipe of some kind, like an air vent, he thought.

And now he could really feel the breeze on his face. Cool, fresh, sweet air.

Air coming in from the outside.

Chapter Sixty-One

Ben worked the rusted iron bolt loose, creaked open the iron door and peered inside at the long, low, dark chamber. It was a primitive dormitory ? row upon row of rudimentary bunks with open latrines just a few feet away. Skeletons littered the floor. Scores of them, gnawed apart by rats, covered in dust and cobwebs.

?Slave workers,? he said to Jeff. ?They must have starved to death down here when the Nazis abandoned the place.?

?Jesus Christ,? Jeff?s voice said in Ben?s earpiece.

They shut the door of the dormitory, and Ben grimly closed the bolt. He took the folded plan from his pocket, and studied it again. The gruesome discovery meant they were still in the lower levels, where the labourers had been housed. The next level up from there had been mainly for storage of equipment and provisions; then above that was the upper level with its complexes of operations rooms and offices, together with the barrack accommodation and shower blocks for the SS soldiers stationed at the facility. He and Jeff had agreed on the plane that it would be the most likely place to improvise a holding cell for a young hostage. As for Adam, it was Ben?s guess that the kidnappers would have put him to work in the strange vault-like chamber which, as far as he could tell from the faded drawings, was the location of the mysterious Kammler invention. Deep inside the mountain, the chamber was only accessible from a lift shaft on the upper level.

?That?s where we need to head for,? Ben said.

They moved stealthily onwards, using the map to find a crude service lift that rumbled up to the next level. They emerged cautiously into what looked like an underground car park, a broad arched concrete roadway leading off into the darkness. There was nobody about as they paused to get their bearings.

Jeff tapped the map with his gloved finger. ?Judging by the layout, I?d say we were just about here. So we need to follow this road. Looks to me like there?s another service lift along there.?

Snick-snack. The sound of an automatic weapon?s cocking bolt being worked, just a few feet behind them.

They turned. Bright torchlight blinded them. From behind it, the vague shapes of two men stepped out of the shadows.

A harsh voice said, ?Guns on floor.?

Very slowly and warily, Ben and Jeff put down their MP5s, then straightened up.

?Drop grenade launcher,? said the voice.

Jeff cursed under his breath as he unslung the weapon and tossed it down with a clatter.

?Also shotgun,? said the voice. Ben shrugged the cut-down Ithaca from his shoulder and dropped it on the pile.

?Remove head gear.?

Ben forced himself to peer through the blinding torch-beam as they dumped their precious night-vision goggles on the floor. The two guards were holding pistols. The one without a torch was clamping a walkie-talkie to his mouth. ?This is Dovzhenko,? he said into it. ?I have intruders on Level Two, Sector Twelve-B.?

?Hands on head,? the other one commanded, shining the light in Ben?s eyes.

Ben laced his fingers together on top of his head, and Jeff did the same.

?Step away from weapons.?

Ben heard the triumphant smile in the guy?s voice. He didn?t have to glance sideways at Jeff to know that they were both waiting for the exact same thing.

Ben knew that there were only two types of mercenary soldier. There was the type who wore the army tattoos and told all the stories, but who?d never done half the things they boasted of and therefore didn?t have the training to go with it. Then there was the type who maybe had done those things, maybe had seen a lot of action and been useful enough soldiers in their day ? but they were all washed up now, worn out, cynical, living job to job, and too used to scrapping with tin-pot militia groups across weary, minefield-ridden Third World and Eastern European war zones to have any respect for the enemy. Either way, what the two types had in common was that they were sloppy soldiers and liable to make mistakes.

Ben also knew that tactics were a game. And in any game, winning was often just a question of riding it out until the opponent made that vital mistake. In armed confrontation, one of the rules was never to push your luck. Not even if all the odds seemed in your favour, not even if everything seemed to be going your way, not even if the other guy was completely at your mercy.

But to the sloppy soldier there was a huge kick, a supreme power-rush, to be gained from shoving the muzzle of a pistol right in the face of an unarmed enemy and yelling commands at them. And that sloppiness was exactly what Ben had been banking on. As though they just couldn?t help themselves, the guards came right up close, pistols extended full-arm, the muzzles almost kissing his and Jeff?s heads.

Much, much too close to get away from what happened next. The man called Dovzhenko let out a scream as Ben twisted his Glock out of his fist and felt the trapped trigger finger snap. As he was ramming the butt of the gun hard and fast into the man?s teeth, Jeff had slapped the other pistol aside, wrestled it out of its owner?s grip and clubbed him round the side of the head with it. It was all over in under two seconds.

But now things were about to get a little hotter. Ben pushed Dovzhenko down to the floor with his knee pressed into the back of his neck and the Glock to his temple.

?Where are the hostages?? he asked. It was a question he was only going to ask once.

The man never had the chance to respond. The arched roadway suddenly blazed bright with truck headlights and the growl of the diesel engine boomed through the echoey tunnel.

?Time to go,? Jeff said.

The big truck burst around the corner thirty yards away and came bearing down on them. There was no chance to pick up their discarded weapons as gunfire crackled out from the vehicle and strafed the concrete. Ben and Jeff sprinted away down the tunnel, returning fire from the pistols they?d taken from the guards.

No way they could outrun a truck.

As they ran, the headlights behind them cast long shadows on the curving tunnel wall up ahead and picked out a tall side doorway covered by a rusted steel shutter. There was a gap at the bottom, just big enough to squeeze through. Ben threw himself down and rolled under the bottom lip of the steel into darkness. Bullets hammered into the shutter as Jeff scrambled in behind him. The truck screeched to a halt outside, and they heard doors opening, voices shouting commands. Another burst of gunfire, and a line of dents punched into the shutter. Shadows appeared in the strip of light underneath. Ben fired at the gap, and they skipped away in retreat.

