The Nemesis Program

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Paris wouldn’t have been Paris in the morning without the aroma of fresh-baked bread in the air, and it still lingered in the streets along with the ever-present traffic fumes as Ben ventured out early to get them some breakfast. He returned carrying a brown paper bag from the boulangerie down the road, and was making coffee when he heard Roberta get up. Moments later she made a tousle-haired appearance in the kitchen doorway, bare-legged below the hem of the old shirt of his she’d borrowed to sleep in.

‘I got us some croissants,’ he said, averting his eyes.

‘Oh. Nice. Guess I’d better put some clothes on.’

They had breakfast in the kitchen, sitting across the table from one another dunking their croissants in their coffee in silence. ‘You look thoughtful,’ she commented.

‘The wedding rehearsal would have been this afternoon. I keep thinking about it.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

Ben shrugged. He knocked back the last of his coffee, patted his pockets for his cigarettes.

‘What’s the point?’ she asked, watching him.

‘What’s the point of what?’

‘Of working so hard to keep in shape if you’re just going to harm your body with those damn things anyway.’

‘Bodily harm is my middle name,’ he said. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘Apart from having to suck second-hand smoke? Nothing. Just that I heard you doing your exercises earlier, that’s all. You put a lot into it.’

‘Sorry if I woke you.’

‘I wasn’t asleep. How many do you do?’

‘Press-ups? A hundred, hundred and fifty.’

‘Every morning?’

‘Twice a day, usually. And a run, if I get time. It keeps me sharp.’

‘Not bad for an old dog,’ she said with a smile. ‘You don’t drink like you used to. That’s good. But you really need to quit those cigarettes, Ben.’

He shot her a foul look, took a Gauloise from the pack, then muttered ‘Fuck it’ under his breath and shoved it back in. ‘Hurry up and finish your coffee. We have a busy morning ahead.’

The fat taxi driver, crammed so tightly behind the wheel of his grey Mercedes that he looked like a permanent fixture in there, dropped them outside the Banque National de Paris off Boulevard Jourdan, close to the Porte d’Orléans on the southern edge of the city. Ben told the driver to wait, which the guy seemed all too happy to do in order to rip open a fresh pack of Haribo snacks from a bulging supply on the front passenger seat. Walking into the crowded bank, Ben took Roberta’s elbow and steered her away from the tellers. ‘Not that way.’

‘I thought you came to get money.’

‘We won’t be making a withdrawal from an account,’ he said. He still had a personal bank account in France, but couldn’t afford to take the risk of tapping into it. Depending on who was really after them, an open, recorded transaction could potentially flag up a chain of computer alerts that would pinpoint their exact location within seconds. ‘There’s a better way of doing it.’

‘How else do you get money from a bank?’ she asked.

In his days of working the kidnap and ransom scene across Europe, Ben had maintained several safe deposit boxes in different cities. Some people kept diamond tiaras locked away in theirs, some people kept gold bars. Ben’s boxes were strictly for the utilitarian purpose of storing quantities of cash, the false IDs he’d sometimes needed to carry out his business, and other tools of the trade for which he could dip in and out whenever he liked. Just as he’d never fully got around to selling off the safehouse, he’d never quite taken the step of closing down his deposit boxes.

Some old habits just wouldn’t die. It was as if they’d been sitting there waiting for him all this time. Maybe it’s true, he reflected bitterly. Maybe I always knew I’d come back to this sooner or later.

Following a few discreet formalities and a short wait seated in a velvety little lounge area, Ben and Roberta were shown through to the private viewing room where his box had been brought up from the vault.

She gasped when she saw the stacks of banknotes inside, wrapped in transparent plastic. Ben lifted the cash out of the box. He didn’t need to count it to know there was about fifteen thousand euros there.

‘Just a little something for a rainy day, huh?’ Roberta said.

‘I think we’re in for a spell. But I’m hoping this should cover our expenses until we figure a way through this situation.’

Roberta’s eyebrows rose when she saw the semi-automatic handgun that had been nestling underneath the cash. Ben lifted it out along with its five loaded spare magazines. It was an old Browning Hi-Power, superseded now as a military arm, but the model of weapon he’d spent more hundreds of hours training with during his time than any other and which suited him like a well-worn shoe. Not to mention that for his purposes, the Hi-Power was a hell of a lot easier to conceal, ready for instant use, than a bulky machine carbine.

