Scott Mariani - The Heretic’s Treasure

He’d been forced to kill, too. Every time he’d done it, it sickened him so badly he’d sworn it would be the last-but it never was. What tormented him most of all was that he was so good at it.

So many times he’d wanted out. So many times he’d sat on his little stretch of beach near his rambling home on the west coast of Ireland and prayed for a normal life.

But how could he retire from it all and still sleep at night, knowing that people out there were in need of his help? It was both a calling and a curse, and for a very long time he’d felt as though he was simply destined to sacrifice himself to it. He’d tried to walk away-but every time it would call him back, drag him back in, and his heart wouldn’t let him say no. Stability, happiness, relationships, any chance of a normal existence: he’d given up everything for it.

And it had cost the life of the one person he’d loved more than anyone. His wife, Leigh, had been murdered by a man called Jack Glass. A man he should have killed. He’d failed. She’d died.

For a long, long time, that had brought Ben to his knees. For a long time, he wanted to die himself.

Then, one night in Ireland a few months ago, while sitting alone on the empty beach, he’d had the idea that changed everything. More than a brainwave, it was like a miracle vision that had kept him awake all night and seemed to breathe life into him. By the next morning, his plans were already coming together.

It was a vision of a special training school, a place dedicated to passing on the skills that he’d acquired through hard experience. There was so much he could teach. As the demand for specialised kidnap and ransom insurance for high-risk business personnel rocketed higher each year, so did the need for trained negotiators to bargain with abductors and help bring people back safely. And, as the ruthlessness and organisation of professional kidnappers soared to overtake that of even the worst of the drug lords, increasingly expert training was necessary to help law enforcement response units deal with certain contingencies that normal agencies couldn’t handle. Then there was the need for bodyguards to learn special close-protection skills to protect their clients from professional kidnappers. The demand for courses in situational awareness and avoidance strategies for people at risk of kidnapping. And more. It was a long list.

So Ben had started calling on former army contacts, mostly Special Forces guys he could trust, talking to people he hadn’t talked to in years. He’d known from the start that some of the courses would involve firearms training. That couldn’t be done in the UK, or his home in the Irish Republic. He had to move.

After a few weeks of searching, northern France had offered the ideal location in the shape of a tumbledown rural property called Le Val. Deep in the Normandy countryside, the old farm was close enough to the international airport at Cherbourg and the town of Valognes to be practical, yet remote enough to allow him to turn the place into the kind of facility he wanted. Over sixty acres of sweeping valley and woodland, accessible only from a long, winding track. The only neighbours were farmers, and the tiny village nearby had a shop and a bar. It was perfect for him.

When the sale had gone through, he’d said a sad farewell to the old rambling house on Galway Bay where he’d lived for many years, and got on a plane.

Now he knew he’d never look back.

In the months since the move, Le Val had been transformed. The renovated stone farmhouse had a large communal room for the trainees, and a huge stone-floored kitchen with a big table where they all ate together at night. Ben himself had always had simple needs, and his private quarters consisted of a modest two-bedroom apartment upstairs.

Meanwhile, new buildings had sprouted up quickly around the large farmyard: the main office, canteen, shower and toilet facilities, a purpose-built gym. Trainees were housed in a basic dormitory building across from the farmhouse. Six small rooms, two bunks to a room, with metal lockers painted olive green. It could have been a military dorm and it was a little rough and ready for some tastes-but there’d been no complaints. People knew they were getting the best. The only concession Ben had made to the softer corporate types, the suits sent to him by insurance companies keen to train up capable kidnap and ransom negotiators, was to build a slightly more luxurious conference room and lecture theatre at the far end of the complex.

But the real focus and purpose of the place was for the more hands-on stuff-the kind of training Ben specialised in, for the kind of people who were serious about learning to deal with extreme contingencies. A number of European military and police units had already signed contracts to come and sharpen up their hostage rescue skills with someone they knew was one of the best in the world. Ben had built two outdoor shooting ranges, one short for pistol and shotgun training, the other for long-range sniper work. The semi-derelict cottage in the woods had been stripped out and equipped with plywood partitions to create a maze of corridors and rooms where teams were drilled in close-quarter battle and live-fire room entry. Some weeks, the school was getting through thousands of rounds of ammunition.

The facility had been tough to set up. Apart from the arduous building work he’d had to jump through a thousand hoops and wade through a jungle of red tape to get the clearance for live-fire weapons training. There’d been official permissions to obtain from the French and British governments, from NATO, from everybody. He’d been buried in paperwork, glued to phones and knee-deep in mud and rubble for three months. He’d never been more thankful that his SAS days had left him fluent in several languages, including French, allowing him to wrangle with the local authorities until his voice was hoarse.

But no sooner had the authorities finally greenlit the operation, enquiries started flooding in from everywhere. The diary had filled up fast and stayed that way for the last four months. Ben was in business, and he knew it was something he should have done a long time ago.

As he drove, he overtook a tractor that was ambling down the country lane. He waved, recognising Duchamp, one of the local farmers, at the wheel. The old guy waved back. Ben got on well with him, and had spent a lot of time in his farmhouse talking over bottles of excellent homemade cider. His visits to Duchamp’s place invariably ended with him loading up the Land Rover with cases of the stuff. Duchamp’s brother was the local butcher who supplied the meat for Le Val, and one of his cousins, Marie-Claire, came in to cook for the trainees.

When summer came, Ben was planning to hold a massive hog-roast for all the locals. He liked these people, their straightforward philosophy of life, their total attunement to nature, and the way they didn’t ask too many questions about his business. They didn’t care about the secrecy, the sound of gunfire, the barbed wire or the ‘KEEP OUT’ signs on the high wooden gates. As far as they were concerned, the facility at Le Val was just a glorified adventure tourism place for corporate types-and if they were happy, Ben was happy.

Approaching Cherbourg, he pulled up in the airport car park and left Storm sitting inside as he walked across the tarmac towards the arrivals building.

The woman he was coming to collect was Dr Brooke Marcel, a clinical psychologist and expert in hostage psychology who had been attached to police Special Operations in London for nine years. Ben had first met her back in his SAS days, when he’d attended one of her lectures and been impressed with her sharp mind and depth of insight. She’d been one of the first people he contacted when he was starting up his centre. Every few weeks, he flew her out to France to lecture the trainees-which, being half French on her father’s side, suited her perfectly. He enjoyed her company and always looked forward to her visits.