THE DEMON CLUB
Scott Mariani

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2020

Copyright © Scott Mariani 2020

Cover design by Henry Steadman © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photographs © Henry Steadman (figure) and Shutterstock.com (forest background)

Scott Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008236014

Ebook Edition © November 2020 ISBN: 9780008365523

Version: 2020-11-20

Discover the series you can’t put down …

‘A high level of realism … the action scenes come thick and fast. Like the father of the modern thriller, Frederick Forsyth, Mariani has a knack for embedding his plots in the fears and preoccupations of their time’

Shots Magazine

‘The plot was thrilling … but what is all the more thrilling is the fantastic way Mariani moulds historical events into his story’

Guardian

‘Scott Mariani is an ebook powerhouse’

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‘Hums with energy and pace … If you like your conspiracies twisty, your action bone-jarring, and your heroes impossibly dashing, then look no further. The Ben Hope series is exactly what you need’

Mark Dawson

‘Slick, serpentine, sharp, and very very entertaining. If you’ve got a pulse, you’ll love Scott Mariani; if you haven’t, then maybe you crossed Ben Hope’

Simon Toyne

‘Hits thrilling, suspenseful notes … a rollickingly good way to spend some time in an easy chair’

USA Today

‘Mariani constructs the thriller with skill and intelligence, staging some good action scenes, and Hope is an appealing protagonist’

Kirkus Reviews

‘If you haven’t read any Mariani before but love fast-paced action with a historical reference, maybe this one won’t be your last’

LibraryThing

‘A breathtaking ride through England and Europe’

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‘This is my first Scott Mariani book … and I totally loved it. It goes on at a good pace, and for me Ben Hope was brilliant, the ultimate decent good guy that you are rooting for’

AlwaysReading.net

‘Scott Mariani writes fantastic thrillers. His series of Ben Hope books shows no sign of slowing down’

Ben Peyton, actor (Bridget Jones’s Diary, Band of Brothers, Nine Lives)

‘A really excellent series of books, and would make a wonderful television series as well!’

Breakaway Reviews

‘Scott Mariani seamlessly weaves the history and action together. His descriptive passages are highly visual, and no word is superfluous. The storyline flows from beginning to end; I couldn’t put it down’

Off the Shelf Books

Epigraph

His body a bloody ruby radiant

With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer

Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant

On Eden’s imbecile perimeter

He blessed nonentity with every curse

And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense,

Breathed life into the sterile universe,

With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence

The Key of Joy is disobedience

Hymn to Lucifer

Aleister Crowley

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Discover the series you can’t put down …

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the same author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The pursuit had led northwards from the English south coast into the heart of the Surrey countryside, deep among thick broadleaf woods under a full moon. It was late March, the spring equinox, and the night was mild and balmy and filled with the sweetly pungent scent of the flowering bluebells that carpeted the woodland floor.

The man called Wolf had stalked his target for hours and for the moment he could go no further, waiting and hoping for the opportunity to finish the job he’d started. A job he did not particularly relish and wouldn’t have been doing unless he was getting well paid for it. A job he must nonetheless complete, lest he disappoint the ruthless men who employed him.

So far, the assignment felt like it was jinxed. It wasn’t Wolf’s fault. He’d followed the plan exactly until things had started going wrong. Which had happened very quickly, earlier that evening.

The hit was scheduled for 7.30 p.m. at the target’s home outside the pretty West Sussex village of Pyecombe, a few miles from Brighton. Abbott was expected to have been alone, but when Wolf had arrived at the nineteenth-century parsonage at the appointed hour and was concealed in the large garden preparing to make his move, he’d been interrupted by the sudden and unanticipated appearance of a gold Range Rover. The vehicle had pulled in through the front gates, rolled up towards the house and crunched to a halt on the gravel driveway next to Abbott’s Lexus.

Wolf had watched from his hiding place as the Rover’s doors opened and out spilled the target’s ex-wife in a red dress, their two young children and a twenty-something brunette that he assumed was the kids’ nanny. Wolf’s mission file contained details on the former Mrs Abbott (number three, the trophy, the most painful marital misstep of the fifty-eight-year-old politician’s career) and the two kids: little Emily, four, and her brother Paul, seven. Since the acrimonious split they now lived twenty miles the other side of Brighton, in a large house provided by the generous divorce settlement and alimony payments that Debbie enjoyed spending on expensive trips abroad. Her lifestyle habits, such as the recent fling with the ski instructor in Zermatt, were well known to Wolf’s employers; but none of the clever-dick analysts who provided the background intel had managed to foresee that she’d show up here today to mess up their plans. Typical.

Anthony Abbott emerged from his front door to meet his visitors, his silvery hair uncombed, casually attired in beige slacks and a cricket jumper. To shrill cries of ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ the kids rushed up and hugged their father. Wolf had a zoom telephoto lens attached to his phone, through which he could see that Abbott was as nonplussed as he was by old Debbie’s turning up like this. Judging by their facial expressions and stiff body language, relations between the couple were still frosty. Abbott appeared impatient for her to leave and kept glancing at his watch, as though he’d been disturbed in the middle of something important he was anxious to return to. If only he knew, Wolf thought, what her unexpected arrival had saved him from. Even if it was just a temporary stay of execution.

She didn’t hang around for long. Eleven minutes later, the Range Rover departed and Wolf watched it disappear up the quiet country lane. He was pleased to see her go, but now he had another problem: it appeared that the purpose of her visit was to dump the kids and nanny on her ex. Wolf wondered whether her intention was to liberate herself for another romantic trip to Zermatt or elsewhere, or whether she wanted to have the house to herself for a tryst at home with another of her numerous beaux.

Whatever the case, the unexpected turn of events screwed things up for him. While others in his profession might not have such scruples, Wolf went by certain rules. The most golden of which being that he would not kill a child, for any amount of money. If he chose to press ahead now, he would be compelled to break that rule, to avoid leaving witnesses. The nanny, too. Messy. Very messy.

And so, Wolf decided to hold back and wait. Improvisation wasn’t a problem for a man of his training and experience. He settled back and kept watching the house.

At 9.33 p.m., the hit now more than two hours overdue, Abbott re-emerged from his front door and started walking briskly towards his car. He’d changed his casual attire for a suit and tie and was carrying a leather overnight bag. It seemed like he was going somewhere, leaving the nanny alone to take care of Emily and Paul. Wolf had been told nothing of any planned excursions – then again, if not for Debbie’s interference, the mission would have been over and he’d have been long gone by now.

Wolf watched as Abbott climbed into his Lexus and set off up the driveway. By the time the car had reached the road, Wolf had already slipped away and hurried back to the Audi saloon he’d hidden around the corner. Like all the vehicles he drove in the course of his work, it had untraceable number plates and officially did not exist. He quickly caught up with the Lexus and followed at a discreet distance as Abbott hustled off down the country lane. Wherever he was going, the man seemed to be in a hurry to get there.

This new twist offered Wolf a fresh opportunity to finish the job, if he could track his target to a suitable location. He stayed on the Lexus, never letting it out of his sight but with always at least one vehicle between it and his Audi. Politicians, as a rule, weren’t very highly trained in recognising when they were being tailed, but you couldn’t be too careful.

The Lexus led northwards for fifty miles, taking the A23 and the M25 into Surrey. He seemed to be heading for Guildford, but then turned off the main road and headed into deep countryside. Wolf hung right back and kept following. Then, at three minutes to eleven, Abbott turned into the gates of a manor estate surrounded by woodland. Wolf drove on past the entrance, slowing down just enough to see the Lexus’s tail-lights disappearing down the oak-lined private road and the plaque on the stone gatepost that said KARSWELL HALL. The stately home itself was out of sight of the quiet country road.

A quarter of a mile further along, Wolf found a spot to hide the car and cut back on foot through the darkness, taking with him the things he needed. Karswell Hall was encircled by a high stone wall that he scaled with ease, and he dropped down inside the wooded grounds and made his cautious way towards the house. From a vantage point among the trees he was able to observe as more cars arrived and paused at a checkpoint on the private road where security guards examined papers before waving the visitors on towards the stately home. It looked like some kind of late evening event or gathering was underway.

It was 11.22 p.m. and he should have reported to base hours ago. Wolf was all too aware that his employers back in London would be wondering what the hell was happening. He faced the choice of whether to abort his mission and admit failure, or stay on his target until a suitable opportunity arose to eliminate him.

Wolf had never admitted failure in his life. He was still figuring out his best move when a black Rolls-Royce limousine purred up to the checkpoint and was halted by the security men. The chauffeur rolled down his window and showed them an admission pass. While they examined it, the driver stepped out of the car for a moment to check a front tyre, and the cabin of the limo was momentarily illuminated by the interior light.

That was when Wolf realised, with a shock, that he knew both of the back-seat passengers.

Wolf had personally met very, very few members of the secretive agency he worked for. But he instantly recognised these two men as his superiors. One was a much older man, easily eighty-five, wizened and gaunt, wearing a black suit and sitting in the back of the car clutching a cane between his knees. A very distinctive cane, topped with a silver bird’s head with a long beak and ruby eyes. Wolf remembered it, though he’d only seen the old man once before. The other back-seat occupant, twenty years younger than his travelling companion, was someone Wolf had had occasional contact with over the years.

The big Rolls moved on through the checkpoint, but the image of the two men remained burned on Wolf’s retinas. What was going on here? Why were his agency chiefs apparently attending the same mysterious gathering as the very target they had directed him to eliminate earlier that day? Wolf generally never questioned the reasoning behind his directives, but this was weird. It seemed to suggest that they were all somehow involved together – though in what, Wolf had no idea. And if that was right, then it meant that Wolf had unwittingly become mixed up in some kind of plot to eliminate one of their own. But one of their own what?

