The Martyr’s Curse

Chapter Thirty

‘Where are we going?’ the woman asked.

‘Nowhere yet,’ Ben said. ‘You still have some explaining to do, Silvie. Or is it Michelle? You still have time to change your mind.’

‘It’s Silvie.’

‘What about your pal Breslin? Was that his real name?’

She nodded. ‘It’s the one on his police file. Pretty unpleasant record, I might add.’

‘So you’re still sticking with the government agent story.’

‘Of course I am. It’s the truth.’

‘All right,’ Ben said. ‘Then tell me about Breslin’s record. Any military past? Explosives experience?’

‘Just your run-of-the-mill criminal stuff,’ she said. ‘Breslin was one of the bad ones. The guy was known to be hanging around the fringes of the reformed Red Brigade when it carried out a number of murders of prominent liberals and anti-fascists in the late nineties. He was a crony of convicted European terrorists like Roberto Morandi and Marco Mezzasalma, before he fell in with Streicher. More recently he was suspected of keeping himself financially stable by dabbling in the odd ransom job. Often hauled in for questioning, never convicted. Streicher turns a blind eye to his gang’s extra-curricular activities. The rest of the time, he keeps them busy.’

‘Busy with what?’

‘His grand plan.’

‘Theft and murder’s not much of a grand plan,’ Ben said.

‘It goes beyond that. Above my pay grade.’

‘Are you saying you don’t even know?’

‘I know as much as they wanted me to know. Which isn’t a lot.’

‘Sounds like a shitty assignment,’ Ben said.

She let out a sarcastic laugh. ‘Really? A hundred and twenty-four days without any backup or contact with the outside sounds shitty? It was like living in a pressure cooker. Day to day, never knowing when they might bundle me in a car, take me out into the middle of nowhere, force me to dig my own grave and then put a bullet in my head. It wasn’t until two months in that Dexter identified himself to me as an agent.’

‘That was taking a risk.’

‘He knew who I was,’ she said. ‘Even my real name. Somebody screwed up with that one. But Dexter must have figured that an ally on the inside was worth taking the risk for. I didn’t believe him at first. I almost cut and run, thinking that they were on to me and it was a trick to flush me out. Took a week before I started to trust him. From then on, we tried to communicate when we could. We had to be so damn careful.’

‘Obviously not careful enough, in Dexter’s case.’

Her lips tightened. ‘I have no idea how Streicher made him. Maybe it was during the attack. Maybe Dexter openly refused to harm anyone. Or maybe Streicher got suspicious before, and put Dexter on the team so he could kill him.’

Ben asked, ‘So how did the agency get you in there? Download an application form from Streicher’s website?’

‘He surrounds himself with all kinds of fanatics and crazies. Michelle Faban had to fit a certain profile. In her case, it was eco-terrorism and extreme animal rights stuff. The car bombing of a pro-vivisectionist. Arson attacks on fast-food restaurants and fur farms, breaking into animal research labs, harassment, intimidation, that kind of thing. DGSI inserted me into the group by setting up a chance meeting with a guy called Willi Dorn, a Green anarchist and sometime bank robber who’d been seen meeting up with Streicher. The insertion took time. Finally, Streicher met me in person.

‘He was very suave and charming, not what I’d expected. He asked me a lot of questions about my experience, my philosophy of life, how I viewed the world, how I’d like to change it. Then asked me if I’d like to get involved in an organisation with a very special future and some really big ideas. When I asked what they were, he just smiled. Then I was introduced to some of the others, and before I knew it I was one of them. DGSI didn’t even know where I was.’

‘They let you go completely off the radar?’

‘I wasn’t very happy about that. I wanted a GPS chip hidden somewhere in my personal effects, but they wouldn’t take the chance. Phone tracking was out of the question, too. Streicher doesn’t let anyone carry their own phones, in case they could be tainted. He issues everyone with new ones, the numbers all pre-allocated and entered. He’s fanatical about security. You saw how hard it was for me to get away alone tonight. It’s virtually impossible to move without one of them breathing down your neck.’

Ben took out the phone he’d taken from Dexter’s body and held it out for her to see. ‘Dexter’s phone,’ he said. ‘I called every number. You were the only one who returned the call.’

‘The other numbers are the rest of the gang.’

‘Then a law-enforcement agency could easily trace them.’

‘To what? They’re just ghost numbers. No contracts, no registration, no names, all cash. Streicher can change everyone’s number whenever he wants, and he does, often.’

Ben laid the phone in a nook in the centre console between them. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Your pal’s not going to stay hidden back there for ever. Someone’s dog will sniff him out sooner or later. When he’s found and you’re still AWOL, it’s not going to do your cover any good. Streicher’s going to get suspicious of you, too.’

She shrugged, her movement restricted by the tape around her wrists. ‘Too late to worry about it now. I’m out of there. And don’t call him my pal.’

‘Let me think about that. You were supposed to come alone. Instead you bring Prince Charming along for the ride, both of you all tooled up and ready to shoot me, stab me, tape me up and kidnap me, or whatever you were planning on. It doesn’t help your credibility much.’