The two of them were safe in here ? but they wouldn?t be for long. Someone would be quick to figure out how to raise the shutter, or how to flush them out using gas or fire.

Stumbling around in the dark, Ben found an antiquated wall panel with a row of big switches, and threw them all. Dusty yellow lamps flickered into life, and he saw they were in an old vehicle workshop. Rusty fuel drums were stacked up against the wall next to a partially-dismantled BMW motorcycle and sidecar. In the middle of the concrete floor, a dusty tarpaulin was draped over a strangely-shaped object the size of a small van. Ben whipped the tarp away and clouds of dust billowed in the dim light.

?It?s a Kettenkrad,? he said. He?d only ever seen pictures of the strange Wehrmacht all-terrain vehicle. It was a hybrid of a miniature tank and a military motorcycle. The six wheels per side were linked by caterpillar tracks, and the machine was steered by a bike front end with broad handlebars. He knew enough about them to know that they?d normally been used as tractors to haul trailers and light artillery. But someone had equipped this one with a pair of forward-facing German MG-34 belt-fed heavy machine guns, turning it into a formidable assault craft.

Outside in the tunnel, the truck gave a roar as it accelerated forward to ram the shutter. The metal buckled violently inwards, but held. The truck crunched into reverse and started backing away for another hit.

?They?re going to get through pretty soon,? Jeff said, eyeing the buckled shutter.

?I know.? As he said it, Ben ran over to the stack of fuel drums. He grabbed one and shook it, heard the liquid swirling around inside. He carried it over to the Kettenkrad, quickly found the fuel tank hatch. The drum?s nozzle cap was rusted solid. He stabbed a rough hole through it with his knife and started sloshing the fuel into the tank.

?You?re crazy. That thing?s been sitting dead for all these years.?

Ben didn?t reply as he ran round to the Kettenkrad?s driver?s seat, searching for the dash-mounted ignition switch. He flipped it on and prodded the starter.

Nothing. The battery was dead. He swore.

The truck roared forward again and hit the steel shutter, harder this time. The crash shook the walls and echoed all through the tunnel. The shutter was grotesquely bulged and distorted, but it still held. The truck reversed. A couple more hits like that and it would be through, and Ben and Jeff would be cornered, outgunned and outnumbered inside the workshop as the guards came spilling in.

Ben ran round to the back of the Kettenkrad and found what he?d been hoping for. He snatched the crank handle from a clip on the bodywork, thrust it through an opening in the radiator grille in the rear, felt it engage on the crankshaft. He said a prayer and turned the lever hard.

The engine coughed, then faltered and died.

The truck hit again, tearing the shutter from one of its roller mountings with a screech. The headlights streamed through the rips in the crumpled metal as it backed off for what Ben and Jeff both knew would be its final charge.

Ben tried the crank again. For a fraction of a second it seemed as though nothing was going to happen, but then he was suddenly engulfed in a cloud of smoke as the Kettenkrad spluttered into life. He leapt on board, twisted the motorcycle throttle and the engine gave a clattering roar.

Amazed, Jeff clambered up the side and dropped into the cramped space behind the twin machine guns. He swept away the thick layers of cobwebs, racked the cocking bolts.

?Ready?? Ben asked, blipping the throttle.

?What is it you always say??

?Fuck it.?

?Then fuck it, I?m ready,? Jeff yelled over the roar of the engine.

At the same instant that the truck rammed the shutter, tore it clean off its mountings and came thundering inside the workshop, Ben was engaging the Kettenkrad?s forward drive and lurching onwards with a clattering squeal of caterpillar tracks. He opened the throttle all the way. Twisted the handlebars and aimed the vehicle straight at the truck.

?Keep your head down,? Jeff yelled as they charged right into the blazing headlights. Ben hunched down behind the bars. But there was no way to be ready for the blast of two heavy-calibre machine guns just over and a foot either side of his head. The sound was devastating.

So was the impact on the truck. The flimsy bodywork was instantly shredded into ribbons and the windscreen exploded into glass dust as the truck swerved and went ploughing headlong into the fuel drums, rupturing them against the wall. The truck hit the far wall of the workshop at an angle with a massive crash and rolled onto its side, sending tool-benches and bits of machinery spinning through the air. Flames began to flicker inside the shattered cab.

The guards in the tunnel opened fire as Ben steered the Kettenkrad around the wreckage. Bullets pinged off the tractor?s armour plating. Jeff swivelled the machine guns round in a sweeping arc just over Ben?s head, cutting down three of the mercenaries in a bloody heap.

Now the Kettenkrad was roaring and clattering down the tunnel with the throttle wide open. The wind tore at Ben?s hair as he twisted round in his seat to look at the carnage behind them. At that moment, the burning truck touched off the fuel drums inside the workshop. A huge rolling mushroom of fire swallowed everything within forty feet of the entrance. The mercenaries who had dived for cover as the Kettenkrad rumbled by were suddenly staggering about in flames.

The tunnel twisted hard left up ahead. Ben steered the handlebars into the turn, but he still had the throttle open all the way and the clumsy Kettenkrad went roaring into the bend too fast. He hit the brakes ? and discovered with an icy lurch why the vehicle had been taken into the workshop all those years ago.

It didn?t have any.

He tried closing the throttle to slow the thing down, but it was stuck open. Years of corrosion had affected the throttle cable, or the carburettor slide, or both. Unable to slow down, the vehicle slammed off the tunnel wall so hard that the handlebars were torn out of Ben?s hands before he could whip in the clutch. They rounded the bend out of control at forty miles an hour with sparks screaming off the side of the bodywork.

What looked like a brick wall flashed up towards them. The Kettenkrad smashed into it with a heart-stopping crunch that sent Ben flying over the handlebars.

He was picking himself up painfully as Jeff clambered out of the trashed vehicle.