Wolf drew away from the checkpoint. He kept well out of sight as he worked his way around the side of the big house, threading through the trees. Karswell Hall was a hell of a grand old country pile, a real billionaire pad, its scores of windows lit up like a starship with exterior floodlamps casting a glow over the immaculate lawn that sloped down from the rear towards a gleaming dark lake at whose centre was a small wooded island, all wreathed in shadow. The guests, maybe fifty of them, were visible through the windows of the manor, standing in groups, talking, sipping drinks. The gathering was obviously a formal event, judging by the sombre suits and ties of everyone present. Wolf noticed that there was not one woman among them.

Crouched down low and invisible among the trees, Wolf used his compact but powerful telephoto lens to search for Abbott among the guests, but couldn’t make him out in the crowd. Maybe Wolf would get an opportunity to take care of Abbott that night, or maybe not. He kept waiting, and watching.

He had no idea what he was soon to witness.

At the stroke of midnight, the ceremony began.

It was like watching a surreal dream unfold. First the lights went out and Karswell Hall fell into darkness, illuminated only by the pale glow of the full moon that hung over the lake. Minutes later, a procession of figures slowly began to emerge from the rear of the house and wind its way down the lawn towards the water’s edge. But, as Wolf realised, there was something bizarrely changed about the figures. All fifty guests were now wearing strange robes, long, dark, and hooded. Their faces were obscured by black masks. Wolf felt a tingle of apprehension as he saw they were animal masks – no, bird masks, with curved, sharp beaks that reminded him of the head of the old man’s cane.

The procession assembled at the lakeside. They stood shoulder to shoulder with their backs to the trees where Wolf was hiding, all looking out across the water towards the dark, wooded island at its centre as if full of anticipation for something about to happen there. He scanned the crowd, still searching for Abbott, but it was impossible to tell whether he was among them or not. The hooded men were unrecognisable, all except for the thin, stooped figure that walked with a noticeable limp and leaned heavily on a cane. The old man.

Wolf breathed, ‘What the f—??’ He knew that he had to capture this on video. If he didn’t film what was happening he’d have a hard time convincing himself afterwards that he hadn’t been dreaming. He quickly set the phone camera and hit the record button.

Now a low chanting broke out from the crowd. Soft at first, building into a crescendo whose weird sound sent a chill down Wolf’s neck. It wasn’t English. It wasn’t any language he had ever heard before. Then, as the chanting reached its peak, a pyrotechnic burst of flames erupted into life on the island and lit up the trees – and Wolf swallowed hard and blinked in disbelief as he saw the giant effigy that until now had been hidden in shadow. Forty feet tall, carved out of stone, a quasi-human figure with the body of a man and the head of a bird, long-beaked like a heron or an ibis. The monstrosity appeared possessed with a life of its own as the flames made the shadows dance and cast their flickering reflection across the water.

The chanting of the crowd went on rising in pitch and intensity, the same incomprehensible phrases being repeated over and over like some hypnotic religious catechism that had taken hold of their minds. More flames illuminated the billows of smoke rising above the treetops.

That was when Wolf should have left. Should have just turned and run, got the hell out of there and kept running and not looked back. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Transfixed by the spectacle, almost willing to believe he was being gripped by some nightmarish hallucination, he couldn’t help but keep watching.

Then it got worse. And it became too late for Wolf to turn away.

There were people on the island. Still filming the scene with the zoom of his phone lens wound up to maximum magnification, he saw the figures appear as if out of nowhere through the smoke. Two of them wore the same robes and masks as the chanting crowd watching from across the lake, and carried flaming torches. But the third was something entirely different. It was a female figure, a blonde, clad in a plain white smock dress. From this distance and in the smoke and flicker of the flames Wolf couldn’t make out her features clearly, but enough to tell that she was young, perhaps still in her teens, more a girl than a woman.

But what was instantly obvious to Wolf was that she wasn’t there by choice. The two hooded, bird-headed men who accompanied her were clutching her by the arms and drawing her towards the base of the statue, which appeared to be some kind of altar. She was struggling, but weakly, and her head lolled limply from side to side as though she was inebriated – or drugged. The hooded men thrust her against the altar, pulled her arms out wide and tethered her wrists to what Wolf supposed must be iron rings set into the stone. She hung there as though crucified, her long blond hair obscuring her face. As the hooded men who’d tethered her stepped away, another appeared from the smoke.

He was robed in crimson with some kind of gold hieroglyph symbol emblazoned on his chest. His mask was more elaborate than the others’, like a ceremonial headdress or a bishop’s mitre. Except that a bishop’s mitre didn’t have horns. They were curly like those of a ram, rising into points that gleamed in the firelight. In his left hand he held a staff or sceptre. The right hand clutched a long, glittering dagger.

The masked crowd at the lakeside were going wild, baying and howling like a pack of bloodhounds. The horned figure in the red robe stepped dramatically in front of the tethered captive, raised his hands above his head and addressed the assembly from across the water, speaking more words that Wolf couldn’t understand. His head was spinning and he felt sick as he began to understand what he was witnessing, and what was about to happen. The figure in red was some kind of High Priest presiding over the twisted ceremony. And the crowd of lunatics who’d gathered here tonight on this spring equinox were his worshippers.

Wolf had seen many terrible things in his life. Some of them, he’d caused to happen personally. He thought he’d seen everything. Thought that he was too hardened and jaded for anything to get to him any longer. But the scene he was witnessing now made his mouth go dry and his hands shake. He steadied his grip on the phone and kept watching and filming, despite himself.

Solemnly, gravely, the High Priest handed his staff to one of the other men. Then he turned to face the girl, reached out to her and ripped away the white smock with a single violent jerk. The crowd screamed. She was naked underneath. The incomprehensible chanting of the crowd became even wilder.

Now the High Priest stepped closer. He raised the dagger to show the crowd, its long curved blade glittering in the firelight; then in a fast left-to-right movement that made Wolf flinch, he nicked the girl’s neck with the edge of the blade. The blood trickled down her throat and chest. The High Priest bent in front of her, and for a few moments Wolf couldn’t tell what he was doing. Then he stepped aside, and Wolf saw the five-pointed Pentacle drawn in blood on the girl’s stomach.

This was no theatre show. This was real.

Wolf had witnessed enough. He finally averted his eyes and turned away. But he didn’t turn away fast enough to avoid seeing the final stroke of the High Priest’s dagger that sliced deep into the sacrificial victim’s throat and ended her life. Fire and explosions lit up the whole lake island as the chanting of the crowd reached its climax and became a roar of delight and satisfaction.

Wolf staggered to his feet and stumbled away through the trees, twigs whipping at his face as he beat his retreat. To hell with the job. To hell with the agency, the money, the whole damn thing. He didn’t care any more. He was out of here. Done with all of it, forever. He already knew where he would run to: a special place in which nobody would ever find him.

Too late, Wolf spotted the gleam of something smooth and glassy, small and round, pointing down at him from the ivied trunk of a tree.

It was a camera. And he’d been caught right on it.

Chapter 1

Five days later

Somewhere over the south of England en route for France, Ben Hope eased back in his window seat, gazed out at the fluffy clouds drifting by and wondered whether this was the fifth, or the sixth, such trip he’d made in the months since late December. Or maybe it was the seventh. He was losing track, much to the amusement of his associate Jeff Dekker, who never tired of teasing him about his unlikely developing relationship with, of all people, a female police officer from the Scottish Highlands. Ben would have to privately admit that the romance had taken him by surprise, too. Her name was Grace Kirk, and it seemed that he couldn’t get enough of her.

His most recent visit to Grace’s tiny, remote village of Kinlochardaich had lasted three days, which was about as long as Ben felt he could stay away from his home and workplace in northern France before he started to feel he was neglecting his obligations there. The tactical training centre he co-ran with his fellow ex-military associates, called Le Val, was tucked away in a quiet corner of the Normandy countryside and over the years had grown into a thriving little concern whose specialist services were in demand from all over Europe and beyond.

Ben loved the place and wasn’t ready to quit his job, while Grace felt the same way about her own home and career; and so for the moment at least, their relationship would be a long-distance one. It was a convoluted thirteen-hour flight that usually involved stop-offs in London or Manchester, as well as Paris or Lyon or sometimes even Amsterdam. Grace had been still fast asleep when he’d left her at 4.30 a.m. to catch the 6.33 flight from Inverness. He’d called from the airport to let his business partners know he was en route and would be home by that evening.

Now, six hours later, with the time-wasting tedium of Heathrow behind him, his next stop was Paris before he’d finally embark on the final leg of his journey home. He was looking forward to seeing Jeff (who’d be full of the usual piss-taking humour, but Jeff was like that), their colleague Tuesday Fletcher (who owed his colourful first name, as well as his eternally laid-back manner, to his Jamaican heritage), and to enjoying a nice glass or two of his favourite scotch whisky before tucking in for an early night.

Bliss. Ben was in little danger of ever succumbing to the soft life, but the temptation did present itself now and then.

