The Cassandra Sanction

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Ben redialled the number, but as expected all he got was a generic answering service. It would be the last time that number was ever used, and the other guy’s phone was probably already trash. Dead and gone.

Raul’s face was flushed. ‘That was great. Just fantastic. You didn’t get his name, you found out nothing, and all you did was antagonise him.’

‘He sent six professional gunmen to kill me and kidnap you, presumably with a view to torturing you to extract information on the whereabouts of your sister, whom he also most likely wants to eliminate. I’d say he’s already as antagonised as it’s possible for a person to be.’ Ben looked at Raul. ‘Face it. There was no way I was going to get much out of him. What matters is that I got the measure of the kind of person we’re dealing with here. I learned that he’s serious, and that he’s unconcerned enough about the loss of six men to mean he has plenty more at his disposal. He won’t give up. He’s going to keep trying until he finds her, one way or another.’

‘Then we have to find her first,’ Raul said tersely. ‘Which isn’t going to happen while we’re sitting here looking at the countryside.’

Ben started the car again and they took off. He pushed the BMW hard for another seventy kilometres, still avoiding major roads as they threaded through pasture land and forest, villages and small towns. Afternoon was wearing into evening, and the sun was climbing down fast. They passed plenty of places where they could have stopped for the night, but Ben kept going. He could still hear the calm, collected voice resonating inside his head.

The landscape became more rugged and the woodland thickened as they pressed deeper into the Black Forest with the hills and limestone escarpments of the Swabian Jura visible now and then through the gaps in the trees. Eventually, the woods opened up and the road dipped into a valley and a small village that felt right and safe to Ben. The streets were narrow and filled with black and white wood-framed houses. Over a stone bridge that crossed a river, they found a traditional inn that probably looked exactly the way it had three centuries ago.

They parked around the back and climbed out into the falling dusk. Raul grabbed his holdall from the back, and Ben scooped up his bag. It was a good deal heavier now, stuffed with the combined weight of Catalina’s computer, her notes, and a salvaged MP5 along with a pistol and half a dozen assorted magazines bombed up with nine-millimetre full metal jackets.

The dour, unsmiling old guy who ran the inn looked as if he’d been there when it was built. Ben did the talking, and asked for a pair of rooms for the night. Either the old guy had had problems with guests running off without paying, or maybe he was generally of a suspicious disposition, because he insisted on money up front. Ben shelled out some notes from the roll he’d taken from the dead sniper’s pocket. The old guy didn’t balk at the sight of good old-fashioned hard cash, and he didn’t seem interested in seeing their passports either. That must have been the way, back in the 1700s. It was fine by Ben. The less record of their movements, the better.

The old man hobbled and dragged his way up an ancient wooden staircase to the first floor, and showed them their rooms. Ben’s overlooked the narrow street, with a little railed balcony made of black-painted wood. It had a quilted single bed and a threadbare rug, a chair and a table and a couple of lamps. By Ben’s standards, it was wildly opulent luxury. Raul’s looked out into a small garden out back, where a stream wound its way between a stand of trees on its way to feed into the main river. It was a cosy, pleasant kind of place. A little dusty, a little creaky, but safe. Alone in his room, Ben dumped his bag on the single bed, unbuckled the worn leather straps and took out both firearms, which he loaded and made safe and tucked away out of sight underneath the pillow. You could never be quite safe enough. Then he kicked off his shoes and lay down and stared at the ceiling.

He hadn’t been staring at it long when Raul knocked once at his door and came in, shut the door behind him and immediately started pacing the floor.

‘Happy with the accommodation?’ Ben asked.

‘No, of course I’m not happy. I mean, the room is fine. But how long are we going to stay here?’

‘Just long enough to do what we need to do,’ Ben said. ‘We’ll grab some rest, get some food inside us, then we’ll see what we’ve got and figure out our next move.’

‘I’ve been thinking that I should phone my parents. I need to tell them that I think Catalina’s still alive.’

Ben sat up on the bed. ‘That’s a bad idea,’ he said.

Raul stopped pacing and looked at him. ‘You don’t think they have a right to know?’

‘As far as they’re concerned, they’ve buried their daughter. You’re only going to stir all those emotions up again. Let them be in peace.’

Raul knitted his brow and looked flustered. ‘Hmm. Maybe you’re right. I shouldn’t call them until we find her.’

‘Still a bad idea,’ Ben said.

Raul’s frown became a scowl. ‘What are you talking about — I can’t even call them to say I found their daughter they thought was dead? I can’t tell them this terrible nightmare that has torn our family apart is over, and they’re going to see her again? How can I keep something like this from them?’

‘We’re up against people who have a long reach,’ Ben said. ‘We should proceed with caution.’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Raul said defiantly. ‘Cell phone tracking, right? You’re worried they can pinpoint where the call came from?’ He took out his phone and waved it. ‘See? It’s just a cheap prepaid one. I don’t have a contract or anything. I told you I always pay cash for things. I bought it for cash, top up the minutes with cash. It can’t be traced to me.’

‘That’s fine,’ Ben said. ‘But that wasn’t what I was thinking. I’d say there’s a very good chance that your parents’ phone is tapped. They might even be under observation, the way you were. It would make sense to have surveillance on anyone Catalina might contact. Family, friends, former colleagues. Not to mention keeping tabs on her apartment in Munich. They’d have been onto this place too, if she hadn’t managed to keep it secret so well. It was just a fluke that they weren’t already waiting there for us.’

Ben was aware of another reason why Raul shouldn’t tell his parents Catalina was alive, but it wasn’t one he could bring himself to express out loud.

It was that she might not still be alive by the time they found her. If they ever did. It would just be cruelty for Raul to wipe away his parents’ grief at a stroke, only to redouble it again when he had to tell them she was dead after all. He would have tormented them for nothing, broken their spirit completely. And if they were the kind of principled, dignified and traditionally minded people Raul had painted them to be, Ben was pretty sure they would never forgive their son for it. What little they had left as a family would be irreversibly destroyed.

Raul had no clue as to Ben’s thoughts. He was still focused on the immediate threat, and he looked bewildered by what Ben was telling him. ‘Can they really be so well organised?’ he asked.

‘They could be even more organised than we think,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe they knew the moment we’d landed in Germany. They could have had someone sitting right behind us on the plane. Basically, we have no way of knowing how big an operation this could be. Therefore, no way of knowing what kinds of financial backing and other resources they might have at their disposal. Therefore, we need to proceed with extreme caution. If we’re going to stay under the radar, that means no calls. Okay?’

Raul digested the information, then grunted his acceptance of Ben’s point. ‘Okay, I understand.’

Ben stood up from the bed and walked over to him, holding out his hand. ‘May I see that phone for a minute?’

Raul shrugged, and held it out. Ben snatched it and dropped it in his own pocket.

‘Hey, what are you doing? I thought you just wanted to see it.’

‘Why would I?’ Ben said. ‘You’ve seen one phone, you’ve seen them all.’

‘Then let me have it back.’

Ben shook his head. ‘Consider it a gesture of kindness and friendship. Sparing you from the evils of temptation.’

‘You don’t trust me one little bit, do you?’

Ben said, ‘Let’s get something to eat.’