?Ever heard of using the brakes??

Ben pointed. They?d crashed into the entrance to the service lift.

?Next level this way.?

Chapter Sixty-Two

Adam was bleeding all over the floor and fighting to keep from fainting with pain and nausea as Pelham stood over him with the pistol and forced him to reassemble the Kammler machine.

?There,? he gasped when the last bolt was tightened on the service hatch. ?It?s done.?

?Make it work,? Pelham said through gritted teeth.

Adam thumped the red activation knob with the heel of his hand.

Nothing.

Of course, nothing.

The silent scream of frustration had to be vented. Not even caring about the gun in Pelham?s hand, Adam snatched up a heavy lump-hammer and whacked the machine?s casing with all the strength that was left in him. The clang filled the vault. He dropped the hammer on the floor. ?Look, just fucking kill me,? he panted.

And he and Pelham both stood back in amazement as the machine started to hum.

It was a low vibrating throb at first, rising steadily in pitch. The upper section of the bell started to rotate like the turbine of a jet engine. Faster and faster, and it suddenly seemed to Adam as though the metal was beginning to glow with a strange blue-tinged light.

Both men were too astonished to speak. Then, as the rising hum became a tortured drone, something happened that nothing could have prepared Adam for.

The hammer moved ? by itself. It was dragged across the floor, then suddenly sailed into the air and flew towards the machine. It slammed against the metal casing, ten times harder than Adam could have swung it, and stuck fast. Seconds later, the mess of spanners and screwdrivers and other tools that littered the floor, every metal object in the vault, went flying through the air, sucked towards the machine with incredible force. The pistol was torn out of Pelham?s hand. He ran to the machine, tried to prise it off, but it was as though it had been welded to the casing.

Adam was sure he could feel strange effects inside his body. The electromagnetic field that the Bell was generating must be way off any Tesla scale, hundreds of times greater than an MRI scan. But something told him that the machine was only just beginning to power up. It was nowhere near its capacity yet. He stared at it. Everything that he and Michio and Julia had dreamed about was actually happening right there in front of him. The Kammler machine was drawing energy from the hidden dimensions within empty space, sucking it in like a giant lung taking in air, initiating the process of converting it into pure power. Terrifying, limitless amounts of power.

The drone was turning into a howl. Adam?s vision was beginning to blur. Pelham staggered away from the machine, the incredulous look on his face lit blue by the intense glow coming off the casing.

Then the machine suddenly went quiet.

Oh, holy shit. Adam instinctively cringed down close to the floor. Pelham opened his mouth to say something, but the words never came out.

The room seemed to explode as the magnetic field surrounding the machine suddenly reversed polarity. The metal objects stuck to the casing burst outwards in all directions like shrapnel from a bomb. Adam threw himself down flat as the steel toolbox went flying over his head like a missile and punched like a tank shell through the vault door. In the same instant, the lump-hammer spun violently through the air and took Pelham in the back of the head with such power that it went right through. Adam caught a nightmarish glimpse of the man?s face disintegrating as he went down.

Now the whole vault seemed to shake. Rays of strange blue light shone through the dust that filled the air. The howl of the machine had resumed, building to a terrifying scream, and Adam could feel the force field vibrating his ribs. He could feel it in the very tissues of his organs. He scrambled to escape, crying out in pain from his injured leg. Pelham?s pistol was lying in the dust. Adam had never so much as held a gun in his life, but he scooped it up and gripped it tight as he tumbled out through the ragged hole in the door.

He hobbled in flickering strobe-light down the passage leading to the circular gallery around the lift shaft. Jerked open the steel cage door, threw himself into the lift and slammed his fist against the Bakelite button, praying that the thing would work. Slowly, much too slowly, the lift began to grind upwards.

Nausea was pounding through his head, and it wasn?t just from the gunshot wound. He was sure he could feel the solid rock around him vibrating.

He didn?t know what was going to happen. All he knew was that the machine was out of control.

He had to find Rory. He had to find his boy.

Chapter Sixty-Three

Crawling on hands and knees, Rory had made his way deep into the air vent by the time he heard the movement in the shaft behind him and his heart froze.

He craned his head round in the confined space, and let out a cry of fear at what he saw. Ivan, crawling rapidly up behind him with his teeth bared in rage.

The shoes. Ivan had followed the trail of the fallen shoes.

The boy kept moving as fast as he could, but the man seemed possessed by some kind of demonic energy and he began to realise there was no way to outpace him.

?I?ll get you,? Ivan?s voice echoed up the metal shaft.

Rory kicked back at the hand that groped for his leg. His foot connected with something solid, but then strong fingers closed around his ankle. He felt himself being dragged back down the way he?d come. He clawed the rusty metal for a grip, but his fingertips just raked uselessly as he slid backwards.

Ivan was laughing now. ?Come here, little fish. Come to Ivan.? Rory thrashed out with both feet, but the man?s grip was like iron.

It took several nightmarish minutes for Ivan to drag the boy all the way back out of the vent. Rory fought him every inch, until his breath was rasping and his fingertips were raw. Ivan pulled him clear of the mouth of the pipe and dumped him hard on the concrete floor. Slapped him across the face, twice. ?You will not run from me again.?

?You lied to me,? Rory screamed at him.

?That?s right. I did.? Ivan hit him again, making him taste blood on his lips. Then the hands were running over his body, and he felt sick. He twisted away in desperation, managed to break free. Clawed up a handful of loose dust and grit and, as Ivan came close to try to kiss him again, he dashed it in his eyes. Ivan bellowed in pain and anger as Rory scrambled to his feet and ran like crazy through the twisting passages. He was working on pure survival instinct now, his mind as blank as a deer?s running from a pack of wolves. Darting through an archway, he found himself staring up at a huge space carved out of the rock, with a gigantic lattice-work steel stairway that wound upwards through it to the next level.

