The Martyr’s Curse

Chapter Thirty-Four

The routier café was open early in the hopes of catching some business from passing long-haul truckers. It was a low, stretched-out building off the road, with a car park big enough to turn articulated lorries but mostly empty apart from a panel van and a smattering of early-bird customers’ cars. The sun was coming up. It was going to be another warm day. By now, Ben had already discarded his farmer’s disguise and flung the stuff into the pickup’s load bed. The worst of the greasy dirt on his face was wiped off with a rag. They wouldn’t have let him into the Ritz, but he was presentable enough for this place, all right.

He was light-headed from lack of sleep and couldn’t remember his last meal. ‘You know the routine,’ he said as they crossed from the parked Toyota towards the café entrance. ‘Try not to look like a prisoner, and don’t forget I have a gun in my pocket.’

The place didn’t look too appetising, or even too clean, but Ben was too tired and hungry to care. He walked Silvie past the few occupied tables, where people who looked even wearier than him tucked into brioches and breakfast fry-ups. The aromas of sizzling bacon and fresh coffee reached Ben’s nose and made his mouth water. He ushered Silvie to a table right at the back, away from the other diners. They sat opposite one another on soft vinyl bench seats, next to the window from which Ben could see the Toyota. The glass was grimed with dust and dirt on the outside and grease and fingermarks on the inside, and had a faded sticker saying Défense de fumer. Ben dumped his green bag on the seat, took off his jacket and laid it next to him with the hidden butt of the Glock close to his hand. When a bored-looking waitress descended on them moments later, he ordered a large pot of coffee, sausages and bacon and mushrooms and fried bread. Silvie asked for fruit juice and a croissant. Ben took out his cigarettes.

‘You always smoke this much?’ she asked as he lit up.

‘I had seven months off. Making up for lost time,’ he said. He leaned back and puffed away.

‘It’s unhealthy.’

‘So’s hanging out with guys like Kurt Breslin,’ he said.

‘There’s a No Smoking sign there right next to you.’

‘So arrest me,’ Ben said. He reached over and pulled open the straps of his bag, dipped his hand down to the bottom and found the cool smoothness of the gold bar. He lifted it across with both hands and laid it on the thin wood veneer of the table, which seemed to sag under its weight.

‘Evidence,’ he said.

Silvie’s eyes widened at the sight. ‘You weren’t bullshitting me.’

‘Your man Dexter had two of them on him.’

‘Why?’

‘You tell me. Looked like he’d taken them for himself.’

‘I can’t believe that.’

‘Aside from those, I found another two lying around, as if they’d been in a hurry and weren’t too bothered about losing the odd one.’

‘Which suggests that there must have been a hell of a lot of it,’ Silvie said, staring at the bar.

Ben nodded. ‘My thoughts exactly. Enough to keep them busy for hours bringing it up and loading it into the raid vehicle.’

She frowned. ‘That’s what troubles me. Surely a load like that would have filled up most of the vehicle. It’s big, but it’s not that big. And it was carrying a full complement of passengers, plus all kinds of other equipment. How come I didn’t see anything, when I got a peek inside?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ben said.

‘And why would Streicher have kept the entire haul on board a single vehicle when the smart thing to do would be to distribute it among several? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘That’s not all that doesn’t make sense,’ Ben said. ‘I still don’t understand why they needed the second charge.’

‘To seal off the hole? Cover their tracks?’

‘Then why didn’t they drag all the bodies in there too? Including the body of their own man, which they left lying out in the open for anyone to find?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘And why go to the trouble of setting up a timed charge to seal up the hole, if they’d already emptied the treasure out of it? There was nothing more to hide.’

‘Maybe they just wanted to create a diversion. The hour’s delay would give them plenty of time to get far away. Maybe it was intended to take out anyone who might come snooping. Or maybe the timing device was faulty.’

‘Too many maybes.’ Ben saw the waitress approaching and slid the gold bar back into his bag. The waitress took no notice of Ben’s cigarette, instead dumped her tray on the table between them and left without a word. Ben stubbed out the Gauloise on his saucer and launched straight into his food. For two minutes he said nothing more as he demolished most of his plateful and drank a pint of hot black coffee. Silvie sipped her fruit juice and picked at her croissant.