She sighed. ‘Try to look at it from my point of view, okay? You really had me fooled with your call. Maybe because I wanted to believe Dexter was still alive. I suppose I was flustered and on edge, caught off my guard, less careful than I might have been about slipping away un-noticed. I was just about to take off out of there when he stopped me, asked me where I was going in such a hurry, so late at night. What could I do? I couldn’t afford for them to get suspicious. So I went along with it. Told Breslin about the call. He figured it was a trap. Hence the hardware. I was scared he might run off and report it to Streicher, but I think he wanted to curry favour by handling it himself. Insisted on driving. The arsehole wagon was his, by the way.’

‘Makes it sound as if you lived together,’ he said. ‘A cosy little nest.’

Silvie shook her head, watching the road. ‘Hardly cosy. Streicher keeps his people together like some weird kind of commune.’

‘He lives with them?’

‘He comes and goes. Turns up now and then, hangs around for a few hours, has these little meetings and discussions, then disappears again. Nobody knows where.’

‘So where did you come from tonight that took three hours to drive here?’

‘Switzerland. It’s a townhouse in Lausanne. One of Streicher’s safe houses. I don’t know whether he owns it or rents it. All I know is, he’s got no shortage of places to move around. He can afford them. It’s part of his strategy. The guy’s insanely suspicious, even about his closest associates. The inner circle are his A team. Himself, Hannah, and a very small and select number of others. Then there’s the B team, the ones he keeps a little closer, but not too close. Then there’s the C team, the outer circle. That’s as close as I got in four months to the heart of the gang. Dexter did a little better. He managed to get closer, into the middle circle. That’s why Streicher had him on the assault team, along with B-circle guys like Breslin. I was just part of the logistics.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘We came in a convoy,’ she explained. ‘Twelve people in three vehicles, from the base in Lausanne to a meeting point just the other side of the Franco-Swiss border. Streicher provided the vehicles. Identical Range Rovers, black, top of the line, seven-seaters. I was driving one of them. Another of his people, Dominik Baiza, was there waiting for us with an articulated Volvo rig. Where he’d come from in it, I have no idea. It was transporting the attack vehicle. A BearCat. The kind of armoured truck used for SWAT raids on heavily armed drug gangs. It’s fitted with a special ram that can breach any kind of barricade.’

‘I know what it is,’ Ben said grimly.

‘Streicher and Hannah arrived by chopper soon afterwards. I don’t know where they came from either.’

‘Fifteen people in all,’ Ben said. The list was already taking shape inside his head.

‘Two of his guys, Chavanne and Cazzitti, took the rotors off the chopper, so it would fit inside the trailer. Baiza stayed behind to mind the lorry while the BearCat joined the rest of the convoy with Streicher at the wheel, and the other fourteen of us headed over the border into France. All lonely, empty mountain roads. No cops. At that point neither Dexter nor I had any idea where we were going, or what was happening. Only that it was a huge deal, some plan that Streicher had been working on for months. We stopped at a second point, off the road, way up in the mountains. We made camp for a few hours there while final preparations were made. There was a lot of activity happening inside the BearCat. Dexter and the rest went inside and didn’t come back out. I suppose they were getting tooled up, checking weapons, having their final pre-operational briefing.’

‘The attack happened around four-thirty in the morning,’ Ben said. ‘Is that right?’

‘How did you know?’

‘Forensic pointers,’ he said. ‘Plus common sense. It’s what any half-decent tactician would have done. They could have hit the place by day, but at this time of year some of the monks might be out working in the fields or tending to the animals. No guarantee they’d get them all, and too big a risk that one or two might be able to slip away and raise the alarm. The time to get them all together in one place, without having to go cell-to-cell rounding them up or sweeping every part of the monastery, was before dawn as they were getting together for morning Mass.’

Silvie went on. ‘Nobody was saying much. It was very tense. Finally, sometime before four, the assault crew went off in the BearCat.’

‘Names,’ Ben said.

‘There were eight of them. Streicher and Hannah Gissel, of course. Torben Roth and Wolf Schilling, two of his A-team crew who’ve been with him for ever. Then Breslin, whom you’ve … ah … met. Cazzitti and Chavanne. Lastly, Dexter.’

Ben ticked off the names on his mental list. ‘Leaving six of you behind.’

She nodded. ‘Me, a guy called Stefan Ringler who was always hitting on me, then Holger Grubitz. Another creep. Then the nerdy one, Anton Lindquist, kind of a bookish type, thick glasses. I don’t quite know what his involvement is, but he’s definitely no tough guy. Then there’s the Pole, Tomasz Wokalek. A real shit-kicker, that one. Finally, the Dutchman, Rutger Zwart. None of us with much to do but twiddle our thumbs waiting for the others to return.’

‘Which was about four hours later,’ Ben said. ‘Correct?’

She looked surprised that he could know that. ‘More forensic pointers?’

‘Three indicators that they hung around the monastery for quite some time,’ he said. ‘Firstly, the bodies of the monks were cold when I found them, but Dexter’s was still reasonably fresh. Suggesting a lengthy interval between the killings. Secondly, the timing of the explosive charges. The initial one was intended to open up a space underneath the monastery. The next was designed to close it again, which it very nearly did with me still inside. It had been set just an hour before I got there. And thirdly, they had a heavy cargo to shift, and a long way to shift it.’

She glanced sideways at him, as far as she could turn against her restraints. He saw the gleam of her eyes in the darkness. ‘What heavy cargo?’ she asked.

‘That’s what this is about,’ Ben said. ‘You know it as well as I do. The gold that was under the monastery. Bullion. A ton of it. What other reason could there be?’

‘I don’t know anything about any gold,’ she said.