Ivan was already gaining on him.

Rory grabbed the rusty handrail and started leaping up the steps. He could hear Ivan?s racing footsteps hammering behind him. The boy?s legs were like jelly, but he willed himself to keep going. He came to a landing where the stairway twisted ninety degrees, slipped on the metal floor and almost fell through the railings and out into the abyss. He managed to get back on his feet just as Ivan?s hand came lashing out at him, wriggled away and ran madly on until he was nearly at the top. But the tumble had cost him precious seconds. Ivan?s fingers closed on his belt and he cried out as he felt himself being pulled back. Ivan just absorbed the kicks. He pressed Rory down hard on the steps and started tearing at his clothes. His eyes were blazing and there was spit foaming in the corners of his mouth.

Rory was helpless to stop him.

Chapter Sixty-Four

Ben and Jeff moved quickly through the maze of corridors in the upper level, scanning left and right with their pistols. Ben checked the map again.

?We should find the access point for the main lift shaft down here somewhere. I don?t think it?s far away.?

?Something?s wrong with this place,? Jeff muttered. ?I can feel it. It?s weird.?

Ben had the same sensation. It was as though the air was crackling with energy, almost like static electricity, but somehow different. He?d never experienced anything like it before. He was convinced he could feel a thrumming vibration coming through the walls, growing steadily more intense with each passing minute.

?Listen.?

The sound of someone yelling, echoing up the corridor. The voice was high-pitched, but it wasn?t a woman?s. It was a boy?s.

They ran towards the sound, and round the next bend they found themselves at the top of a tall iron stairway. A few steps down, a boy Ben instantly recognised as Rory O?Connor was lying on his back with a man on top of him. In the split second that he stood staring, Ben?s first thought was that the man was trying to throttle him ? until he realised what he was seeing.

The man was too intent on trying to tear the boy?s clothes off to notice their presence. Ben stepped quickly over to him, grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked him up and dashed his head against the steel railing. The man?s hand flew to his belt and came out holding a pistol. Ben sent it spinning, headbutted him and threw him bodily down the stairway. The man went somersaulting down the metal steps, hit the landing. His fingers scrabbled for a hold on the rails as he slipped over the edge. His scream lasted about three seconds before he hit the stone floor down below, and then was silenced by a crunching impact that echoed through the cavern.

Ben and Jeff helped the pale, trembling boy to his feet and checked him over. ?Rory? We?re getting you out of here.?

?Who are you??

?I?m a friend of your Aunt Sabrina,? Ben said. ?I think my dad?s here somewhere.?

?Well then, let?s find him.?

In the time it had taken to save Rory from the attack, the thrumming in the air had intensified. It was getting more noticeable and uncomfortable every second. The kid looked scared. ?What?s happening??

?I don?t know,? Ben said. ?But I don?t like it.? He held on to Rory?s arm as they moved quickly back along the corridors. By his reckoning, any time now they were going to reach the passage leading to the circular gallery where the access point was for the main lift shaft. If Adam O?Connor was down there working on the machine, they still had a chance of finding him. But Ben couldn?t ignore the nasty feeling that they were running very short of time.

Jeff was rubbing his temple. ?Are you getting a headache? I don?t know what?s wrong with me, mate, but I?m feeling really weird.?

Ben was feeling it too. A strange kind of inner turmoil that was both mental and physical. It seemed to be coming from somewhere deep inside him, as though the cells of his body were being agitated, the way water molecules were vibrated by a microwave oven. The headache was steadily getting worse, rising at about the same rate as the strange sound that was now thrumming loudly through the facility, rising to a howl.

But that wasn?t all he could hear as they drew nearer to the location of the main shaft. He strained to listen.

?I can hear someone calling your name,? he said to Rory.

Chapter Sixty-Five

As she and the tall man scoured the upper level for the missing boy, Irina knew something was badly wrong. She couldn?t understand the strange sensations she was feeling, like ants crawling under her flesh and the worst headache she?d ever known building swiftly to an alarming crescendo inside her skull. She was sure it was something to do with the sound that was throbbing through the walls around them.

For several minutes now she?d been trying to raise Pelham on the radio and getting nothing but strange interference. The lights were acting strangely too, dimming and flickering as if all the electrical systems in the facility had gone haywire. Her instincts were telling her that this whole operation was quickly going into meltdown, and it was going to be time to evacuate.

They emerged into the wide open space that was the aircraft hangar, scanning left and right for any little hiding place the boy could have curled himself up into. Irina eyed the derelict Me 262, then clambered up onto one of the jet fighter?s rusty wings and brusquely tore open the cockpit canopy. Empty. She swore loudly.

?He has to be around here somewhere,? the tall man said.

Irina jumped down from the plane wing, dusted the red powder off her hands, and strode onwards across the hangar.

Suddenly she stopped. Pointed. ?Look.?

A glistening blood trail traced a weaving line across the hangar floor. It led from the lift shaft gallery entrance. Her nostrils flared. She glanced at the tall man, and they began to follow the trail.

It led them away from the hangar and down the passages. Irina stopped to examine a bloody palm-print on the wall. Made by a man?s hand, the blood still sticky and warm.

That was when they heard a ragged, hoarse voice calling out a single name over and over again. ?Rory! Rory!?

They found him just moments later, staggering along as if drunk, dragging his leg behind him and using the walls for support. It was the child?s father. O?Connor.

The tall guy took out his pistol and aimed it down the corridor. O?Connor just stood there, swaying on his feet as though he was either resigned to a bullet in the head or he was just too crazed to understand what was happening.

Irina pushed the pistol aside. ?Let me.? Drawing the knife from her sheath, she began walking towards O?Connor.

The migraine in her temples was thumping violently, but she blinked the pain away. She had a job to finish. Pelham had told her that when this was all over, the child and his father had to be eliminated. And Irina Dragojevi? always honoured her contracts.