The London-to-Paris flight was unusually empty that day; entire rows of seats across the aisle as well as those behind and in front were vacant. In fact, he virtually had this entire section of the plane to himself. A luxury he’d never encountered before on a commercial flight, but one that suited him fine, allowing him to spread out a little. His old brown leather jacket and military olive-green canvas knapsack occupied the seat next to him, along with the crumpled newspaper he’d been idly leafing through earlier before losing interest. Ben didn’t really care much for following world affairs. He was relaxed into the steady thrum of the plane, still watching the sky drift by and thinking about nothing much in particular when a fellow passenger who was strolling down the aisle from the rear of the plane stopped by Ben’s row, gestured at the unoccupied seat next to him and asked courteously, ‘Please, may I?’

Ben studied him for a moment. He had an excellent memory for faces, but he couldn’t remember having ever seen this man before. The stranger appeared to be in his mid-sixties, though it was hard to tell. He wasn’t tall, wasn’t short, wasn’t fat, wasn’t thin. His grey hair was receding from a high forehead, but was otherwise thick and somewhat unkempt. Sticking-out ears and a large, thread-veined nose with a prominent wart to one side. He wore glasses with a heavy black frame and thick lenses that magnified his eyes like a lemur’s. His suit was dark and his shoes were shiny. Generally respectable-looking and unthreatening in his manner. He seemed to have some particular reason for wanting to talk, though Ben had no idea what it could be.

Experience had taught Ben to be a careful person, sometimes to the point of being cagey and suspicious. But his natural tendency, especially at a moment like this when he was at ease, relatively carefree and fresh from three very pleasant days spent with someone he was extremely fond of, was to be open and friendly. Maybe the fellow had stopped to ask if he could borrow the newspaper. Maybe his watch had stopped and he wanted to know the right time. Maybe all kinds of things.

Ben hesitated a moment longer, then cleared his stuff from the seat, dumped it on the floor at his feet and replied, ‘Be my guest.’

The stranger plucked at his trouser legs the way dapper Englishmen do before sitting down, then settled in the empty seat and peered curiously at Ben through the thick glasses.

‘Enjoying your trip, Mr Hope?’ He spoke softly, but there was no misunderstanding his words.

And now Ben felt the familiar old sense of suspiciousness come flooding back, and he regretted his initial response. He had spent years travelling all over the world under a variety of fake identities, both during and after his time in British Special Forces. Nowadays he was just an ordinary citizen, or as ordinary as a man like him could ever be, and he seldom had cause to travel using any identity other than his own. But he still didn’t like being recognised like this. And whoever the well-dressed stranger was, he obviously hadn’t come to ask the time.

Ben replied tersely, ‘I’m sorry, I think you got the wrong person. I don’t know any Mr Hope.’

The stranger’s face crinkled into a polite smile. But there was a falseness to it, a coldness behind his eyes that made the curl of his lips seem unpleasantly knowing, almost mocking. ‘I do beg your pardon. What I should have said was “Enjoying your trip, Major Hope?” Because, you see, I do happen to know exactly who I’m speaking to. I might add that it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. By all accounts you’re really quite a remarkable fellow.’

Ben stared at the stranger for a very long time. He said, ‘There are plenty of other free seats on this plane. You might want to go and sit in one of those instead.’

The mock-polite smile again. ‘Don’t be coy, Major. A man with your record, which, by the way, makes fascinating reading, should be proud of his achievements. More than a dozen years serving your country in our most elite military force, responsible for countless successful missions in theatres of war all over the world, involving some quite outstanding displays of strategic brilliance and courage. I’m sure I needn’t run through a whole summary of your exemplary career, though.’

The stranger couldn’t be bluffing. He seemed to know too much for that. But if he really had read Ben’s military file, that meant he had access to high-level classified information. Which in turn meant he wasn’t just anybody. He was also talking far too openly about matters that were not meant to be public knowledge.

Ben glanced around him at all the vacant seats, and wondered whether it was just a coincidence that he’d been seated in an almost empty section. Whoever had arranged this cosy meeting could easily have made ghost reservations for half the plane, ensuring that the conversation would not be overheard. And Ben had let himself be caught right in their trap. He felt angry and powerless.

‘All right,’ he said to the stranger. ‘You’ve seen my record, and you know who I am. Which means you’re obviously bothering me for a reason.’

‘You’re quite correct. I thought we could have a little chat before you got home. Easier this way.’

‘You got me,’ Ben said. ‘I’m your captive audience. So is this the part where you cut the crap and tell me what you want?’

‘To retain your services,’ the stranger replied, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘What else?’

Ben shook his head. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re wasting your time there. I’m self-employed. Meaning that I get to choose who I work for. Me.’

‘Of course. Of course. And I hope you can forgive me for intruding on your privacy like this. But I think perhaps you’ll feel more amenable to speaking to me once you’ve seen what I have to show you.’

‘Show me?’

‘Indeed.’ The stranger reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small, slender tablet phone that he offered to Ben.

‘No, thanks. I’m not interested.’

The stranger didn’t take the tablet away. ‘Please. I insist.’

Ben reluctantly took it. The tablet was black and glossy and looked brand new. The screen was displaying what he immediately realised was a paused video file.

The stranger said, ‘Watch.’

Ben tapped the screen, and the video began to play. For the first few moments it could have been a still photo image, as nothing was moving on the screen. It showed the inside of a dark room. Ben had to peer closely to make anything out. He still had no idea what this was about.

But as he began to make sense of what he was looking at, he felt every muscle in his body tighten with alarm.

Chapter 2

Because the scene in the video clip was a bedroom. A bedroom he recognised and had got to know well over the course of the last three months. The same bedroom he’d last slept in himself, before getting up early to catch the plane from Inverness.

In the dim, grainy image on the screen he could see the curve of Grace’s shape beneath the bed covers, turned on her side, gently rising and falling to the rhythm of her breathing, her black hair spread out across the whiteness of the pillow and both hands clasped under her cheek, the way she often slept. Like she was praying in her dreams. Praying for what, Ben had often mused as he lay there watching her.

The video had not been filmed from a static hidden camera. That would have been bad enough – but the slight tremor and sway of the frame told him that it had been captured on a phone or other device by someone inside Grace’s bedroom. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be there.

‘In case you were wondering,’ the stranger said, ‘this was taken this morning, just minutes after you left. Looks peaceful, doesn’t she? Like Sleeping Beauty.’

Ben said nothing. He couldn’t speak. He just wanted to cram the tablet sideways between the stranger’s teeth and pound it in until it disappeared down his throat. But before he could react either way, a movement on the screen made him tense up even more. Because whoever had slipped unnoticed into Grace’s bedroom to film her hadn’t come alone. The second man who stepped out of the shadows the other side of the bed was clad all in black, head to toe, apart from the three pale ovals of the eye and mouth apertures of his balaclava. His hands were gloved. One of them held a semiautomatic pistol. That was black, too, like the long, tubular sound suppressor fitted to the end of its barrel.

The second man stepped up to the edge of the bed. Raised the muzzle of the silenced handgun a few inches from the back of Grace’s head, almost close enough to brush against her hair. He held it there for a few seconds as she went on sleeping, oblivious, as serene as a dormant child. Then he lowered the weapon, stepped away and melted back into the graininess of the shadows as though he’d never been there. With that, the video clip ended and the screen went black.

Ben knew how this game was played. What he’d just been shown was a classic textbook warning. A display of power. Telling him, See, this is what we can do. We can do it easily. We can do it any time. And nobody will even see us coming.

The stranger said, ‘Needless to say, she had no idea of what was happening. Around the time you were boarding your flight at Inverness, she was getting up and preparing to go off to work. That’s where she is now. Going about her police duties without the faintest clue that her every move is being monitored around the clock by a team of operatives ready to move in on command and execute their orders. Nor does she ever need to know, so long as you play your cards right and cooperate with me and my colleagues. I expect I have your attention now, don’t I?’

The trap had just sprung shut, with Ben neatly snared inside it. He said nothing.

The stranger went on: ‘Oh, you can play it cool if you like. But I’m sure you must be full of questions. For example, you’re probably wondering who I am. For the purposes of this conversation, you can call me Saunders. As to the rest, such as whom I work for and what interests I represent, that’s not your concern. You can simply rest assured that this is not a bluff, and that you need to take what I’m telling you with the utmost seriousness. Am I making myself clear?’

‘I think you’ve made your point,’ Ben said.

There is a special kind of anger that goes beyond all possible limits of normal furious, burning rage. It starts deep in the pit of your stomach and gradually spreads to the extremities of the whole body, turning the blood to ice water, boosting adrenal output and focusing the mind more sharply than a combat fighter pilot’s. The hindbrain becomes hyper-aware, the physical senses are greatly amplified, and time seems to move in slow motion.

That was the kind of anger Ben was experiencing at this moment.

The man calling himself Saunders said, ‘Good. Now, here are the ground rules. You are about to receive a set of mission instructions, which you will follow very carefully and exactly. If you refuse to take the mission or comply with said instructions, the team of men who will be watching over Miss Kirk day and night are under orders to dispatch her. A task they will carry out in the most professional, quick and humane manner, but even so I’m sure you prefer to avoid that outcome. Once your mission is complete, the team will stand down and she will never know they were even there.’

‘Really? I can trust you on that, can I?’

If Saunders detected the sarcasm, he didn’t show it. ‘You have my word.’

Ben said, ‘I’m still waiting for the rules.’

All the mannerisms of phony politeness had left Saunders’ face, and the real man was visible behind his former mask of genteel courtesy. The big lemur eyes behind the magnifying lenses were as hard as glaciers and locked unwaveringly onto Ben’s.

