The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET. Scott Mariani
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means we can largely rule out a financial motive,’ he said. ‘Unless it was an amateur job. Snatch the person first and worry about the details later. But these guys sound more professional than that. And I don’t think it was a case of mistaken identity either. They knew where you were living. Someone had done their homework.’ He paused to take another long drink of whisky. He laid the empty glass down with a clunk on the table. ‘What are you planning to do now?’ he asked.
‘I want to get out of London, for a start. I can’t stand it here any more, trapped like an animal in this hotel. I’ve got to be in Venice in mid-January for The Magic Flute. But first I’m heading for west Oxfordshire, in the country. Dave and his team are escorting me there.’
‘Why there?’
‘It’s a place I bought a while ago. I’ve been thinking of setting up an opera school.’
‘Who knows about it?’
‘Nobody yet, apart from myself, my PA and my business manager,’ she said. ‘At the moment it’s still just a big old empty house with nothing but a few boxes of stuff sent over from Monte Carlo. I haven’t got around to furnishing it. But it’s liveable in. I’ll stay there for a few days until I decide what to do next.’
‘I’ll tell you what you need to do,’ Ben said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door. ‘First thing, you need to ditch those idiots outside. They’re a liability. I could have been anybody walking in here. They didn’t even slow me down.’
She nodded. ‘You’ve put things into perspective a little. So, say I agree to ditch them right away. What next?’
‘You want me to step in?’
‘That’s what I was hoping,’ she said.
‘I’m not a bodyguard, Leigh. It isn’t what I do. But I know people. We’ll get you some proper protection.’
She looked unhappy. ‘Why should I exchange one bunch of heavies for another?’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘The people I have in mind are professionals. The real thing. You would barely even know they were there, but you’d be safe. I know, I trained them.’
‘I’d feel safer with you,’ she said.
‘Even after what I did to you?’
‘You won’t let me down again?’ she asked. ‘Not this time?’
He sighed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t let you down again.’
Berne, Switzerland
Heini Müller huddled closer to the fire and warmed his hands. Snowflakes were spiralling down from the night sky, sizzling against the metal sides of the brazier.
It had been a long day, and some of the protesters were getting restless waiting for something to happen. He ran his eye over the crowd. They weren’t as vociferous as they’d been that afternoon. People were standing around smoking herbal cigarettes, sipping blackcurrant tea and decaf from their flasks, talking in groups, kicking their feet, looking tired and cold. Some people had given up and gone home, but there were still about four hundred of them.
They’d tried earlier to get inside the hotel grounds, but when these bastards had their conferences the security was tight. The place was locked up solid and they’d had to content themselves with waving banners outside the tall gates. The police were keeping their distance, vans and motorcycles parked some way up the road, and more inside the grounds. The cops were nervous. They knew they were seriously outnumbered.
The big hotel stood a few hundred yards away, across snowy lawns. There were thirteen limos parked outside the conference building, black, identical. A few minutes ago, Heini’s girlfriend Franka had spotted a bunch of drivers emerge from a side entrance to wipe snow off the cars. It looked like something was beginning to happen at last.
‘Here they come,’ someone yelled. The protesters picked up their banners like weapons. STOP CLIMATE CHAOS. ARAGON FOR EUROPE.
Heini watched through Franka’s binoculars as the conference building opened and the attendees filed out under the snow. The youngest of the men were middle-aged. They were all smartly dressed and some of the older ones wore hats. The hotel forecourt had been salted and swept for the Important Men, and the drivers and hotel staff were in attendance with umbrellas. Motorcycle police mounted their white Honda Pan Europeans, and plain-clothed security men stood around talking on radios.
Thirteen drivers simultaneously opened thirteen limo rear doors, and the passengers got in. The doors slammed and the hotel staff gathered respectfully under the snow as the cars pulled away. The procession purred softly down the private road towards the tall gates where the protesters were waiting. Flanking motorcycles led the way, and four security cars brought up the rear.
In the back of the lead limousine a slightly built, smartly dressed man in his late sixties reclined into the leather seat. His name was Werner Kroll and he was the committee president. He folded his hands delicately on his lap and waited patiently as the limo approached the thronging, raging crowd.
Kroll’s assistant sat opposite him. He was a younger man, in his early forties. He was muscular and still wore his hair the way he had in his military days. He turned to watch the waving banners with a scowl of derision. ‘Idiots,’ he said, pointing a gloved finger. ‘Look at them. What do they think they’re achieving?’
‘Democracy gives them the illusion of freedom,’ Kroll replied softly, gazing at them.
The gates swung open automatically to let the limousines through. The protesters immediately swarmed around the cars, yelling slogans and shaking their banners angrily. There were a lot more of them than usual, Kroll observed. Two years ago the demonstrators outside these meetings would be little more than a disordered band of hippies, sixty or seventy at the most and easily within the police’s power to subdue. Things were different now.
The crowd surrounded the car. The police were mingling with the demonstrators now, grabbing people and dragging them away to the waiting vans. The pitch was rising fast. Three officers grabbed hold of a young man carrying an ARAGON FOR EUROPE banner who was blocking the car’s path. The banner clattered against the windscreen, the rough painted words large against the glass.
Kroll knew the name Aragon very well. Aragon was the man who was giving these people their power. In a few short years the charismatic young Europolitician had risen from obscurity to being able to command massive popular support for his Green and anti-nuclear policies. It wasn’t just a group of hippies, radicals and committed lefties protesting any longer. Aragon was appealing to the middle classes. And that was dangerous.
Heini Müller reached into his bag and took out a box of eggs. He was a vegan and didn’t normally buy them, but for this he’d made an exception. The eggs were months old. Heini stood grinning as the lead limo approached, its headlights blazing. He grabbed an egg out of the box and raised his arm to hurl it against the window of the limo. Someone else was shaking up a spray-can of red paint.
As Heini was about to smash the egg against the first car, it stopped. The opaque window whirred down.
Heini froze. Suddenly the roar of the crowd was silent in his ears. The old man in the back of the limo was staring at him. His gaze was like ice. It seemed to drain the blood out of Heini, who stood transfixed with the egg in his hand. His arm fell limp, and something cracked. The window whirred up again and the gleaming black limo moved silently on.
Heini Müller looked down at his hand. The rotten yolk dripped from his fingers. The cars went by him and he just stood there. Then the yelling filled his ears again. A policeman grabbed his hair and he was on the ground, kicking and squirming.
* * *
Kroll