Her lips twisted into a thin smile as she approached him. He lowered his gaze down to the knife in her hand. She made no attempt to hide it. Better like this, when they knew it was coming.

?I know you,? he said. His voice was cracked with emotion and fatigue, barely audible over the growing sound that was shaking the ground under their feet.

She raised the knife. The flickering lamplight shimmered down the blade. She took another step closer to him.

?You?re the bitch who hurt my child,? he said more loudly.

?That?s right. And now this is for you,? she told him.

?And this is for you.? His bloody hand went to his pocket, and before she could react he?d drawn a gun. He pointed it at her and his face contorted as he squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing.

Despite the pain exploding viciously through her skull, Irina began to laugh. Behind her, the tall man raised his gun and fired a single shot that blew O?Connor off his feet.

Adam felt the bullet tear through his shoulder and spin his body round. He hit the floor on his belly, gasping. The woman was howling with laughter as he scrabbled for his fallen pistol. His fingers closed numbly over its grip.

His vision faltered. The lever. The lever by his thumb. He pressed it, and it clicked upwards. He could sense her walking up to him, standing over him. The knife was coming. He was going to feel the cold steel any second now, carving into his flesh.

No. He mustn?t give up.

For Rory.

He rolled over on his back and with all the strength he could muster he punched the gun out with both hands. Felt the smooth face of the trigger under his finger and squeezed it once, twice, three times, as fast as he could. The searing blast of the gun exploded in his ears.

The woman called Irina was standing right over him when he shot her. The first bullet took her under the chin and blew away half her face. The second blasted into her chest, and the third went through her hand.

The woman?s tall companion let out a cry of rage as she went down. Adam fired at him, but even as the pistol went off in his hand, he knew the pain and dizziness had made him miss. Before he could get off another shot, the tall man had come running towards him and lashed out with his foot and kicked the gun out of his fingers. Adam tried to scramble away, but his strength was quickly failing him.

The tall man squatted down on his haunches in the blood and picked up the woman?s knife. ?Now you?re going to die bad,? he said.

Adam gasped as he saw the blade plunge towards him. Then, in the next instant, he heard the shot and he was spluttering the tall man?s blood out of his mouth.

Chapter Sixty-Six

Ben lowered the smoking pistol as the tall man crumpled to the floor with a bullet in his skull. Rory went running up the corridor, screaming for his father. Adam O?Connor?s eyes opened wide in his bloodied face, and he let out a cry as his son flew into his arms. Rory hugged him, then saw the blood-soaked trouser leg and the pool of it on the floor under him, the ragged bullet wound in his shoulder. ?Oh, God, you?re hurt!?

?I?m fine,? Adam sobbed. ?Now I?m just fine.? He held the boy tight in his arms, rocking him, tears cutting white lines through the blood on his face.

?I don?t want to interrupt a happy family reunion,? Ben said as he and Jeff ran up to them. ?But we need to get out of here fast.? He had to raise his voice to be heard over the terrible noise. He and Jeff picked up the wounded man and supported him as they made their way through the passages. The noise kept building and building, driving them mad with its intensity.

?Need to find the main lift shaft,? Jeff shouted. ?Maybe it?ll lead down to the exit we found.?

Ben shook his head. ?That only leads straight down to the vault,? he yelled back. ?We need to use the service lift we came up on.?

?Jesus. This whole place feels like it?s going to blow apart.?

?The machine,? Adam muttered. ?It?s out of control.? His head lolled sideways and his body went limp in Ben and Jeff?s arms.

?Dad!? Rory screamed.

?He?s just fainted, don?t worry,? Ben reassured him. Adam?s body was a dead weight as they carried him back the way they?d come. By the time they reached the service lift, the floor was trembling like an earthquake under their feet.

Just as Ben and Jeff were hauling the unconscious scientist on board the crude wooden platform, a massive shock seemed to ripple through the whole facility. It felt like an explosion, but with no blast ? like a devastating pulse of pure energy capable of destroying everything around it. As the walls shook and the air seemed to thrum, the thick steel cables holding up the lift platform began to vibrate and buzz like plucked guitar strings. The platform began to judder.

Ben?s eyes met Jeff?s for a fraction of a second. They were both thinking the same thing. Get off this thing now!

They leapt off the platform, dragging Adam?s slumped body with them as Rory watched in horror. At the same instant, the vibrating cables began to fray dramatically, and then parted with a lashing crack. The platform tumbled down the shaft, taking bits of masonry with it. Jeff lost his balance and almost went down with them, but Ben grabbed his webbing belt and hauled him away from the crumbling edge.

?There?s no other way out of here,? Jeff yelled, pointing down the empty shaft. ?We?re trapped.?

Ben?s mind raced, fighting the rising tide of dizziness that was beginning to overcome him. He felt a tug on his sleeve and turned to see Rory standing there gesticulating back down the corridor. ?I know a way,? the boy shouted.

?What way??

?Trust me. I found it.?

There was no choice but to follow the kid. Ben and Jeff manhandled the unconscious scientist as his son led them at a run back towards the stairway where they?d found him.

The moment they started down the metal steps, Ben knew they weren?t going to get out in time. The stairway was rocking and swaying dangerously as they clattered down it. Struts and rails were cracking and breaking off, falling down around them. A guillotine blade of sheet metal crashed down, narrowly missing them and tearing away a section of framework. The whole construction lurched sideways and began to topple slowly over.

Seconds after the four of them had reached the bottom, the stairway fell apart. Debris rained down, burying Ivan?s body where it lay on the cavern floor. They ran. Adam was beginning to come round as Ben and Jeff hauled him along.

?This way!? Rory was yelling. ?Here! This is it!?

Ben looked where the boy was frantically pointing. ?Where does it lead??