Saunders replied, ‘They’re very simple. Please remember that the surveillance team will be watching every move Miss Kirk makes, and everyone with whom she comes into contact. If someone so much as says hello to her in the street, within seconds we’ll know everything about not just their lives, but those of their entire circle of family and friends. Likewise, all her communications, such as landline and mobile phones, emails and social media, are being closely monitored. Therefore, the slightest attempt on your part to warn her, in any way, will be detected the instant you make it, and will result in her being shot in the head at the first opportunity. There will be no reprieve, no second chance.’

Chapter 3

Ben said, ‘No need to sugar-coat it, Saunders. Tell me it like it is.’

Saunders went on, ‘Likewise, if you try to involve the authorities in this matter, she will be shot in the head. Should you be tempted to enlist any of your talented business associates to intervene in this situation, she will be shot in the head.’

Ben was thinking that if he were to snap this man’s neck like a stale stick of baguette and hurl his dead body out of the aircraft, she’d probably be shot in the head, too. ‘She’ll be expecting me to call when I get home.’

‘We know. You needn’t concern yourself with that. It’ll be done for you, by text message. A simple line or two, to say you got back safely and will be in touch soon. It will appear to have come from your phone, which, incidentally, is also being monitored.’

‘You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?’ It was an understatement. It seemed to Ben like they had him pretty well stitched up. As Jeff Dekker would have said, tighter than a camel’s arse in a sandstorm.

‘It’s my job.’

‘All right, Saunders, or whoever you are. I get the message. What is it that you want from me?’

Saunders explained, ‘You’ve been selected from a shortlist of candidates. A very short shortlist, I might add. Made up of names of current or former operatives who share a common expertise in the art of locating, and then neutralising, selected targets.’

‘Human targets,’ Ben said. It wasn’t a question.

‘For a number of particular reasons, you came out top of the list. Head and shoulders above the nearest competition, thanks to your prior experience in this kind of work. Before you went freelance calling yourself a “specialist kidnap and ransom consultant” you excelled at tracking insurgents and terrorist commanders on behalf of HM Government.’

Ben was no longer surprised that this man Saunders seemed to know so much about his past. It wasn’t just his military experience. These people clearly had gathered detailed information on his private hostage rescue career, too, and that bothered him a lot. He’d always worked hard to cover his tracks. The knowledge that these spooks, or whoever they were, seemed able to see straight through his defences made him feel vulnerable, even paranoid.

‘Is that who I’m being recruited by, HM Government?’

Saunders gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘Let’s just say that one of our lambs has strayed from the flock. We need someone with your inimitable talents to find him and teach him the error of his ways.’

So after the brutal candour about the threat hanging over Grace if Ben didn’t play ball, now it was back to the euphemisms. ‘You mean you want him eliminated.’

‘Eliminated, neutralised, terminated, call it what you will.’

‘There’s your problem,’ Ben replied. ‘Because I’m not an assassin.’

Saunders raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, dear. That sounded suspiciously like a refusal to take the mission. Are we forgetting the ground rules already?’

Ben said nothing.

‘Under the circumstances, Major, you’re whoever we want you to be. Let’s not pretend you haven’t done it before. Your particular skillset is well documented. Plus, you’re uniquely qualified for this specific mission. Unlike any of the other potential candidates, you happen to be personally acquainted with the target. Given the nature of the job, we considered that would give you an edge. Not that a man of your expertise is likely to have too much trouble.’

‘Killers come as friends,’ Ben said. ‘That’s how it works in your organisation, I suppose.’

‘I wouldn’t call him a friend, exactly. You haven’t seen him in a long time.’

‘Who is he?’

‘His name is Wolf. Jaden Wolf.’

‘That’s some name for a stray lamb,’ Ben said. But he recognised it immediately, and it was clear to him why he’d been picked for such an assignment. That didn’t make him any happier about it. ‘So what’s Wolf done to deserve this?’

‘The whys and wherefores are not your concern,’ replied Saunders. He pointed at the tablet phone. ‘You can hang onto that. It contains all the information you’ll require, on an encrypted data file that is programmed to self-destruct two minutes after opening, so I suggest you read it carefully and commit it to memory. Shouldn’t be a problem for a clever chap like you.’

‘What’s the decryption key?’

Saunders smiled. ‘We selected one that would be nice and easy for you to remember. The password is “Ruth”.’

Ruth was Ben’s sister and only surviving relation. She lived in Switzerland, and they were in touch from time to time. When Ben was in his teens, Ruth had been kidnapped by Arab human traffickers during a family holiday in Morocco. He’d devoted many years of his life to finding her, and never wanted to lose her again. He understood that the use of her name as a passcode was another not-so-subtle warning of the hurt these people could inflict if he failed to obey them.

He asked, ‘When did this happen?’

‘Five days ago.’

‘That’s a long time for someone like Wolf to be running. I’m presuming you’ve had your own people out looking for him.’

Saunders nodded. ‘We were able to track a few of his movements. His vehicle was found abandoned in a village in Surrey, where a car was reported stolen the same night. The stolen car was discovered the next day in a street in London. It’s all in the file.’

‘And you have no idea where he is now.’

‘If we did, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

‘Which means he’s either still in the country, or he’s travelling on a false ID.’

‘He’s a resourceful sort of chap. Almost as resourceful as you are. You and he had the same teachers, after all.’

‘Then he could be anywhere. Sitting in a cave in outer Mongolia or sailing a fishing boat around the Florida Keys.’

‘Why else would we have seen the need to enlist the very best man for the job of tracking him down? Few people have ever known Jaden Wolf as well as you. I have every faith that you can find him, Major Hope.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t like it,’ Ben said. ‘I left that whole world behind me a long time ago.’ And now it was catching up with him again, like a trailing shadow that he couldn’t shake off.

‘As you wish.’ Saunders pointed again at the tablet phone. ‘You’ve been supplied with a number to call to notify us once the mission is complete, as well as a secure email address to which you’re required to send photographic evidence of the neutralised target, and its location. Needless to say, one of my operatives will be sent to the scene to ascertain personally that the job has been carried out to our satisfaction. Afterwards, you will be free to return to your life, and neither you nor Miss Kirk will hear from us again. You have my word on that, too.’

‘You’re a man of real integrity, Saunders.’

‘Well, I think that more or less concludes this little chat. You and I will not meet again, but it’s been a pleasure talking to you.’

Saunders went to get up, then paused. ‘Oh, just one thing. Before I go, I should point out that there are several of my agents on this aircraft, so I suggest you stay in your seat for the remainder of the flight and don’t make a fuss, or come looking for me or anything silly like that. There will be no reminder regarding Miss Kirk’s situation. Be sensible, do your job, and you needn’t have a thing to worry about.’

Then Saunders stood and walked off down the aisle the way he’d come, and Ben was alone again.

Chapter 4

For what it was worth, the rest of Ben’s journey home went smoothly. He made his connection in Paris, got to Cherbourg exactly on time and sped back to Le Val in his BMW Alpina. The night was warm and still, and the stars were shining bright. Storm, Ben’s favourite of the various canine residents of Le Val, was there to greet him when he got out of the car, wagging his tail and full of happiness at his master’s return. Ben bent down to give the big hairy German shepherd a hug, had his face liberally washed by a sloppy great tongue and then climbed the steps to the front door of the farmhouse.

Home sweet home. Warm, welcoming light spilled from the windows of the farmhouse kitchen into the yard. Ben could see his friends Jeff and Tuesday having dinner in their usual places at the old oak table. The kitchen was the hub of the house, the common room and command centre where the core members of the Le Val team spent most evenings drinking, smoking, relaxing and sharing a laugh after a long day’s work teaching good guys with guns how to better protect and serve the innocent citizens who depended on them. A delegation of cops from the BRI-BRAC anti-terror brigade in Paris had just finished up a two-day Hostage Rescue Team refresher course in which Jeff had put them through their paces in Le Val’s killing house, where the live-fire combat exercises were fast and furious, bad-guy targets lurked behind every doorway and the simulation of a real-life HRT raid was made to be as realistic as possible.

In short, life at the compound was just the same as ever. Stepping back into that comforting, familiar environment, Ben might almost have believed that the episode on board the plane earlier that day had been nothing more than some weird dream that he could just shrug off, forget and move on from.

But it hadn’t been a dream. Ben’s predicament was as real as the threat hanging over Grace Kirk, and he could no more afford to ignore it than he could disregard Saunders’ rules. The first of which was tell no one. And that, Ben knew, was going to be his first tough challenge.

As he stepped inside the house and put his head around the kitchen door he was met with the sound of laughter and the aroma of the big pot of beef stew that sat on the range.

‘Dead on time. Welcome home, lover boy,’ was Jeff’s boisterous greeting. The wine had been flowing that evening, judging by the empty bottles on the dinner table and the flush in Jeff’s cheeks. Jeff was in a happier mood these days, after going through the grinder following the collapse of his relationship with a French woman called Chantal. Some months earlier he’d celebrated his rediscovered bachelor status by throwing himself into learning to fly. Since getting his pilot’s licence just weeks ago, he’d spent a chunk of his hard-earned cash on a 1967 Cessna 172 Skyhawk and could talk of little else. A stack of light aircraft magazines, service manuals and pilot licensing literature lay heaped on the sideboard.

‘How was your trip?’ Tuesday asked, grinning his dazzling trademark grin that could light up all but the darkest of spaces. Jeff grabbed a third glass from the cupboard, set it down for Ben in his usual place at the head of the table, and swilled wine into it. ‘Come and have a drink, mate. Plenty of stew left in the pot, too.’

‘I’m not hungry. Think I’ll go and take a shower.’