No, some old habits really wouldn’t die. Here I go again, he thought. He stuck the pistol into his belt behind the right hip, where it was neatly covered by his jacket, and dropped the magazines into his pockets. He was now carrying seventy-eight rounds of 9mm Parabellum on his person, not counting the capacity of the submachine gun inside his bag, where he stuffed the thick pile of wrapped money, minus a wad that he folded inside his wallet.

The last item Ben took from the box was one of several false passports he’d had made back when he’d been active on the kidnap and ransom circuit. He hadn’t used them for years; the duplicates he’d kept at Le Val were still gathering dust in his personal safe in the training facility’s armoury room. He picked one out, a cover that had never been blown or compromised: John Freeman, a professional wine buyer born in Oxford a few months before Ben’s real birthdate. He hadn’t done any travelling in quite a while — maybe now he’d get the chance again.

‘I think we’re good to go,’ he said. He strapped the items up inside his bag, closed the box and called the guards in to come and take it away.

The enormous screen filled almost an entire wall of the Director’s tranquil personal office. He was watching it now as he sat at his desk, his fingers laced together, lips pursed and a customary frown of deep concentration on his wizened brow. He might have been staring fixedly at the high-definition image of the vast container ship gliding across his screen, which a few days ago had been the primary focus of his current plans, but now the core of his thoughts was elsewhere. He picked up a remote and jabbed it at the screen; the image of the ship disappeared to make way for the news report footage that had been troubling him from the moment it had broken earlier.

French Emergency Services had completed their search for survivors among the ruins of the gutted private chapel on the De Bourg family estate near Paris. Their official report, which the Director already had on another screen in front of him, stated in effect that the only bodies in the place were the ones already interred in the family tomb beneath the chapel.

The Director had been in this game a long, long time, and he was an extremely hard man to trick. And yet, tricked he had been. It was now painfully clear that this Ben Hope, this troublesome new player who’d appeared out of left field, had caught him out with a ploy intended to buy time for himself and the Ryder woman.

The facts were all there on the desk. The BMW Alpina left abandoned at the scene was a company car registered to Hope’s former business in Normandy, reported stolen the night before. Which meant, the Director realised, that Hope must have figured out about the tracking device planted on the vehicle. In turn, that also meant something almost unprecedented in the Director’s experience: that the target was successfully staying a step ahead, for now.

How Hope and Ryder had effected their seemingly impossible escape from the chapel was anyone’s guess, as was their current location. They could be anywhere, and the Director didn’t like uncertainties. It would seem, he thought grimly, that McGrath had made a mistake this time. That couldn’t happen again.

It was time to alert everybody. Hope was dangerous and he had to be taken down as a matter of top-level priority before he did more damage.

The Director’s thoughts were interrupted by the beep of his intercom. He pressed a button and heard the voice of his closest aide, an efficient if slightly nervy fifteen-year veteran of his team named Isaac Friedkin.

‘Sir, there’s been a development. We have security camera images of Hope and Ryder walking into the Boulevard Jourdan branch of the Banque Nationale in Paris twenty minutes ago. The facial recognition software confirms their identities beyond any doubt.’

‘Where are they now?’

‘They haven’t come out yet,’ Friedkin said. ‘We presume they’re still inside.’

‘Put it on my screen,’ the Director snapped. He flicked the remote again, and the news report vanished as the video playback covered his wall. His wrinkled eyes scanned the milling crowds of pedestrians in the street outside the Banque Nationale. He saw a grey Mercedes taxi pull up at the kerbside and its passengers get out and walk quickly across the pavement to the bank’s entrance. The blond-haired man in the leather jacket and his female companion were definitely his targets.

‘What about inside? Don’t we have access to the bank’s interior video system?’

‘Working on it as we speak,’ Friedkin’s voice said from the speaker. ‘Should be hooked up any time now.’

‘Not good enough. Work faster. Where’s McGrath?’

‘Already mobilised and on his way, ETA four minutes.’

The Director nodded. ‘I want every exit covered on the ground and eyes in the air. Don’t let them get away this time. Am I clear?’

The Director leaned back in the plush chair and shut his tired eyes. He wasn’t happy with the way this was heading. The time for discretion in this matter might very well just have ended.