?Some kind of air vent. Like a big pipe. It goes all the way through to the outside.?

Ben looked hard into Rory?s eyes, blinking to focus his vision. ?You?re sure? You?ve been in??

?Some of the way in.?

Ben took a deep breath. It seemed insane, but it was their only option. The facility was rumbling like the world?s biggest volcano about to erupt. ?Can you crawl?? he asked Adam.

?Just leave me here,? Adam slurred. ?Get my son out.?

Ben ripped his tactical webbing belt out of his trouser loops. ?You?re going up that vent if I have to drag you. Hold this and don?t let go.?

Then it was the frantic scramble up the tunnel. Rory led the way, followed by Jeff. Ben half-dragged Adam behind him on the end of the belt, praying it wouldn?t snap. After half a minute of crawling, he could taste the cool air from outside and there was a definite glow of moonlight up ahead. But would they ever reach the end? The metal walls were heating up fast, burning their hands and knees. The nausea was crippling.

At that moment, the world seemed to come apart. The explosion was like nothing Ben had experienced before. A horrible sensation of weightlessness as they seemed to be falling, falling, followed by a barrage of enormous impacts. The steel pipe was as fragile and vulnerable as a twig tossed around in a hurricane. Ben heard Rory?s scream of terror as it rolled over and over, battering them around inside. The pipe groaned as unimaginable outside pressures tried to stamp it flat. An ear-splitting shriek of rending steel, a cascade of dust and stones showering over them.

And then, nothing. As suddenly as the insane forces of destruction had reached their climax, it was over. There was silence, just the sound of grit and pebbles slithering down the inside of the pipe, and the soft groans of the others.

Ben raised his face out of his arms and blinked. The awful sensation was gone, the headache and nausea quickly clearing. Raising himself on his hands and knees, he realised he could stand. The pipe had ruptured above them, creating a jagged opening through which he could see moonlight and twinkling stars. He slowly, painfully got to his feet. A couple of metres away, Jeff was doing the same, looking stunned, his hair white with dust.

Rory stirred, let out a whimper and went scrambling over to his father. Adam O?Connor groaned in pain and joy as he sat up and hugged him.

The moon shone down on a transformed landscape. Kammler?s mountain was gone. It had collapsed in on itself, the facility swallowed up, vaporised. All that was left was a giant crater of rubble and debris and twisted metal, like the scene of an air disaster without the plane.

Ben knew he?d never be able to describe what they?d just witnessed. The power of Kammler?s machine was too incredible to contemplate. Now it was buried forever in its rocky grave ? the Nazi weapon that might have saved the Earth or destroyed it was going to remain a secret for the rest of time.

Nobody spoke for a long while, just breathing the air, listening to the silence and savouring what it felt like to be alive. Ben stepped over to where father and son were holding each other tight. He put his hand on the boy?s shoulder. ?You saved us, Rory.?

Adam O?Connor gripped Ben?s hand in his bloodstained fist. ?You saved us.?

Ben just smiled.

?Who the hell are you, anyway??

?Nobody much,? Ben replied. He looked towards the sweeping forest, and pointed across the tree line to where they?d left the Porsche Cayenne, a few hours and a lifetime ago. ?There?s a car down there. Let?s get you to hospital, and then home.?

Chapter Sixty-Seven

While Adam was getting patched up in Budapest the next day, Sabrina flew out from London on a Steiner aircraft. Meanwhile, Ben was on the phone to Switzerland. Heinrich Dorenkamp told him the news. Ruth was on her feet and had already discharged herself from hospital after arguing with the doctors. As for Maximilian Steiner himself, he had come out of intensive care, weak and grieving for his nephew, but stable and headed for a full recovery.

Ben didn?t bother watching the news, because he knew nothing would ever come to light about the incident in the wilds of Hungary. What had happened there was buried and gone, just as surely as the legacy of SS-Obergruppenf?hrer Hans Kammler. Nobody would ever know the whole truth about who had been behind it. With Otto Steiner dead and his operation in ruins, the faceless, nameless figures who?d financed the project would now slip back into the shadows and wait for their next opportunity. That was just the way things worked. Always had, always would.

Ben hung around for a while in the hospital while Adam and Rory were reunited with Sabrina. He smiled to himself at the emotional scenes. Things hadn?t worked out too badly in the end.

He walked away without anyone noticing. Jeff was sitting in the Porsche outside. Ben climbed in next to him, and they headed for the airport.

It was the next afternoon, when Ben was sitting with Storm in the kitchen at Le Val, feeding him pieces of sirloin steak and watching him grow stronger by the hour, that he heard a car outside, and a minute later the door opened.

He turned, half expecting to see Jeff.

It was Ruth. Other than the sling around her arm, she looked fine.

?Is he all right?? she asked, looking with concern at the bandaged dog.

?People who?ve been shot don?t just travel about the place,? he scolded her.

?Would you take that kind of advice from anyone??

?No,? he admitted.

She swiped a glass off the side, pulled up a chair at the table and poured herself some of the wine he was drinking. ?How are you, bro??

?I heard about Maximilian. I?m glad he?s going to pull through.?

She shrugged. ?Me too. I feel pretty bad about what?s happened.?

?Some of the things you did were wrong,? he said. ?But you did them for the right reasons, and that?s what?s important.?

?You?re too nice to me. Fact is, I have some changes to make to my life. A lot of amends to make, and it starts here. Did Heinrich tell you that Maximilian is thinking of retiring??

Ben shook his head. ?Meaning what??

?Well, Silvia?s not interested in running a business. So, with Otto gone, that just leaves me.?

?Sounds like something new for you,? Ben said.

?Franz will help me. We?re going to build the greenest multinational corporation you?ve ever seen. Use its power and money to do something for the world.?

?Something that doesn?t involve Zero Point Energy??

?Maybe that?s still a little ahead of its time. We?ll find other ways to make a difference.?

