Scott Mariani - The Nemesis Program

When would he see her again? Emotions flashed up inside him: sorrow, guilt, anger, resentment against what had happened, against Roberta Ryder for bringing it on him.

No. It wasn’t fair to blame her. He just had to see this through. Everything would be all right, he told himself uncertainly.

He chucked the bundled-up Beretta machine carbine onto the bed. Nearby stood a small antique bookcase that Brooke had been gradually filling from a half-unpacked box. His eye drawn to the row of titles on the shelf, Ben spotted a familiar leather-bound spine among her assorted paperbacks and psychology textbooks. He wistfully paused to take it off the shelf. It was the volume of Milton’s works given to him by Jude’s mother shortly before she and Simeon had been murdered. Inside it had been the fateful letter telling Ben the secret of Jude’s real paternity.

As Ben turned the book over in his hands, it fell open and he found himself staring at the first page of Paradise Lost .

Paradise Lost. He thought about that for a moment, then snapped the book shut and quickly replaced it on the shelf. He walked across to his own wardrobe, wrenched open the door and found his old green canvas army bag where he’d carelessly stuffed it into the back underneath a load of stuff, thinking he’d never need it again. You got that wrong, he thought as he dug it out and tossed it on the bed. The first thing to go inside was the gun, which was compact enough to fit without bits poking incriminatingly out of the green canvas. He began rummaging through drawers and boxes for items of spare clothing.

When he’d done packing, he strapped up the bag, slung it over his shoulder and said a quick, silent goodbye to the room. When he’d be back was anybody’s guess.

Downstairs, he found Roberta wandering around the semi-furnished rooms and looking agitated. ‘You want something to eat?’ he asked her. ‘There isn’t much in the house. We’ve been living on takeaways and eating out until we got settled.’ The last word stabbed him as he said it.

She shook her head with a frown. ‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Me neither,’ he said.

‘I’ve been thinking. We’re heading back to Paris, right? Makes sense.’

‘That’s where this thing started,’ he said. ‘I aim to get there as quickly as possible.’

‘But how’s that going to work?’ she went on anxiously. ‘If these sons of bitches can pinpoint my exact location in some backwoods Oxfordshire village, just like that out of all the places I could’ve turned up, it means they’ve got access to Christ knows what kind of information. They’ve got to be hooked into every database out there. Which means that the moment I step over the Channel into France, they’ll know right where to find me. There’s no way I can travel unnoticed, is there?’ She eyed the green bag hanging heavily from his shoulder. ‘And if you’ve got what I think you’ve got in there, it’s not something you can exactly sneak by the customs officials.’

‘There are ways we can get across undetected.’

Roberta looked sceptical. ‘If you’re thinking of swimming the Channel, think again. I can’t swim. Or maybe you were planning on stealing a rowboat?’

‘Not exactly,’ he replied, deep in thought. He glanced at his Omega diver’s watch. Its skeletonised hands read 3.17. ‘Might just about do it,’ he murmured, more to himself than to Roberta.

‘Might just about do what?’

Ben didn’t reply. Leaving Roberta looking mystified, he took out his phone and quickly punched in a number that was extremely familiar to him.

Jeff Dekker picked up after two rings. ‘Le Val Tactical Training Centre.’

‘It’s me.’

‘Thought you’d still be rehearsing for your rehearsal about now,’ Jeff replied. Ben could hear the smile in his tone of voice.

‘That’s one reason I’m calling,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t bother coming over to England tomorrow.’

‘Why’s that, mate? You found a better best man to walk you up the aisle?’ The smile was still there. Jeff thought Ben was kidding.

‘I’m serious,’ Ben said. ‘It’s off, Jeff. The whole thing’s off. Long story.’

Jeff seemed about to burst out into the reaction of amazement, stupefaction, outright disbelief or a combination of all three that Ben had been expecting – but something in Ben’s voice made him stop. ‘You want to talk about it, mate?’ he asked quietly.

‘No, I don’t.’ Ben said. He hadn’t called to pour his heart out. The second and more important reason for the call was to ask a question. ‘Listen, Jeff, the old landing strip near Valognes. Driven out that way in the last couple of weeks or so?’ The year before, they’d toyed with buying the disused airfield to convert into a civilian rifle range but then dropped the project as the location was too far from Le Val.

‘I passed there last Tuesday,’ Jeff replied, sounding bemused.

‘So you’d have noticed if anyone had dug it all up or parked a load of artic trailers on it.’

‘Far as I could see, it’s just the way it was. What the fuck d’you want to know for?’

‘One more thing,’ Ben said. ‘If I needed the Alpina for a couple of days, could you get Raoul or Paul to leave it there for me?’ Raoul de la Vega and Paul Bonnard were the two ex-military trainers who worked as assistant tutors at Le Val. The Alpina was a high-performance BMW 7 Series used as a demonstrator for the bodyguard defensive driving courses taught at the facility, called VIP Evasion / Reaction, VIPER for short.

‘Shouldn’t be a problem. But what—?’

‘Thanks, Jeff. I’ll be in touch.’ Before his friend could say anything more, he ended the call.

‘Who’re you phoning now?’ Roberta asked as Ben immediately started stabbing in another number.

‘My sister,’ he replied.

She stared at him. ‘ You have a sister?’

‘That’s another long story,’ Ben said. It always seemed so strange to him that Ruth was only a call away. For so many years, she’d seemed to have been lost forever. From child kidnap victim to adopted daughter of a billionaire tycoon – whose business empire she now ran like she’d been doing it all her life – Ruth had walked a strange path, almost as strange as her elder sibling’s.

‘Well, hello, big brother,’ her voice chirped on the line.

‘Where are you?’ Ben asked.

‘Nice,’ she said acerbically. ‘The customary greeting. No “Hi, Ruth, how are things? How’s your life?” All I get is “Where are you?”. As it happens, I’m on my way over to you right now. We’ll be touching down at London Oxford Airport in just under … let’s see, say thirty minutes.’ Her tone changed suddenly as excitement bubbled through. ‘You know, Ben, I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this. Seeing you and Brooke getting hitched at last—’

‘What plane are you coming on?’ Ben cut in, interrupting her. As CEO of Steiner Industries, the mega-corporation Ruth had inherited from her adoptive father, the Swiss billionaire Maximilian Steiner, she had the pick of one of the biggest corporate fleets of aircraft in Europe.

‘Wow, you are in a chatty mood, bro. Since you ask, I’m using my favourite little runaround, the new Steiner Industries ST-1 turboprop. We do lead the way in promoting eco-friendly aviation, as I may have told you before.’

‘No more than ten or twenty times,’ he said. ‘What’s the LDR for that aircraft?’

‘Landing distance required?’ she replied, sounding perplexed by the question. ‘Uh, minimum eighteen hundred and forty feet.’ Even as a young child, Ruth had always been sharp when it came to numbers, and few things escaped her. ‘But why do you want to know?’

‘Range?’