The Babylon Idol

Chapter 6

Despite his protests, Sandrine Lacombe dispatched a squad of nurses to attend to Ben while the doctor herself hurried back to the ICU to check on Jeff and see to the rest of her rounds. Ben was taken into an examination room where he did his best to fend off the nurses’ attentions, but gave in when he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror and didn’t recognise the wild man looking back at him: the figure of an escaped desperado who had taken refuge in a slaughterhouse. ‘You can’t go around the hospital looking like that,’ said the head nurse. ‘You’ll frighten the patients.’

Once they’d exchanged his bloody rags for a hospital gown and confirmed what he already knew, that none of the blood was his, they started insisting on treating him for shock. Ben drew the line at sedatives. He needed to keep his wits about him. But a hot shower seemed like a good idea, and he gladly followed the head nurse down the corridor to get himself cleaned up.

He stood under the splashing hot water for fifteen long minutes, trying to wash away the tension that locked up his neck and shoulder muscles. Looking down at his feet, he saw the cloudy rust-coloured swirl of Jeff’s blood running off him and circling the drain. He still felt strangely numb. It all seemed somehow surreal, as if he were watching himself from the outside; as if these events were just an awful dream from which he half expected to awake at any second. One instant Jeff had been there at his side, his usual self, cheerful and focused and content with the future; the next there was an empty, desolate space where Jeff used to be. Good old solid Jeff, who was always there when you needed him, whose spirits were so hard to dampen, who had saved Ben’s skin on more than a couple of occasions. Someone like that couldn’t just disappear from your life and not be there any more.

No, it didn’t seem real. But reality would bite soon enough, all right, if Sandrine Lacombe returned to break the news that the patient had slipped away despite all their efforts. Ben had lost enough people close to him to know exactly how he would feel then.

One step at a time, he decided. There was no other way to deal with this.

After his shower Ben towelled himself and put on the clothes that the nurse had left folded on a chair for him. His own, except for his leather jacket, were probably already in the hospital incinerator. What they’d brought him would have fitted a man two inches shorter and forty pounds heavier, but at least he wouldn’t have to meet the cops dressed like an in-patient.

Just as he’d expected, there were six plain-clothes officers waiting for him in the corridor when he emerged from the bathroom. During his years as a kidnap rescue specialist and since, Ben had dealt with a lot of police officers in a lot of countries. A few notable exceptions apart, he’d never been able to form much of an affinity with them. But in this situation, he promised himself, he would try to keep it civil.

It proved to be a hard promise to keep. Even as he walked towards them along the corridor and saw them all turn to stare at him, Ben’s eye had picked out the most officious-looking one and decided he must be in charge. He was right. Inspector Sébastien Tarrare couldn’t have been more puffed-up if he’d been personally appointed by the president as commander-in-chief of French national security.

They waved him into the same small waiting area whose walls Ben had already spent three hours studying. The shortest and fattest of the cops, with a bristly neck and protruding teeth, helped himself to a Coke from the vending machine. Ben gave him a hard look. Tarrare invited Ben to sit. Ben preferred to stand. They’d barely exchanged ten words yet, and already it wasn’t going too well. All six cops looked on edge, shooting him cagey looks as though he was some kind of terror suspect himself. It was a good thing his name was Ben Hope and not Bin Hossain, he thought, or Tarrare and his little posse would have cordoned off a security zone several blocks around the hospital and called in tanks and artillery support by now.

Inspector Tarrare briefly introduced his five colleagues, whose names Ben dismissed from his memory the instant he heard them, and then went on to offer a few insincere-sounding condolences for what had happened.

‘He’s not dead yet,’ Ben said.

‘But I am given to understand he is mortally wounded,’ Tarrare replied, arching an eyebrow.

Ben definitely didn’t like him now.

‘In any case we are obliged to treat this as a matter of the utmost priority. Especially under the circumstances, considering the nature of the target.’

Now it was Ben’s turn to arch an eyebrow. ‘The target?’

‘A terrorist’s dream. Your place of business has more military hardware all stockpiled in a single place than any French Army base.’