‘Then there’s the matter of how he even knew the gold was there,’ Ben said at last. Full of protein and carbohydrates, fats and caffeine, he felt halfway human again already. All he needed now was about twelve hours’ sleep.

‘If Streicher makes it his business to find out about something, believe me, he does,’ Silvie said. ‘I told you he was insane, and I wasn’t kidding. He has the kind of abnormal capacity for single-minded focus that’s associated with all kinds of psychiatric conditions. Like an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but apparently without any of the anxiety. Once he gets fixed on a subject, he can literally talk about it all day and all night. It’s way beyond normal enthusiasm. I’ve witnessed some of his monologues. One night, weeks ago, before he moved us to the house in Lausanne, he was there with Hannah Gissel and some of the others. They were in the living room, drinking wine. I overheard some of the conversation, except it wasn’t so much a conversation as Streicher himself just talking, and talking, and talking, almost as if he didn’t care whether anyone else was listening, or even there. He gabbled on and on about a crypt. Deep underground, carved out of solid rock. But no mention of where it was, or in what kind of place. He said it was full of secrets.’

‘Secrets?’

She nodded. ‘Ancient secrets. Ones that had been almost completely forgotten over the course of centuries. Only he had been able to connect the facts. How he was going to make history. How he was going to be remembered. And on, and on.’

Ben said, ‘Père Antoine talked about secrets too.’

‘Père Antoine?’

‘The prior of the monastery. I got to know him well, though not so well that he’d confide anything more. Something about the place’s history seemed to trouble him.’ Ben told Silvie about his discovery of the walled-up crypt, and how the old monk had been unwilling to discuss it. ‘When I tried to press him, he clammed up and changed the subject.’

‘He must have known they were sitting on a pile of gold,’ Silvie said. ‘There are probably hundreds of ancient treasures all over France, waiting to be dug up, and thousands of speculators who’d do anything to get a piece of them. The last thing a very private, secluded place like a monastery needs is a load of noisy attention. Maybe he was nervous about people finding out, the media getting wind of it, all kinds of hysteria and TV crews and crowds of idiots with cameras gathering outside the gates.’

Ben considered the idea for a few moments as he chewed on a piece of fried bread with mushrooms and washed it down with more coffee. ‘It didn’t sound to me as if he was talking about treasure. He mentioned ghosts from the past. Things that ought to be forgotten about. Like a dirty secret. Something shameful from days gone by. Something so terrible that it was still impossible to talk about it. That was the impression I got. And there was more down there in the crypt than just gold bars. I saw it for myself.’

Silvie frowned over the rim of her glass as she sipped the last of her fruit juice. ‘What?’

‘Old bones,’ Ben said. ‘Human skeletons. Piles of them. It was hard to tell how many. Scores of them, maybe hundreds. Men, women and children.’

‘A mass grave?’

‘More than a grave,’ Ben said. ‘Worse than a grave. They were shackled and chained to the floor. Nobody does that to a corpse. These people had been taken down there, walled up and left to die, a very long time ago.’

‘Underneath a monastery? Who would do something like that?’

‘The church authorities of the day,’ Ben said. ‘Nobody else would have had the power. And I think that Père Antoine knew about it. I think that was the secret he wouldn’t talk about.’

‘Horrible.’

‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘Very horrible.’

Silvie leaned forward with her elbows on the table, gazing emptily down at the wood veneer, her brow slightly furrowed and her lips pursed, as if she were thinking hard.

‘What?’

‘This may sound weird, but did Père Antoine ever talk about a curse?’

Ben looked at her. ‘A curse?’

She nodded. ‘Don’t ask me for details. All I know is what I heard Streicher talking about that night. I remember that he kept mentioning something about a blind man’s curse.’

‘What blind man?’ Ben said, baffled.

‘In history. I think he was the one who cast the curse, or whatever it was. A priest, I think. I’m trying to remember his name. Damn it, what was it? Someone the blind.’

‘That would make sense, I suppose,’ Ben said, barely interested.

She ignored him and clicked her tongue in frustration. ‘Salvator. That was it. Salvator l’Aveugle.’