?Something tells me you?ll do pretty well.?

She smiled. ?Now, enough about me. Did you call Brooke??

?We?ve left messages for each other.?

?You?re nervous about talking to her.?

?Things were left a little up in the air,? he said.

?She and I have been talking a lot on the phone. She told me a few things. Like the fact that your business is in deep shit because of that guy Rupert Shannon.?

With all that had been going on, Ben had almost managed to forget the Shannon situation. The prospect of losing Le Val returned like a toothache. ?Back down to earth with a thump,? he said.

?Is it true??

?It?s true. But I?ll sort it out somehow. I?ll be talking to Dupont at the bank soon. Whatever happens, we?ll survive.?

?Well, maybe you won?t need to,? she said enigmatically as she reached into her bag and took out an envelope.

Ben slipped out a single folded sheet from inside. It was a letter from the new CEO of Steiner Enterprises, Ruth Steiner-Hope. He smiled at that.

?Read it,? she said.

The letter was brief and straightforward, an offer to reinstate the original contract with Rupert Shannon and his team. Ben read it twice, then looked up at her with a frown. ?But you don?t need them any more. Especially as they weren?t much use in the first place.?

She chuckled. ?Shannon will be so keen to grab the dough, he won?t read the small print of the new contract that?ll be attached when this is posted in the morning. It basically states that they?re being hired for general duties. No specific mention of bodyguarding. Which means we?re going to put them to work mucking out the new stable complex I?m building, mowing the golf course and sifting out the swimming pools. If they refuse, it?s their choice. Either way, you?re off the hook.?

Ben folded the letter back into the envelope and handed it to her. ?Thank you, Little Moon.?

?There?s a condition. Something I want you to do.?

?Name it.?

?I want you on a flight to London. You?ve got to go and see Brooke.?

Two hours later, cutting northwards over the Channel on board his sister?s personal jet, he dialled Brooke?s number.

?It?s me,? he said.

?At last. Where have you been??

?I?ll tell you about all about it when I see you.?

She was quiet for a second. ?I don?t know when that will be, Ben.?

?It?ll be within the hour,? he said.

She said nothing, but he could hear the smile in her silence.

?You and I started something,? he said.

?Yes, we did,? she replied after a beat.

?How would you feel about picking up where we left off??

?You and me??

?You and me.?

There was a pause. ?See you in an hour,? she said.

Read on for an exclusive extract from the first book in the
thrilling new VAMPIRE FEDERATION series coming
from Scott in summer 2010.

SINCE THE DAWN of civilisation, vampires preyed on human beings, drank their blood and regarded them contemptuously as an inferior species, a mere disposable resource. For aeons, the vampires ruled.

But things have changed. With the birth of the modern age and the explosion in human communications and surveillance technologies, many vampires realized that they could no longer carry on the old ways. Something needed to be done, if the ancient culture was to survive.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the powerful World Vampire Federation was founded to control and oversee the activities of the vampire community. No longer would vampires prey unrestricted on human beings and turn them into creatures like themselves. New biotechnologies enabled the Undead to walk in daylight, living among us, in our cities, our streets. Strict laws were imposed to control vampire activity and allow their community to carry on. Quietly. Unnoticed. Undisturbed.

These laws were enforced by the Federation?s Vampire
Intelligence Agency, or VIA, with a licence granted by the
Ruling Council to hunt and destroy transgressors.

But not all the vampires were willing to obey ?

1

Eighteen years later
October 27

Pockets of thick autumnal mist drifted over the waters of the Thames as the big cargo ship cut upriver from the estuary, heading for the wharfs of the Port of London. Smaller vessels seemed to shy out of its way. With its lights poking beams through the gloom, the ship carved its way westwards into the heart of the city.

On the approach to the docks, the beat of a helicopter thudded through the chill evening air.

Eight sailors of mixed Romanian and Czech origin were assembled around the helipad on the forward deck, craning their necks up at the sky at the approaching aircraft. At their feet lay a pair of steel-reinforced crates, seven feet long, that had been wheeled up from the hold. Most of the crew preferred to keep their distance from them. The strong downdraught from the chopper?s rotors tore at the men?s clothing and hair as its pilot brought it down to land on the pad.

?Okay, boys, let?s get these bastard things off our ship,? the senior crewman yelled over the noise as the chopper?s cargo hatch slid open.

?I?d love to know what the hell?s in there,? said one of the Romanians.

?I don?t fucking want to know,? someone else replied. ?All I can say is I?m glad to be shot of them.?

There wasn?t a man aboard ship who hadn?t felt the sense of unease that had been hanging like a pall over the vessel since they?d left the Romanian port of Constantza. It hadn?t been a happy voyage. Five of the hands were sick below decks, suffering from some kind of fever that the ship?s medic couldn?t figure out. The radio kept talking about the major flu pandemic that had much of Europe in its grip. Maybe that was it. But some of the guys were sceptical. Flu didn?t make you wake up in the middle of the night screaming in terror.

The crewmen heaved each crate aboard the chopper and then stepped back in the wind blast as the cargo was strapped into place. The hatch slammed shut, the rotors accelerated to a deafening roar, and the chopper took off.

A few of the ship?s crew stood on deck and watched the aircraft?s twinkling lights disappear into the mist that overhung the city skyline. One of them quickly made the sign of the cross over his chest, and muttered a prayer under his breath. He was a devout Catholic, and his faith was normally the butt of many jokes on board.

Today, though, nobody laughed.

Crowmoor Hall
Near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

Forty miles away, the gnarly figure of Seymour Finch stepped out of the grand entrance of the manor house. He raised his bald head, peered up at the sky. The stars were out, seeming dead and flat through ragged holes in the mist that curled around the mansion?s gables and clung to the lawns.

