Bring Him Back

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.

It only took a moment to dump the corpse where nobody would find it for a good while. Ben ran back to the car. The plane was coming in to land. He slipped on the tweed jacket; not a bad fit. Opening up the briefcase, he took out Mike’s spare glasses: chunky designer plastic, different from the thin wire frames Ben had always seen him in. Ben put them on. They made everything look too small, and threatened to start his eyes watering if he wore them too long. Next he took out the dead man’s comb, and used the wing mirror to quickly smooth and part his hair in a rough imitation of the way Mike had worn his.

By this time, the plane had touched down and was taxiing along the strip towards him. A red and white Cessna 400. Single pilot, capacity for three passengers and a fuel range of over twelve hundred miles. Ben smiled and waved casually as he walked up to meet it, briefcase in hand.

The aircraft halted and its gullwing cockpit hatches popped open. The pilot climbed out to greet Ben. He was in his early to mid-forties, casually dressed in jeans and a check shirt. ‘Dr Simonsen?’ he called over the noise of the idling engine.

It was a worrying moment. If the pilot knew Mike well from previous trips, Ben couldn’t be sure that the masquerade would fool him. That was where Plan B came in, involving two dead bodies in the bushes instead of one. Ben could fly the plane all right; he’d just have to hope that he could figure out his exact destination. The Black Forest was a big area.

But as the pilot broke into a smile, Ben’s anxiety melted away.

‘We haven’t met,’ the pilot said, extending his hand. ‘I’m Tommy. Standing in for Jürgen today.’ His accent was European tinged with American.

They shook hands. ‘How is Jürgen?’ Ben asked amiably, doing a passable imitation of Mike’s voice.

‘Lying on a beach somewhere for the next two weeks, the lucky fuck.’

‘Nice for some, eh?’ Ben said as Tommy ushered him on board. The plane’s interior was like a small car’s. Ben strapped himself into a passenger seat. The pilot climbed in after him, settled behind the controls and clapped on his headset. Moments later, the plane began to taxi round in a circle for takeoff.

Ben settled back in his seat, gratefully removed the eye-watering glasses and watched as the ground fell away below. For the next couple of hours of so, he’d have little to do but try to relax, clear his mind and prepare mentally for what lay ahead of him.