The name reminded Ben of Rollo le Tordu. Funny how a person could become so inextricably associated with their disability that it merged with their identity. Right now, he was Benoît le Confondu. Benedict the Confused.

‘Well, I don’t believe in curses,’ he said.

‘But secrets are another matter,’ Silvie said. ‘This has something to do with the monastery, I’m sure of it. If we could understand it, I think it would explain how Streicher knew about the gold.’

Ben was silent for a beat. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere. You promised you’d tell me what you knew.’

‘I also warned you how little that was. Like I said, you’ll be disappointed. It wasn’t exactly a successful mission as undercover insertions go. It’s not a career-maker. In fact, in four months I was able to discover virtually nothing more than what I was briefed on going in.’

‘Which was?’

‘Key facts,’ she said. ‘That Udo Streicher is Swiss, that he’s forty-six years of age, that he has absolutely no criminal convictions or record of any kind, not so much as a library fine, and that he’s very wealthy. His family made their millions in shoes, although he never worked for the business. He trained as a dentist. For a time he owned a private practice in Geneva. All totally legitimate and above board.’

‘A dentist,’ Ben said blankly.

‘He’s also a certified pilot, holds a Swiss private licence. He’s exactly six foot tall, weighs about a hundred and fifty pounds, has dark hair greying at the temples, grey eyes, has no known home address whatsoever and is of prime interest to certain government agencies, who it seems have closely guarded reasons for believing he’s on the verge of something big.’

Ben stared at her. ‘On the verge of something big?’

‘I know. It’s a hell of an insult to the people he’s already hurt. But my superiors wouldn’t consider what he’s done to your friends as something big. Take it from me. What they’re thinking of is in a completely different league. Killing a few monks is nothing by comparison. Minor collateral damage. That’s just the way it is.’

‘All right,’ Ben said. ‘So just what is this master plan they’re all so het up about? What is it we’re supposed to be waiting for Streicher to pull off next? Was the raid on the monastery some kind of dry run for something? Was the idea to steal the gold to finance a bigger project?’

‘I’ve already asked myself those same questions.’

‘And what about answers?’

‘For that, you need to be talking to DGSI.’

‘I thought that’s what I was doing. So far you’re not giving me much.’

Silvie gave a short laugh. ‘Pay grades, remember? You think my superiors tell me everything? I’m just a plain vanilla field agent. Way down the chain of command. Expendable. Not someone the agency trusts with privileged information. If Streicher’s people had got suspicious of me and applied pressure, that is to say whatever kind of torture they might use to make me talk, waterboarding or hot irons, they’d quickly have realised I knew nothing. They’d simply have disposed of me, and the agency would come up with another plan for getting inside the operation. In effect, I was piggy in the middle. Which pisses me off, more than a little bit. In no way is that what I signed up for.’

Ben quietly finished his coffee, then sat back. ‘So I’m back to square one. Which is to say, nowhere.’

‘I’m sorry. I know you were counting on me for information.’

‘It’s a setback, that’s all.’

‘I know you’re upset about your friends. I’m sorry about that as well.’

He said nothing.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

Ben said, ‘I’m going to find him, hunt him down and put him in the ground. Him, and whoever else was involved.’

‘He has a lot of protection.’

‘He’s one man down already.’

‘There are plenty more, and Breslin wasn’t the worst.’

‘It won’t do him any good. I’ll go through his people, layer by layer, one by one, whatever it takes, until I get to him.’

She looked at him. ‘Are you really good enough?’

‘This kind of thing isn’t exactly new to me. And I’m still alive.’

‘I was right about you, wasn’t I?’

‘I was in the SAS, yes. For many years. About half your lifetime.’

‘I’m older than I look. And I was right about the officer part, too?’

He shrugged. ‘Final rank of major. Not that it matters.’

‘It says a lot about who you are.’

‘No. It says nothing about who I am.’

‘Why did you leave?’

‘I wasn’t happy in my work,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like the way they did things, and I didn’t always agree with why they needed doing in the first place. Politics isn’t my game. I wanted to do good, to help people. That’s why I left.’

‘I can sympathise,’ Silvie replied.

‘Sure you can,’ he said.