Ben said, ‘If that’s true, then the government had better step up its defence spending. We have a small armoury, kept highly secure and subject to regular inspections, every item in it registered and licensed down to the last round of ammunition, with a stack of official paperwork to prove it. Which I know you already know, Inspector, so let’s cut the bullshit. Besides, as far as anyone can prove at this point the target was a man, not a place of business. My friend was shot. I didn’t see a terrorist raiding party storming the compound to blow open the armoury for its contents. Nor did any of the witnesses to the immediate aftermath of the shooting, including several officers of your very own SDAT.’ So put that in your pipe and smoke it, he wanted to add, but didn’t.

‘All the same,’ Tarrare said without missing a beat, ‘this is an extremely serious situation.’

‘No argument there,’ Ben told him. ‘You have an attempted murder to solve and a guy running loose with a rifle. Maybe that should be your priority.’

‘And maybe you should read the papers,’ said the porcine cop with the can of Coke, tipping it towards Ben as he spoke. ‘France is under attack from radical extremists. Any day now, another major incident is expected to happen anywhere in the country. But you don’t seem to think this incident is connected with the current national state of emergency?’

‘By radical extremists, I take it you mean Islamic ones?’

Tarrare pulled a face and grunted, ‘Who else?’

‘Just making that clear,’ Ben said. ‘I mean, for all we know it could have been anyone from the National Liberation Front of Corsica, to the Basque separatists, to the Unité Radicale bunch who tried to shoot your president a few years back. Or maybe those Action Directe guys or the Red Army Brigade are back in business and looking to procure some weaponry for a new wave of terror attacks that will shake things up like nothing Europe has ever seen before. Basically, it could be anyone at all. I’d say you boys have your work cut out for you, for sure.’

Nobody replied. The cops all glared at him.

Ben pointed up at the big clock on the waiting-room wall, which read 2.15 p.m. ‘But you must be hungry, missing lunch over this stuff. Why don’t you do what you do best, head down to the nearest bistro for a nice meal and a bottle of wine and spend an hour or two working out how to become the heroes who saved the republic? Then maybe you’d like to call Commander Roman Vidal and ask him if they’ve found a single scrap of evidence down there at Le Val linking the shooting with the activities of any known or suspected terror group of any kind.’

The cop with the can pulled a nasty sneer. ‘If it wasn’t terrorists, then what? Maybe a hunter let off a stray shot? Thought your friend was a wild boar?’

Ben stared at him coldly and wondered how fast the guy’s smirk would disappear with that Coke can rammed down his throat. ‘Wild boar hunters shoot in groups, with spotters and beaters. They don’t snipe at their quarry from extreme ranges, with no safety backstop except someone’s wire fence. They don’t use silencers and they don’t generally confuse a human with a large hairy pig. Though,’ he added, giving the cop a deliberate up-and-down look, ‘in some cases I can see how that misunderstanding might arise.’

The cop’s eyes narrowed and he flushed scarlet. ‘Then who did this? Enlighten us, as you’re obviously so knowledgeable.’

‘That’s a very good question,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t know who did this, any more than you do. But then, I’m not the police, am I? I’m just a visitor to this hospital, waiting to find out if my friend in there is going to live or die, and having to waste my time answering pointless questions while you guys should be out there searching for the answers. So how about you leave me alone now?’

When the disgruntled cops eventually did leave, Ben called Tuesday again to update him on Jeff’s condition. Moments after he’d put his phone away, Ben heard footsteps and turned to see Dr Lacombe approaching. The look on her face made his heart jerk to a stop for a moment. Even before she opened her mouth to speak, he knew she’d come to deliver bad news.

‘There’s been a complication,’ she said gravely.

‘What kind of complication?’

She sighed. ‘I’m very sorry. I was afraid something like this would happen.’

‘Talk to me. Tell me he’s alive.’

‘He’s alive. But—’ She went into a rapid stream of medical terminology like post-traumatic pulmonary thromboembolism and right ventricular failure and circulatory failure and mechanical ventilation, until Ben stopped her.

‘I don’t understand. What happened?’

‘He had a blood clot in the lung. It caused a severe stroke and he’s no longer able to breathe on his own. We gave him a massive dose of barbiturates to induce deep unconsciousness, so the machine could breathe for him. I have no idea how long we might have to keep him under. Worst case, perhaps indefinitely.’

Ben could only repeat her words dully, as if he’d become stupid. His brain couldn’t compute what she was telling him. ‘Are you saying—?’

‘I’m afraid so, yes. He’s in a coma.’