Jeff peered at him. ‘You all right?’ For Ben to turn down a drink was a rare event; besides which, there wasn’t much you could hide from Jeff Dekker. He liked to laugh and mess around, but beneath the laddish façade was a highly astute and perspicacious mind. You didn’t get to spend over ten years in the Special Boat Service, half of them in command of your own troop, unless you were a pretty smart and capable guy.

‘I’m fine,’ Ben said, with not much conviction.

‘Sure about that?’

‘I’m fine,’ Ben repeated. Leaving them to it, he headed upstairs to dump his bag in his room. His quarters were small and simple, with a single bed, a plain wardrobe, a mirror on the wall and very little else in the way of decor. The only luxury was his ensuite bathroom. He quickly stripped off his things and hit the shower. Sixty seconds exactly, ice cold, grimly relishing the shock of the frigid water that jolted his system and helped to keep his mind sharp and clear. He towelled himself vigorously, returned to his room with a towel around his waist, changed into fresh clothing and set about repacking his bag for another trip. Where that would lead him, he still had no idea – but from the information that Saunders had supplied him he knew that his starting point would be London. And he could afford to waste no time getting there.

After he’d finished repacking his travel items, he unlocked the small security safe bolted to the wall by his bedside. The contents of the safe were the reason he’d come home, rather than heading straight back to London the instant he’d touched down at Charles de Gaulle airport. Inside were two handguns with multiple loaded magazines, two burner phones, ten thousand euros in cash, and a manila envelope containing three fake passports.

It was primarily the passports that Ben was interested in. He spilled them out of the envelope. They were the work of one Thierry Chevrolet, a master forger whose expertise Ben had enlisted back during his wild, dangerous days of hustling around Europe chasing down kidnappers and rescuing the victims they’d taken for ransom. For several years he’d kept them in a bank deposit box in Paris, the city that had served as his main European base of operations. Since getting out of that game and reverting back – at any rate, trying to revert back – to being a normal citizen, he’d no longer had any use for the deposit box and brought everything across to Le Val. There they’d stayed, locked up, unneeded and mostly forgotten.

Until now. Saunders might have got him by the balls, and there might be no option other than comply with the man’s threat, but Ben was damned if he was going to let these bastards pry into his life for another minute or shadow his movements another mile. The fake passports were in the names of three fictitious individuals named Harris, Connors and Palmer. They were equally well-used and covered with visa stamps that read like a scrapbook of Ben’s adventures all over the world. The Palmer passport had expired but the other two still had some life left. Ben decided that he would travel as Paul Harris, with the Connors identity as a fall back. He tossed his real passport and the Palmer one onto the bed and stuffed the two fakes into his bag.

Now the phones. With his personal mobile compromised, it had to be ditched too. He tossed it on the bed next to the discarded passports and grabbed the two burners from the safe. Both anonymously paid for in cash and untraceable to their owner. The only other person in the world who knew their numbers was Jeff Dekker. And that was good enough for Ben.

Next he turned his attention to the handguns, removed them both from the safe and laid them on the bed, too. One was a Springfield XD, polymer-framed, all-singing, all-dancing, state-of-the-art modern combat pistol. The other was the venerable steel Browning 9mm that he’d used for many years in the SAS. With its rugged design and fourteen-shot capacity the model had barely changed since its inception in 1935, because it hadn’t needed to. It was an old friend to him, fitted his hand like a tailor-made glove and had never once let him down.

Ben hesitated over the weapons. No question, he couldn’t go after a man like Jaden Wolf unarmed. But the travel issue was the sticking point. He could take the chance of finding a substitute once he reached his target location, but good, reliable hardware wasn’t always easy to get hold of in the field. On the other hand, smuggling a gun overseas was taking a hell of a chance. An even bigger one, if he was stupid enough to try to bring a firearm onto a civilian passenger plane.

But Ben had already decided that the fastest way to London was by car. And despite the risk, he had his ways and means. Making his choice, he stuck the old Browning and three loaded magazines into his pocket.

Next, he thought about money. His mission expenses were an unknown quantity. The full ten thousand euros was probably more than he needed, but five might be too little. Settling on seven, he bundled six thousand into his bag and kept the remainder aside to carry on his person. As he was slipping the wad of notes into his wallet, something fell out. It was a folded 4x6 photo print. The picture had been taken on a cold, sunny, snowy day back in January, during one of his early return visits to Scotland when he and Grace had gone hiking into the mountains above Loch Ardaich. Pausing to marvel at the scenery, they’d snuggled together while she snapped a selfie shot of them with her phone. On his return to Le Val he’d asked her to email it to him, and printed it out on the office printer. Faintly embarrassed at his own sentimentality, he’d been carrying it with him ever since.

Seeing the picture again now made him think of what he’d brought on her. If he’d been just some ordinary guy with a normal life, this threat would not be hanging over her now. She was in mortal danger because of him. Because she loved him.

He let the picture slip from his fingers. Looked up and saw his own raw, grim expression looking back at him in the mirror. A rush of self-hatred gripped him and he slammed his fist into the glass. Jagged shards fell to the floor. Breathing hard and fighting to contain his emotions, he looked at his hand and the blood oozing from his lacerated knuckles.

Get a grip on yourself. This doesn’t help her.

His hand hurt, but he didn’t care. He wiped the blood on his bed cover, then threw on his leather jacket, slung his bag over his shoulder and headed downstairs.

Chapter 5

Now for the tricky part: getting past Jeff and Tuesday without attracting suspicion. Ben was wondering whether it was better to say goodbye or just disappear. But that choice was made for him when Jeff emerged from the kitchen and collared him in the hallway.

‘What’s up?’ Jeff asked.

‘Nothing’s up.’

But Jeff wasn’t so easily fooled. Eyeing the bag on Ben’s shoulder he grinned and said, ‘Christ almighty, off again so soon? Don’t tell me you’re headed back to Scotland for more. What happened, did she forget to bring the handcuffs?’

Highly tickled by his own joke, Jeff roared with laughter until his face turned purple. Tuesday, who had appeared in the doorway behind him, rolled his eyes in exasperation. ‘Please excuse him, Ben. It’s not his fault. The poor guy’s suffering from a bad case of suspended adolescence.’

The banter was just part of the routine at Le Val, a throwback to their military days. Ben knew that if he told his friends what was really going on, they’d drop the larking around like a red-hot coal and nobody in the world would be more deadly serious about offering their help in any way possible, with no concern whatever for their own skins. But as alone as he felt at this moment, however much he ached to share his problem with them, it was a risk he dreaded to take. If Saunders and his shadowy team of watchers got the slightest inkling that Ben had broken the rules by bringing in outside help, there would be nothing to stop them from carrying out their threat. Grace would die, and Ben could not live knowing he’d caused that to happen.

Stitched up tight.

No way out.

Except to do what he’d been ordered to do.

‘There’s something I have to take care of,’ he said. ‘Please don’t ask me what it is, because I can’t tell you. When it’s over, I promise that I will. But for the moment I need you to cover for me while I go off and deal with this, alone. I hate having to ask you to do that. I hate this whole situation. But that’s just how it is.’

Whatever quantity of wine Jeff might have consumed that evening, the effects of the alcohol seemed to vanish instantly and he was suddenly as sober as a brain surgeon. Both he and Tuesday were frowning and full of questions that they had to work hard to bite back. ‘You know we’re there for you,’ Jeff said after a beat. ‘Anytime, in any way. No matter what. You know that, yeah?’

‘I do know that.’

‘You’re sure this is how it has to be, mate?’

‘I have no other choice.’

‘Whatever you need from us, Ben,’ Tuesday said. ‘We’ve got your back.’

‘I appreciate it,’ Ben replied.

‘Hey, your hand’s bleeding,’ Tuesday said, noticing Ben’s gashed knuckles. ‘Looks like a nasty cut.’

Ben barely glanced at his injured hand. ‘Just a scratch. Must have knocked it.’

‘Hmm. Whatever you say.’

What Ben had to tell them next was too important not to mention, even though he knew it would sound strange. ‘Listen. One more thing. I need you to screen all phone calls to the office line while I’m gone.’

Now Jeff’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘What? Why?’

Ben replied, ‘Because Grace might try to phone. If she does, I don’t want you to pick up. And whatever you do, don’t call her back. Okay?’

Any verbal contact, however innocent, could be construed by the watchers as a breach of the rules. But with no way of knowing that, Jeff and Tuesday were taken aback by Ben’s request. Jeff was staring at him through narrowed eyes. ‘Enough messing around, mate. Level with us. You’ve been acting odd since you got back.’

‘I asked you not to ask,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t know how else to say it.’

Jeff said, ‘Come on, Ben. You can’t leave us in the dark like this.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.’

‘At least tell us where you’re going.’

‘I’m going to London. All right? I have to go now.’

Ben clapped their shoulders, nodded his goodbye and left before they could see the emotions welling up inside him. The lump in his throat was one of gratitude for their trust and comradeship, and guilt for not being open with them. What had he ever done to deserve friends like these? And just when he needed their help the most, he was forbidden from accepting it. That thought only made him despise Saunders even more.

And it formed a new resolve in Ben’s mind. Jaden Wolf wasn’t the only marked man out there. Once that situation was dealt with, Saunders would be next. Nobody would threaten to hurt Grace and get away unpunished. Nobody.

He closed the farmhouse door behind him. Outside in the darkness of the yard, he gave Storm a parting hug. He slipped a Gauloise from a fresh pack, lit it with his Zippo, then clanged the lighter shut and got back in the car. The three-litre, straight-six, triple-turbo engine was still warm from the drive from Paris. It roared into life and Ben stamped on the gas and slewed hard around in the yard and took off again.