‘I mean it. I’m not happy in my work either. I don’t like being put into a vulnerable situation like that without being told the full story. I don’t like taking orders from faceless bureaucrats who keep their cards close to their chests. I don’t like the way they allow innocent people to be murdered, like some kind of acceptable sacrifice, while they wait in the wings playing the bigger picture game. And I want to get Streicher for what he did. No way they’d let me back on the case now. I’m compromised. But no way am I going to let myself be reassigned to some second-rate posting, to sit gnashing my teeth and twiddling my damn thumbs while all this is going on.’

Ben could see a spirited flash in Silvie’s eyes as she talked. He liked it.

‘So?’ he asked.

‘The way I see it, being your hostage gives me an opportunity. A time window. I don’t have to return to base with my tail between my legs, at least not yet. I’m free, for as long as we can stay a step ahead.’

Ben smiled and lit another Gauloise. ‘Are you trying to tell me you want to team up? Because the answer is, forget it. I don’t need you any more. I’ll go it alone from here.’

‘Meaning what? That you’ll just let me go?’

‘The door’s over there. I won’t stop you. An hour from now, you’ll have no better idea of where I am than Luc Simon or any of them.’

‘And I tell them what?’

‘You could just tell them you got away. Make up all kinds of harrowing stories about your ordeal and how you risked your life escaping from me. You’ll be a hero.’

‘Think again. You might find me useful to have around.’

He shook his head. ‘You’ll slow me down. I work alone.’

‘Don’t give me that “I work alone” crap. A lone man on the run is an easy target. Especially when they plaster your face all over the news, because everywhere you go people will be afraid of you. A man and a woman together don’t arouse suspicion. Just a normal couple, going about our business.’

‘You don’t have the training. You said so yourself.’

‘I’m a quick study. Anyway, I might surprise you.’

‘Surprise is the last thing I need.’ He yawned. Waves of fatigue were hitting him. The caffeine in his system had taken only the slightest edge off it.

‘Rest is what you need,’ Silvie said. ‘You look exhausted.’

‘And I want to sleep easy,’ he replied, ‘knowing that I won’t wake up with a gun in my face.’

‘You’re scared I could arrest you?’

‘Given what you do for a living, it crossed my mind.’

She smiled. ‘The fact is, Ben, I could have arrested you any number of times. The moment we got out of the Hummer, for instance. When you cut me free of the seat, before you taped my wrists back together. The whole time you had me hiding under the tarpaulin. Or before we walked into this place, and any time since. Right this moment.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so. Your weapons are all in the car, except for my Glock there in your jacket pocket. You’re tired, your reactions are slowed. You’d never get to it in time. Not before I got to mine.’

‘You’re not even armed. You thinking of pronging me with a fork? Taking my eye out with a sugar spoon?’

She smiled again. ‘They didn’t teach you to frisk girls in the British Army, did they? Or maybe you were just too gentlemanly to check my underwear.’ Her right hand emerged from under the table. It was holding a tiny black automatic, just a few ounces of polymer and steel, as smooth and rounded as a sucked sweet. Then it was gone, as the hand gripping it ducked back under the table.

‘Say hello to my micro Kel-Tec,’ she said. ‘Seven rounds of .380 that have been with me the whole time, and that I could plug you with right here, right now. The law would be on my side. Kidnapped government agent, defending herself against a heavily armed, highly dangerous desperado? No problem. And before you ask, yes, I have shot a man before. In fact there are three of them on the other side of the grass because I put them there. So you need to ask yourself: why doesn’t she shoot?’

Ben said nothing. The gun was out of sight but he could feel it pointing at his belly under the table, the way you could sense someone watching you across a room. A .380 auto was no man stopper. It wasn’t a .44 Magnum. But at close range a full magazine of those stubby, zippy little copper-nosed rounds would tear through him and make a real mess inside. It would kill him stone dead. That was for certain.

‘The fact is, Ben, I can take you hostage just as easily as you can me. We can keep passing the baton back and forth, switching hats, captor and captive, all day long, until one of us gets hurt. But we don’t have time to waste on silly games. What you and I need to do is make a deal. Work together. Partners, until this is over and we go our separate ways. Agreed?’

Ben said nothing.

‘Trust me,’ she said.