‘You mean kidnapped. What facilities?’
‘It’s a specialised laboratory unit in the Black Forest,’ Mike said. ‘Extremely secret, very well hidden in the mountains. Armed guards patrol twenty-four-seven.’
‘Germany. That’s where you said you were going next.’
‘I travel up to the lab from time to time,’ Mike admitted. ‘It’s part of my work.’
Ben glared at him. ‘To do what, help train your kidnap victims into little psychic spies for whichever government agency bids the highest?’
Mike shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work like that. It’s been tried, and it’s a waste of time. The subjects failed to perform under the duress of being separated from their families and placed in an unfamiliar environment. Coercion didn’t work, and the incentive of financial gain was meaningless to them. They were children. Simply too frightened and confused by what was happening to them, with fatal results for whatever ESP aptitude they might have shown under normal relaxed conditions. We had to come up with alternatives. It’s now essentially a neuroscience-based approach.’
Ben could feel the cold fury slowly spreading through him. Loose matches sprinkled the caravan floor as he crushed the box flat in his fist without even knowing it. ‘Neuroscience-based — what does that mean? That you pull their brains apart into pieces to see how they work? Is that the idea?’
‘No!’ Mike protested, blanching at the look on Ben’s face. ‘I mean, surgical procedures are strictly considered an extreme measure.’
‘An extreme measure. But not out of the question.’
‘Where at all possible, other analytic methods are used. CT scans, imaging techniques…’
‘Carl had better be alive,’ Ben warned. ‘Or you’re going to wish you never had been.’
‘Look, I’m fond of that boy. I mean it. I’ve spent a lot of time with him. You think I’d want him to suffer?’
‘What happened to the children who failed to perform under duress?’
Mike looked down at his chest and made no reply.
Ben stood up, fists clenched. ‘Answer me, Mike. What happened to them? They couldn’t be returned to their families, could they? Not after what they’d been through. Not in the state they were in. Did they just disappear?’
‘Look, that’s not my area,’ Mike blurted. ‘I’m just a field assessor.’
Ben stood over him, wanting to tear his head off. ‘How many other children like Carl are they holding now?’
Mike’s reply was almost a sob. ‘Carl makes seven.’
‘Boys and girls? How old?’
‘Both. Gender makes no difference. The youngest is Franck. He’s nearly eight. Satoko’s the eldest now, with Kristina g—’ Mike checked himself and shut his mouth.
‘You were about to say “gone”, weren’t you?’ Ben asked harshly. ‘What happened to Kristina?’
‘She …escaped. There was …an accident. She fell.’
‘Fell?’
‘Down a ravine. The mountains are full of them. They found the body at the bottom …but you have to believe me. I wasn’t responsible for what happened, I swear. I wasn’t even there.’
‘Oh, you’re not that involved,’ Ben said, his fists clenched in anger. ‘Then I suppose you didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Paul Finley, either.’
‘He was asking too many questions,’ Mike jabbered. ‘By the time we realised he was following me and taking pictures of my meetings, he’d already identified one of my contacts from an old army connection. He was getting too close.’
‘So you had him killed. Just like your three goons for hire tried to do to me in Dover. Did they actually believe Drew Hunter had sent them, or is that just what they were told to say?’
‘We really didn’t want you to be hurt!’
‘No, you didn’t want to have to replace me,’ Ben said. ‘Not with your precious asset on the run, and the clock ticking. But you couldn’t let me get too close to Finley’s discoveries, either, could you? My purpose was just to recover your lost property, and you bastards were watching me the whole time to make sure I did my job. Dover. Monaco. Every step of the way. I know when I’m being followed. I wasn’t. How did you do it?’
‘You don’t even begin to understand what you’re dealing with here, do you?’ Mike yelled with a flash of defiance. ‘Linden Global is one of the biggest private defence corporations in Europe. Big enough to have their own satellite division. They see everything. And they’re watching us right now. They can pinpoint our location to within a metre.’
‘I doubt that very much, Mike. Nobody knew I was coming back to Jersey. I’ve been presumed dead for three weeks, remember? Burned up in the fire. And you know what they say about presumption.’
‘I’ll be missed, don’t you see?’ Mike threatened. ‘I’m due to report to the lab. If I don’t turn up at the pick-up-point, the pilot will report back immediately and they’ll know something happened. It won’t be long before they figure it out. They’ll hunt you down. You’ll be a walking dead man.’
Ben smiled. ‘Then we’ll have to make sure you don’t miss that flight, won’t we?’
20
The small airfield was out in the countryside, twenty minutes from the ferry port of Saint-Malo. The corporate brains behind the Indigo Project were clearly hot on secrecy, as Ben could tell from the disused state of the rendezvous point. Buildings and hangars stood empty amid patches of yellowed and weed-strewn grass that waved in the breeze. There wasn’t a soul about to witness the mysterious comings and goings of Dr Mark Simonsen, a.k.a Mike Greerson, and that was exactly how his employers wanted things to be.
Mike peered closely at his watch. ‘Any time now,’ he muttered, and squinted myopically up at the sky, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun. He walked a few steps from the car towards the airstrip. He was still moving stiffly from his undignified confinement in the boot during the ferry crossing from Jersey. ‘I hear it,’ he said, scanning the sky.
So could Ben. The distant buzz of an approaching plane, growing steadily louder. Moments later, he saw the incoming aircraft’s tiny white speck against the blue.
Ben grabbed Mike’s briefcase from the car. He’d already examined its contents on the ferry. There was no incriminating paperwork inside, only a set of disks containing information that he was certain would be inaccessible to him even if he’d had a computer. The case also contained a laminated ID pass card and a clip-on name badge, both with the company header “Drexler Optik GmbH”. In a zippered compartment was a spare pair of glasses, a comb and some pens.
‘You do realise this isn’t going to work,’ Mike said, turning round with a scowl. ‘The pilot’s going to take one look at you and sound the alert. I’m supposed to be the only passenger.’
Ben nodded. ‘You’re right. It won’t work. In fact, I was meaning to talk to you about that.’
Mike stared at him in blank incomprehension. ‘But you said—’
‘I know what I said,’ Ben replied, laying the briefcase down on the bonnet of the car. ‘That I didn’t want you to miss this flight. Fact is, Mike, I lied. Which I have no problem doing to vermin like you. This is as far as you go.’
Mike’s jaw hung open as he realised what Ben was saying. ‘No,’ he mumbled, staggering back a step, then another. ‘Wait. Let’s be reas—’
Ben made it quick, for the sake of economy if not merciful compassion. The blow to the neck was sharp, swift and instantly lethal, and he caught Mike’s falling body before it hit the ground.
The approaching plane was beginning to drop in altitude as the pilot prepared to land. It would be here in ninety seconds. Ben had work to do, and he needed to move fast. Cupping his hands under the dead man’s arms, he dragged the corpse a few yards and let it flop to the concrete next to the car while he transferred his own wallet from his leather jacket to his jeans. It contained only cash, no cards, no ID. Taking off his jacket, he bundled it into the back of the car alongside his bag. Next came off the dead man’s tweed jacket, which Ben laid across the car bonnet beside the briefcase. He locked the car up, pocketed the key and then bent down to grab the dead body by the wrists and haul it hurriedly out of sight into the thick bushes at the edge of the airstrip.