One lone wolf going after another. As the hunt began, Ben thought about the man he was being commanded to kill.

Chapter 6

Saunders had said that few people knew Jaden Wolf as well as Ben had. He’d been right. Because there weren’t many experiences in life that could form bonds between people like the shared adversity of extreme danger and war. That was the nature of Ben’s past history with the man who was now his target.

For those who’d never been there, it was easy to scoff at and dismiss as trite the notion of a ‘band of brothers’. But those who had been through the terror and the exhilaration, witnessed the raw brutality of mankind’s most destructive and pitiless endeavour, watched their comrades being maimed and killed and put themselves on the line right along with them, knew that that sense of kinship was the core experience of combat. The willingness to lay down your life to safeguard those of your brothers in arms was, ultimately, a form of love – one that forged some of the most intense and indelible bonds known to the human condition.

Ben was one of the minority of people who understood what that really meant. And so was Jaden Wolf.

Wolf was a few years younger than Ben, who had first met him as an intense, raw-boned twenty-three-year-old still fresh from his ascension from the Royal Marines to the hallowed ranks of UK Special Forces’ most elite unit, 22 SAS. Many young troopers from all throughout the British Army dreamed of wearing the coveted winged dagger badge with its Who Dares Wins motto; few of them dared to pit themselves against the bone-crushingly, soul-destroyingly arduous selection process, and fewer still, far fewer, ever made it through to achieving their goal.

For young Jaden Wolf, the journey to the regiment had been a particularly gruelling one, marked by failure, cruel disappointment and injury. On his first unlucky attempt to pass the notorious endurance phase of the twice-yearly selection course he’d slipped on ice, knocked himself unconscious, almost frozen to death in the mountains of the Brecon Beacons and had to be stretchered out with acute hypothermia, concussion and a badly dislocated shoulder, earning himself an automatic RTU by failing to finish. Though he’d been by no means the only candidate to have to return to his unit with his tail between his legs, he felt the humiliation deeply and spent the next year nursing his injured pride and training like a maniac before trying again.

Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. Wolf’s second attempt, the following winter, came perilously close to repeating the failure of his first when, during a forced march in full kit with a sixty-pound Bergen on his back and torrential rain making it all but impossible to see, he lost his footing in the rocks and tumbled a hundred feet down a gorge. In the fall, his rifle butt smacked him in the face, broke his nose and knocked out half his teeth. But this time the young Marine was not to be deterred, and would sooner die than fail again. By sheer force of will, he managed to drag himself out of the gorge and rejoin the march at double speed. He finished the endurance phase covered in blood and barely able to stand – one of just nineteen men out of over two hundred who’d shown enough grit to make it to the end.

Several months later, having battered his way through the rigours of Jungle Training, Escape and Evasion Training and the euphemistically termed ‘Tactical Questioning’ (military-speak for torture resistance), Wolf was able to stand proud as one of the fully-fledged new regimental members who received the exalted beige beret and winged dagger insignia. The fancy new titanium and gold denture he now sported in place of his missing teeth quickly earned him the nickname ‘Jaws’ among his SAS comrades. Along with the rest of the newcomers he was still on probation, his every move closely watched by the Directing Staff in case he slipped up or showed the slightest weakness. But it seemed that no amount of mental stress or physical hardship could wipe the gleaming golden smile off his face.

The several times Ben had got to work with him, Wolf had proven himself to be a tough and reliable trooper. He was unambitious for his own advancement and yet showed the capacity of a born leader of men, as efficient at fighting the enemy as he was thoughtful and selfless in regard to his peers. Ben had heard the whisperings among the top brass that Wolf might have the makings of a fine commanding officer.

Another quality Ben had liked in him, even though it was a decidedly non-military one, was the caring attitude he showed towards animals. On one occasion, when Ben’s unit entered a remote Iraqi village while hunting renegade Islamist insurgents, the SAS troops had found a tumbledown building that they initially suspected housed a cell of enemy fighters, only to discover that it was being used as stabling for a small herd of horses and mules, all of them badly undernourished and living in filth. He remembered Wolf’s disgust and anger at the appalling condition in which the poor beasts were being kept. After giving their keeper a severe dressing down, the young trooper had personally seen to it that the animals were cleaned up and given food and fresh bedding. When it came time for the unit to move on, Wolf was reluctant to leave the horses behind.

Wolf’s love of animals hadn’t always earned him the admiration of his superiors, however. Eighteen months after the horse incident, Wolf had returned from two weeks’ leave with a leg in plaster, the result of having thrown himself in front of a car to save a dog from being run over. Anyone who loved Man’s best friend that much had to get Ben’s approval – but the SAS top brass were not amused. A critical mission that had been months in the planning very nearly got screwed up as a result of Wolf’s having to be replaced at short notice, and he faced disciplinary action for turning up for duty half crippled. Only when Ben had intervened in the matter to plead his case had Wolf been spared from administrative punishment.

It wasn’t so long after that affair that Ben’s own military days drew to a close. After thirteen long and sometimes difficult years he finally quit the regiment to pursue his solo career, implementing his skills in service of innocent victims of the kidnap and ransom industry. Some time after, he’d heard through the grapevine that Wolf had quit, too, though nobody seemed to know where he’d gone afterwards.

Ben had always wondered where Wolf might have ended up. A lot of ex-SAS guys drifted into high-level security work, getting paid fat tax-free dollars for consulting on oilfield protection in the Persian Gulf or keeping VIPs safe from the bullets of assassins. Others went the less salubrious mercenary route, enabling the rulers of tin-pot nations to overthrow and butcher their neighbours, or sometimes to persecute and oppress their own citizens. A smaller minority became employed by secretive government agencies at home or abroad, doing work that was no less dark and dirty but highly lucrative. Some stayed in contact with their old army pals. But Jaden Wolf seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.

Now, it seemed that Ben was about to catch up once again with his former comrade.

If only he could find him first.

Chapter 7

Five days earlier

Jaden Wolf knew that from the instant he’d been caught on security camera, he was a marked man and his life as he’d known it was over. That was fine by him. After what he’d witnessed that night, he wanted out. All the way out. And he had no plans ever to return.

He’d encountered no resistance as he made it out of the grounds of Karswell Hall, but he knew that they’d waste no time in coming after him. The clock was ticking. He had to move extremely fast, or all escape routes would be blocked ahead of him and it would be game over. Failure to complete a mission was not an option at the best of times; now that he was a witness to such a dark and terrible secret, there was no way they’d allow him to live. If caught, he would be made to disappear as though no trace of him had ever existed. Reaching the perimeter of the estate he scrambled back over the wall and sprinted to his car. The Audi, like virtually everything else he owned, would have to be abandoned sooner rather than later. He threw himself behind the wheel and took off into the night with a squeal of spinning tyres.

Wolf drove eleven miles in seven minutes before the signs for a village flashed by in his headlights. It was a traditional old place, with a greystone church and cemetery, sleepy timber-framed and flint cottages, a quaint village square and a little stone bridge over a river. He parked the Audi under the shadows of a spreading oak tree, got out and spent a couple of minutes removing its number plates. That would help slow the police’s attempts to ID the abandoned vehicle. They’d soon find that it had no engine or chassis numbers, either. Being traced by the police wasn’t Wolf’s concern, however. More watchful and sinister forces were everywhere. He knew that all too well. He’d been one of their foot soldiers until tonight.

Wolf abandoned the Audi and moved fast and silently through the dark village streets for quarter of a mile until he found what he was looking for. Some of the newest and most hi-tech cars were also the easiest to steal, and Wolf was an expert. The DS 3 Crossback was parked just a few yards from the front door of its owner’s cottage. Wolf took a small electronic device from his pocket that boosted the signal for its keyless central locking while simultaneously relaying it to the key inside the cottage, fooling the system. The locks clunked open. Wolf was inside and away within six seconds.

From there, it was just a thirty-five-mile drive to London. Wolf sped through the night and covered the distance in a little over twenty minutes. He sliced through the city and parked the Crossback on a residential street close to the Imperial War Museum, half a mile from his apartment. He lived on the top floor of a handsome old building overlooking a little park where he often walked and fed crumbs to the pigeons. The apartment wasn’t large, but it was comfortable for a single guy who generally kept himself to himself apart from the occasional short-term lady friend. Wolf wasn’t so attached to the place that it would hurt him never to come back.

He had his pistol in his hand as he climbed the stairs and approached his door. Silently, stealthily, he slipped inside. He paused for an entire minute, until he could be confident that the apartment was empty. He was still ahead of the curve. None of his fellow agents had come for him – yet. But they could turn up at any moment and he intended to get out of here as fast as he could. Keeping the lights off he walked into his bedroom, where he kept a go-bag packed and ready. It contained all the essentials for a fast getaway, including another pistol and a quantity of walking-around money. Wolf snatched the bag and left. He did not return to the stolen car. Southwark underground station was four minutes’ walk away. It was on the Jubilee line, and this was a Friday, which meant the tube would be running around the clock. He donned a NY Yankees baseball cap from his bag and kept his eyes down as he entered the station, letting the long peak of the cap mask his face from the CCTV cameras.

Wolf travelled the night tube, constantly watching out for anyone following him. Nobody was, or he’d likely already be fighting for his life. He got off at St John’s Wood Station, and walked another quarter mile to a private security facility that offered twenty-four-hour access to safe deposit storage ranging from shoebox-size to a walk-in vault. Guards patrolled the facility day and night, and customers’ valuables were protected by a state-of-the-art biometric authentication system. Wolf had been using the place for five years, after a meticulous search for the most bombproof private security storage in London.