Finch couldn?t stop grinning to himself, even though his hands were quaking in fear as he nervously, impatiently awaited the arrival of the helicopter. He glanced at his watch.

Soon. Soon.

Eventually he heard the distant beat of approaching rotor blades. He rubbed his hands together. Took out a small radio handset and spoke into it.

?He?s coming. He?s here.?

2

The Carpathian Mountains, Romania
October 31

It was getting dark as Alex Bishop emerged from the path through the woods. Across the clearing, she could see the old tumbledown house. She just hoped that her informant had been right. Lives were on the line.

She quickly checked the equipment she was carrying on her belt, unsnapped the retaining strap on the holster. The steps on the porch were rotten and she overstepped them, treading carefully. She went to the front door, all peeled paint. It swung open with a creak and she could smell the stench of rot and fungus.

Inside, the house was all in shadow. She stepped in, peering into the darkness. The door creaked shut behind her.

Her sharp ears caught something. Was that a thump from somewhere below her feet? She stiffened. Something was moving around down there. She followed the sound through the front hall towards a doorway. A rat, startled by her approach, darted into the deepening shadows.

A muffled yell from behind the door. Then another. Shrill, scared, all hell breaking loose.

Someone had got here before her. She kicked the door open with a brittle cracking and splintering, and found herself at the top of a flight of stone steps leading down to the cellar. She wasn?t alone.

Alex took in the situation. Three young guys in their twenties. One of them lay writhing in a spreading, dark pool of blood. Two still on their feet, one clutching a wooden cross, the other holding a mallet in one hand and a stake in the other. Both howling in panic, wild, demented, as the cellar?s other occupant rose up from their friend?s body and took a step towards them. His mouth opened to show the extended fangs.

Vampire.

The guy holding the cross rushed forward with a yell and held it in the vampire?s face. It was a brave thing to do, textbook horror movie heroics, but foolish. If he?d been expecting the vampire to cover its face and hiss and shrink away, he was in for a shock.

The vampire didn?t blink an eye at the cross. Alex knew he wouldn?t. Instead, he reached out and jerked his attacker brutally off his feet. Pulled him in and bit deep into his shoulder. The young guy fell twitching to the ground, blood jetting from his ripped throat.

There was nowhere for the third guy to run as the vampire turned his attentions to him and backed him towards the corner of the cellar. The young man had dropped his mallet and stake, and cowered pleading against the rough wall.

The vampire stepped closer to him. Then stopped and turned as Alex walked calmly down the cellar steps. He stared at her, and his bloodstained mouth fell open. Recognition in his eyes.

?Surprise,? she said. Reached down and drew the Desert Eagle from its holster.

The vampire snarled. ?Federation scum. Your time is over.?

?Not before yours,? she said.

And fired. The explosion was deafening in the room. Even in Alex?s strong grip, the large-calibre pistol recoiled hard.

The vampire screamed. Not because of the bullet that had ripped a fist-sized hole in his chest, but because of the instant devastating effect of the Nosferol on his system -the lethal poison developed by the Fed chemists and issued under strict control to VIA field agents like Alex Bishop.

The vampire collapsed to the cellar floor, writhing in agony, staring at his hands as the blood vessels bulged out of the skin. His face swelled grotesquely, eyes popping out of their sockets. Then blood burst out of his mouth, and his hideously distended veins exploded in a spatter of red that coated the floor and the stone wall behind him. Alex turned away from the spray. The vampire went on twitching for a second, his body peeled apart, turned almost inside out, blood still spurting from everywhere; then he lay still.

Alex holstered the gun and walked over to the young guy in the corner, grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet.

He gaped at her. ?How did you??

She could see that he had wet himself with fear. These amateurs had no idea what they were into.

?It takes a vampire to destroy a vampire properly,? she said as she unzipped the pouch on her belt. Before he could react, she?d taken out the syringe of Vambloc and jabbed it into the vein under his ear. He let out a wheezing gasp and then lost consciousness. By the time he woke up, his short-term memory of what had just happened would be completely erased.

Alex replaced the Vambloc syringe and took out the one that was loaded with Nosferol. Leaving the young guy where he lay, she stepped over to his two dead friends and injected each of them with 10ml of the clear liquid. Standard procedure, to ensure they stayed dead. She carefully capped the needle with a cork and put the syringe back into its pouch.

Two minutes later she was heading back out into the evening with the unconscious body over her shoulder. As she strode out of the house she tossed a miniature incendiary device into the doorway. She was halfway to the trees before the whole place went up in a roar of flame, bathing the murky woods in an orange glow.

Hiding the traces of another day?s work.

?Rest in peace,? she muttered. She took out her phone, keyed in Rumble?s number at the London HQ.

?Harry. You were right. It?s happening.?

Acknowledgements

Once more, the author would like to thank the great team at Avon, Maxine Hitchcock, Keshini Naidoo and Sammia Rafique, for their enthusiasm and dedication.

About the Author

Scott Mariani grew up in St Andrews, Scotland. He studied Modern Languages at Oxford and went on to work as a translator, a professional musician, a pistol shooting instructor and a freelance journalist before becoming a fulltime writer. After spending several years in Italy and France, Scott discovered his secluded writer?s haven in the wilds of west Wales, an 1830s country house complete with rambling woodland and a secret passage. When he isn?t writing, Scott enjoys jazz, movies, classic motorcycles and astronomy. His books have sold worldwide and he is currently working on an exciting new vampire series, to be published by AVON in summer 2010.

To find out more about Scott Mariani go to www.scottmariani.com

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By the same author:

The Alchemist?s Secret
The Mozart Conspiracy
The Doomsday Prophecy
The Heretic?s Treasure

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author?s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

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A Paperback Original 2010
FIRST EDITION

Copyright ? Scott Mariani 2010

Scott Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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EPub Edition ? 2010 ISBN: 978-0-00-735802-1

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