Scott Mariani - The Mozart Conspiracy

Kroll hit the remote again and the picture cut to black. ‘I was coming to that. I have some bad news for you. I am afraid the beautiful Ms Llewellyn did not survive the incident.’

Behind him, Glass suppressed a snigger.

‘I would have preferred to take her alive,’ Kroll went on. ‘I was looking forward to meeting her in the flesh. But unfortunately for her, it appears that someone taught her how to operate a firearm. I wonder who that might have been?’ He smiled. ‘She took it upon herself to open fire on my men, and they were obliged to take her down.’

Fingers of ice curled around Ben’s spine and held it tight. ‘You’re a liar.’

Kroll reached into his briefcase and laid something on the desk. It clunked on the wood. ‘Is this familiar to you?’

It was a gold locket. Dull, dirty, and spattered with russety spots of dried blood.

Glass’s shoulders quaked and a grin spread across his face. Kroll shoved the locket across the desk. ‘Look more closely.’

Ben picked it up and turned it over in his hands. They were beginning to shake. The letters LL were finely engraved on the back.

‘Open it,’ said Kroll.

Ben pressed the little catch with his thumb and the locket popped open. His heart was pounding, and when he saw what was inside all hope left him and he closed his eyes. The miniature photos faced one another inside the opened locket. On one side was Oliver, on the other Richard and Margaret Llewellyn.

The last time Ben had seen it, it had been hanging around Leigh’s neck.

He slowly snapped the locket shut and let it fall back on the desk.

He swallowed. His mouth was dry. ‘That’s no proof.’

‘Very well. I wanted to spare you this, but you are stubborn.’ Kroll tapped another key and suddenly Leigh was on the screen.

She was lying sprawled in a thicket.

Her eyes were glazed and dead. There was blood on her face and all down her front.

He sat still for a moment. It was impossible. But his eyes were telling him it was true. Screaming it. She was dead. Leigh Llewellyn, gone like smoke.

There was so much he’d wanted to say to her.

He felt faint, drifting in a black void. He swayed in his chair. His eyes clamped shut.

‘Beautiful even in death,’ Kroll said, gazing at the screen. ‘But she won’t remain so for long, after the wild animals have found her. They may have done already.’

Ben couldn’t speak. Then, out of the emptiness inside him, a massive wave of rage came surging up. He snapped open his eyes. The first thing he saw, the only thing he could see, was Kroll sitting there with that impassive look on his face. It was the look of a scientist observing the death throes of a laboratory animal and calmly noting the details.

Ben hurled himself across the desk. The blow he aimed at the old man’s neck would have crushed his windpipe against his spine. They could have done what they wanted to him after that, but he would have had the pleasure of watching Kroll die a panicked and tortured death within about fifteen seconds.

But Glass was quick, and the frame of the 9mm came down hard on Ben’s head before he could reach the old man. Kroll kicked out with his shiny shoes and his executive swivel chair rolled out of range. The door burst open and the guards stormed in. They grabbed Ben and threw him back in his chair. His wrists were cuffed roughly behind his back with the chain through the steel tubing.

Kroll wheeled himself back towards the desk and straightened his tie. ‘Evidently you cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner.’

Ben shook blood out of his eye. ‘You’re a dead man, Kroll.’

‘I doubt that,’ said Kroll. ‘We haven’t finished yet. There was one survivor of the incident in Slovenia.’ He pressed another key and brought up another image.

Ben’s shoulders dropped.

It was Clara Kinski. They’d taken her.

The cell looked small and dank. She was tied down to a bare mattress on an iron-framed bed, her small wrists and ankles strapped to the bars with duct tape. She was blindfolded and struggling weakly, as though her strength was giving out.

‘That is a live webcam image,’ Kroll said. ‘I can prove it to you by sending an email order this very moment to have one of her fingers removed as you watch. Would you like that?’

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘I wouldn’t. But I know what I would like to see.’

A strange, wild light in the prisoner’s eyes disconcerted Kroll for an instant, but he hid it with a smile. ‘You are in no position to be defiant, Major,’ he said. ‘I am about to make you a proposal, and I suggest you consider it carefully. Based on your decision, the child either lives or she dies. It’s as simple as that.’

Ben shut his eyes for a long moment. In his mind, Leigh was looking at him. She smiled. He opened his eyes again, controlling his heartbeat and his breathing. ‘I’m listening,’ he said quietly after a long pause.

‘Tell me if you recognize this person.’ Clara disappeared from the screen and was replaced by a picture of a handsome man in his early forties. He was well-tailored but casual, and the snap looked as though it had been taken at some kind of VIP function.

‘I don’t know who he is,’ Ben muttered truthfully.

Kroll watched him closely, as though assessing whether or not to believe him. He nodded. ‘You should follow politics, Major. That is Philippe Aragon. The candidate for the EU Commission Vice-Presidency. He is your target.’

‘I’m not an assassin.’

‘That is precisely what you are. And you like to keep your skills well-practised. It isn’t long since you gunned down five men in cold blood on your little mercy mission in Turkey.’ Kroll waved that aside. ‘Anyway, I didn’t say I wanted him assassinated. We want you to bring him to us. We will take care of him.’

‘I imagine you will,’ Ben said. ‘I’ve seen the sick things your Order of Ra does to people.’

‘The Order of Ra!’ Kroll’s wrinkled face split into a yellow smile and he twisted his neck to grin up at Glass. Glass smirked.

Kroll wiped his mouth and his grin faded. ‘It has been a long time since anyone has called us by that ridiculous old name. The Order of Ra is part of history, my young friend. It is as much a relic as its founder, my great-great-great grandfather Viktor Kroll.’

‘But I see you keep up some of your traditions,’ Ben said. ‘Bullet in the head too modern for you people?’

‘Some people are worth no more than a bullet,’ Kroll said. ‘For men like Philippe Aragon we reserve a special kind of reception.’

‘Like ritual execution,’ Ben replied.

Kroll shrugged. ‘Some traditions are worth keeping.’

‘What are you going to do, cut his tongue out the way you did to that other guy-whoever he was?’

Kroll said nothing. He watched Ben for a moment, again as though assessing the truth of his words. Then he gave that icy smile once more. ‘The punishment fits the crime,’ he said. ‘Men who cannot keep their tongues from wagging have them removed. In Aragon’s case we have something a little different in mind. This will take place in precisely two days from now, after you have acquired him and delivered him to a prearranged rendezvous with my agents.’ Kroll reached out and pressed another key. The image of Aragon was replaced with a picture of a house.

Ben ran his eyes over the unusual building. The house was a radical design of curved steel and glass, cut into the side of a sweeping embankment. It was a peaceful setting. The sky was blue, the grass was green and there were rolling hills in the background.

Cuffed in his chair, blood running down his face, Leigh dead, Ben wanted to be in that peaceful scene more than anything in the world. Anywhere but here.