Also the most discreet. Which it needed to be, considering the nature of some of the items he kept in his personal vault. Those included a fully-automatic Heckler & Koch G3 battle rifle and an Uzi submachine gun – which he wouldn’t be bringing with him. It also included his cash savings fund of quarter of a million pounds, half of it in euro currency, and a collection of driving licences and passports in a variety of names – which he would. Some of the fake papers were ones that had been provided to him by his employers, but Wolf had taken the precaution of creating two additional false identities that nobody knew about. Neither Jack Cullen nor Douglas Baker would trigger any alert via passport control, and they were free to flit about the world as they pleased. Wolf decided that, for the time being at least, he would travel as Jack Cullen.

The money was packed in a black holdall. It was heavy, but manageable. He transferred the contents of his go-bag apart from the pistol, which he’d have to leave behind along with the one in his belt. Wolf locked up his vault, checked out of the facility for what he knew would be the last time and walked back out into the night. Now he was ready to leave Britain and never return. It didn’t bother him a bit. There was nothing here for him any longer. And he knew exactly where he was headed.

In a back alley a mile away from the security facility, Wolf bade a formal goodbye to his old self. He watched as the passport and driving licence in his real name, along with all his cards and other ID, burned away into a small pile of ashes and molten plastic. He walked for a long time through the night streets of London. The killers would no doubt have reached his apartment by now. Finding it empty, they’d soon be hunting city-wide for him. He was a step ahead. He meant to keep it that way.

A few hours later, a lone traveller by the name of Jack Cullen arrived at Heathrow Airport where he boarded a flight to Luxembourg, carrying a black holdall with him as hand luggage. One hour and seventeen minutes after takeoff, he was moving on once more, satisfied that he was leaving no trail that anyone could follow. He would soon be completely home free. That thought made him feel strangely liberated, almost happy. This was the first day of a new life for him. One that he had often dreamed of and should have begun a long time ago – but he’d never had the courage to take the step. In the most bizarre and terrible way, last night’s events at Karswell Hall had been the catalyst to set him free.

Over the next two days Wolf made his way across France. He slept rough at night, in remote spots where police patrols wouldn’t harass him. Hitch-hiking was the best way to avoid bus and railway stations or anywhere else his face might get picked up on a security camera. Even though French citizens were far less heavily surveilled than the subjects of the cynically mistrustful British state, you could never be too careful. Most of his rides were with long-distance truckers, in whose company he felt comfortable. His dad had been a lorry driver all his life, before lung cancer had punched his ticket. If Wolf hadn’t joined the Marines, he might have pursued the same freewheeling, solitary kind of existence.

On the third day since leaving London he reached the Pyrenees and crossed the border into Andorra. He was elated knowing that he’d made a clean getaway. Soon he would get to his final destination. A place that he had often visited in his dreams. A secret haven where the evil lunatics he’d worked for could never find him. His new life would be a simple one, keeping himself to himself, close to nature and the things that he loved. He had enough money to last him years, maybe even forever if he was frugal. He would be safe and free, and happy. The future seemed assured.

That, at any rate, was the plan. If Jaden Wolf had known then who his employers would soon be sending to track him down, he wouldn’t have been so confident.

Chapter 8

Ben hurtled from Le Val towards Calais, a long drive across northern France whittled down to just over three hours by the insane speeds at which he pushed the high-performance Alpina along the motorway through the dead of night.

He made only two stops along the way. The first was to refuel and buy a ham and cheese half-baguette sandwich, some bottled mineral water and some handi-wipes from the service station shop. The second stop was in search of a quiet spot away from the main road, where he used one of his burner phones to book a crossing on the Eurotunnel Le Shuttle, due to depart at 03.25, in the name of Paul Harris. That done, he ate behind the wheel while rereading the file on Jaden Wolf that Saunders had given him. It revealed nothing of what Wolf had been doing for these people, or why they might want him dead. But Ben could guess. He could guess plenty.

He washed down the sandwich with some water, smoked a Gauloise, then got out of the car and set about taking the necessary precautions to conceal the items he needed to smuggle illegally into Britain. He’d made the same simple modification to several of the cars he’d owned. It had always worked for him in the past and with a bit of luck it would work now.

Ben had made good time from Le Val and it wasn’t yet midnight. He cleaned up his grimy hands with the wipes and the rest of the water, then climbed into the front passenger seat, racked its backrest all the way down, and tried to grab a couple of hours’ sleep. It wasn’t a success. With so many anxious thoughts buzzing through his mind the best he could hope for was to close his eyes and try to let his body relax. A Buddhist monk wouldn’t have been able to find inner peace at a time like this. In the end, he gave up and got out of the car, pacing and smoking to try to burn off his nervous energy. That didn’t work either.

Then it was time to head the last few kilometres to catch his night crossing. Back on the motorway, he soon passed under the overhead TUNNEL SOUS LA MANCHE sign and followed the filter lane for private vehicles. At the other end of a flyover was the automated check-in terminal where a machine fed him his boarding pass to hang on his rear-view mirror. After the French passport control was the security check area, where cars were stopped at random for inspection. Ben had been through that routine before. Some examinations were more thorough than others. The vehicle might be put over a grid with a camera below that scanned the underbody for anything fishy. Sniffer dogs were sometimes let loose to test their uncanny skills in detecting drugs or explosives. A suspect vehicle could be stripped down to the last nut and bolt while its owner sweated in a Border Force holding pen. And now and then, to much triumphant fanfare that belied the fact that any success was almost entirely down to luck, they actually nailed a smuggler.

What Ben was carrying carefully concealed inside his car would have landed him in jail on charges of anything from arms trafficking to suspected terrorism. But his precautions turned out to have been unnecessary as the Alpina sailed through the security control with nobody the wiser about the Browning Hi-Power and thirty-nine rounds of ammunition wrapped in an airtight, heat-resistant package within a secret compartment deep inside the Alpina’s engine bay, coated in heavy grease.

The useful tricks you could learn from a lifetime of dealing with terrorists, thugs and psychopaths. Ben couldn’t help but wonder how many of those would be waltzing unimpeded through the tunnel today, this week, this month, happily avoiding running the gauntlet of airport security. The disparity between the two forms of travel was plain crazy. You were forbidden to take a can of soup or a badminton racket onto a plane for fear that such items would imperil the lives of your fellow passengers; and yet there was little to prevent some enterprising jihadist suicide bomber or other nutcase from packing a car full of PETN high-explosive and letting off a nasty little surprise midway beneath the English Channel. It would almost certainly happen one day.

But it wasn’t Ben’s job to question policy, least of all if his situation could benefit from its slackness. After the security point he presented his fake passport to the British end of the customs check. Then he was being waved through and following the EMBARQUEMENT signs for boarding. A staff member in an orange high-vis jacket directed him onto the train, where vehicles lined up nose-to-tail like cattle being shipped to market. Ben killed his engine, rolled down his windows, and soon the train got rolling. As they hurtled along fifty metres below the sea bed, he sat quietly resisting the urge to smoke while looking once more at Saunders’ file on the target. The video clip of Grace and her intruders was just a tap of the screen away, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at it.

Thirty-five minutes later, at three a.m. local time, Ben rolled the Alpina off the train on the other side of the Channel, in the port town of Folkestone seventy miles from London. The address that Saunders had given him was in the heart of the city, on the cusp between Lambeth and Waterloo not far from the river. In some parallel fantasy universe, Ben might walk into Wolf’s apartment and find him sitting there unawares, sipping a cup of tea while idly planning his getaway sometime in the near future. In the real world, Wolf was somewhere on the far side of the planet and the spooks had already been through every square inch of his place any number of times, days before Saunders had resorted to his alternative plan of extorting Ben to pick up the cold trail.

Ben would soon find out. Somewhere near the rural Kent village of Charing he detoured into the countryside and found a deserted back lane where he could retrieve his pistol and ammunition from their hiding place. Then he was back on the road and speeding towards London with the loaded Browning nestling comfortably in its traditional place behind his right hip. By 4.30 a.m. he was parking the car close to Wolf’s address, ready for whatever he might find there.

The outside of Wolf’s apartment building was surveilled by a CCTV system, but Ben soon found the conveniently disabled camera around the back. Whoever had neatly snipped its feed wire had very likely been the same person who’d picked the lock on a nearby rear entrance to the building. Ben shone his mini-torch on the fresh scratches around the keyhole and thought, Hmm. He wouldn’t have made those scratches himself, because he was a pretty adept lock-picker. Less than a minute later, he was inside the building and making his way up a dark backstair to the top floor.

The same tell-tale scratches were on the lock of Wolf’s apartment door. Ben thought, Hmm again. Not too surprisingly, it looked as though his real-life assessment of the situation had been right. Someone else had been here before him, and done a reasonable, if not perfect, job of covering their tracks. Would Wolf have picked his own lock? Ben didn’t think so.

Another minute later, he was inside the apartment. Gun in hand he stalked from room to room until he’d cleared the whole place and found it empty. Only then did he turn on the lights and survey the extent of the damage. Whoever had surreptitiously entered the apartment had done a thorough job of tearing the place apart. It was either the work of one very busy ransacker, or more likely two or three working in a team. Whatever the case, one thing was for sure: the burglary hadn’t been reported to the police or the apartment would have been sealed with crime scene tape.

Wolf’s home was quite sparsely furnished, but the things he did own were upmarket. He’d clearly been making good money working for Saunders’ people. Ben wondered whether it was money that the ransackers had been looking for. The way they’d torn the place up suggested they’d been interested in more than just finding the man himself. If not money, then perhaps documents? Photographs? Computer drives? In the living room a large modern bookcase had been dragged away from the wall, as though someone wanted to check for a hidey-hole or concealed safe behind it. Pictures had been torn down from the walls or knocked askew on their hooks, presumably for the same reason. An expensive white leather sofa had been slashed to ribbons and half its stuffing ripped out. They’d even been prising up floorboards.

If Wolf had left behind any obvious clue as to his current whereabouts, the searchers would surely have found it days ago, and Ben wouldn’t have been standing here now. Coming here seemed like a hopeless cause – but it was Ben’s only lead. In any case he’d expected to find the place in a mess. He wasn’t going to be fazed by it, because finding clues where there were seemingly none to be found was one of the abilities that had served him well in the past. He stood there in the wreckage of the apartment, mentally absorbing the energy of the place, trying to put himself in his target’s mind.

To catch a wolf, you have to think like a wolf.

Chapter 9

Ben revisited each room of Wolf’s apartment in turn, scanning details, thinking hard. In the bedroom the intruders had rifled through a unit that contained various personal effects including two high-priced Swiss watches, but not taken them. They seemed to have been more interested in disembowelling the bed mattress, which was as badly slashed to pieces as the living room sofa.

It was the same story when he examined the bathroom, where similar havoc had been wrought: cabinet drawers ripped out and upended on the floor, the contents of a small cupboard below the sink scattered everywhere. Ditto the small kitchen, whose top-of-the-line appliances seemed to have seen little use, suggesting their owner either ate out most nights or was seldom at home. The intruders had had a poke around in the empty fridge, leaving the door wide open. There was a small notice-board on the wall next to the cooker with some Post-it notes attached to it, but if Wolf had left a memo there saying ‘Gone to Timbuktu’ the spooks would probably have noticed.

Nothing coming to him yet, Ben walked back into the living room. He paused beside the tall bookcase that the intruders had shunted away from the wall, and spent a moment running his eyes along the shelves. Searching for inspiration. Or maybe he was just running out of hope that he’d find anything. Wolf’s book collection surprised him somewhat, showing eclectic tastes that ranged from classics of fiction to history and religion. There were some works on ancient Chinese philosophy, meditation, Tai Chi and Qi Gong. On reflection, that seemed to fit with what Ben remembered about Wolf’s quiet, contemplative nature. Maybe the place to go looking for him was some remote Daoist temple retreat in the Himalayas.

Two other shelves were reserved for CDs and DVDs. Wolf’s taste in movies was as unusual as his choice of literature. Ben hadn’t known too many Special Forces guys who showed enthusiasm for European arthouse cinema. Wolf’s collection was diverse, with names like Werner Herzog and Andrei Tarkovsky jumping from the shelves that Ben only recognised at all because his ex-fiancée Brooke Marcel had been into that kind of thing and tried to get him to watch some with her. He’d finally drawn the line with Last Year in Marienbad.

By contrast, Wolf’s musical interests seemed far less wide-ranging. In fact, Ben noticed, his large CD collection was exclusively devoted to Spanish Flamenco, not a single rock or jazz album among them. Ben ran his eye along the spines and saw names like Sabicas, Carlos Montoya, Juan Martín and Manitas de Plata that he’d never heard of before. He slid a few down from the shelf and gazed at them. The images on the jewel cases were of swarthy, rugged men clasping guitars and sultry raven-haired dancing ladies in red dresses. You could almost hear the castanets and the stamping feet. Ben had visited Spain a few times during his K&R days, and spent a memorable evening or two in bars watching live Flamenco jam sessions raise the roof with raucous singing and guitar playing so violent it was a wonder they didn’t break the damn things.

It was as Ben replaced the CDs on the shelf and turned away from the bookcase that the pictures on the walls caught his eye more closely. Before, he’d only glanced at them to ascertain that they’d been knocked askew or taken down as the ransackers hunted for the elusive wall safe. Now he was suddenly looking at what they were pictures of.

He could be certain that the intruders hadn’t paid much attention to the pictures themselves, either. What kind of professional hardman gave a crap about fine art? The framed prints were modern in style, to Ben’s eye at least. Cubist, or something. He was no expert himself, though he could appreciate the skill involved, and the tasteful way that Wolf had arranged them on his wall. Four pictures had been hung in a neat row. Each one featuring a Spanish guitar, or a figure playing a guitar, conveyed in a semi-abstract style that you sometimes had to squint at to get what it was depicting. The prints were reproduced from paintings that were all obviously the work of a single artist. Ben looked more closely and saw the signature ‘Juan Gris’ in the bottom corner of each. He’d have bet that Juan Gris wasn’t from Latvia.

Spain, Spain, Spain. Interesting.

Remembering something he’d seen there, Ben walked back into Wolf’s bathroom. He was no longer interested in examining the wreckage the intruders had left in their wake. Hanging askew on the wall opposite the bath and shower unit was another, smaller, framed picture he’d barely glanced at earlier. Now he gave it closer attention. Unlike the prints in the living room, this was an original oil painting of a panoramic rural landscape, done in a more traditional descriptive style than Wolf’s little modernist collection.

It depicted a pretty, centuries-old village nestling against a starkly majestic rocky escarpment backdrop with sparsely vegetated hills in the foreground. The ancient stone buildings were tinged pink, with red terracotta roofs and overhanging balconies sloping in all directions, here and there a castle-like spired tower rising above the narrow medieval streets. The effect was so quintessentially Spanish that just looking at it as he stood here in a wrecked London apartment in the middle of the night, Ben could almost hear the chirping of the crickets and the rasp of Flamenco guitars wafting on the warm mountain breeze, smell the scent of the wild lavender and thyme that grew among the rocks, and feel the radiance of the sun beating down. It was an image you could stand and look at for a long time and lose yourself in. Ben could imagine Wolf doing just that.

The music. The guitar paintings. The landscape. Suddenly it all came together in Ben’s mind, and a memory that he hadn’t thought about in years came flashing back as vivid and sharp as the day it had happened.

Ben’s memory carried him back many years to the remote craggy wastelands of north-west Afghanistan, and a time when his SAS unit had been deployed on a reconnaissance mission to hunt for enclaves of Taliban fighters. The SAS were no strangers to some of the world’s wildest places, but the raw, savage beauty of these mountains seemed almost like another planet. After travelling for three days from the insertion point they had made no contact with the enemy. In fact on this occasion, though they didn’t know it yet, Ben and his men would be returning to base without a shot fired. Which was highly unusual for them; but they were alert and ready for a surprise attack as they made camp on the third night, on high ground overlooking a mountain valley deep inside hostile territory. The dozen-strong unit gathered in a craggy hollow where they could observe any enemy approach for miles around. They sat hunkered down close to their weapons while a pot of coffee bubbled and spluttered on a portable stove. Ben had been famous among his men for his in-the-field coffee-making skills.

While they waited for their tin mugs to be filled with the delicious brew, the twelve weary men chatted quietly among themselves. ‘You know what I bleedin’ hate the most about this job?’ muttered Baz Packham, about whom it was often said that the day he stopped griping about just about everything would be the day they found him dead behind his light machine gun, half-buried in a big pile of spent cartridge cases.

‘No, what’s that?’ Ben asked with a smile as he poured coffee and handed out the steaming tin mugs to each man in turn.

‘The miserable bloody places they send us,’ Packham said, sweeping an arm across the landscape as though to prove his point. ‘I mean, look at it. Rough as a badger’s arse.’

‘Yeah, in hessian knickers,’ said another of the guys, Boney Gallagher, not to be outdone. Liam McVicar joined in the fun with ‘You talking about my Missus again?’ and everyone laughed, all except for Jaden Wolf, who was lounged against a rock as though it were a satin pillow, with his rifle and grenade launcher between his knees. It was normal for Wolf to stay out of it while the rest of the lads bantered and joked around. He was a quiet sort of man who generally kept his thoughts to himself. But now he seemed to have something to say, frowning at Packham as if he’d lost his mind. ‘Something’s wrong with you, Baz. Open your eyes, for Christ’s sake.’

‘My eyes are open. That’s why I keep seeing your ugly mug.’

Wolf shook his head. ‘Breathe the air, man. Listen to the sound of the silence. These mountains are just about the nearest thing a plonker like you is ever going to get to heaven, that’s for sure.’

‘Why don’t you write me a fuckin’ poem about it, Jaws?’ Packham grunted. There was more laughter, but Ben thought he should intervene before the amicable dispute turned more serious. Packham considered himself a hardened dealer of death, and Wolf had never backed down from a fight in his life. Ben defused the tension by saying, ‘You always did have a hankering for the wild places, Jaden. I can resonate with that. I feel the same way.’

Wolf nodded. ‘Yeah, one day I’m going to make enough money that I can bugger off forever and nobody’ll see my heels for the dust. Going to get out. All the way out, and never come back.’

Ben asked, ‘You have a particular place in mind?’

Wolf was silent for a beat, then flashed a glint of gold as a happy memory stirred a smile. ‘My first two-week summer leave after I joined up, I went off backpacking in Europe. Made my way down to Spain, a place called Aragón. Right in the heart of the Pyrenees, Catalonia to the east and Navarra, La Rioja and Castilla y León to the west. There’s this little village next to the Guadalaviar River, sitting there in the hills, prettiest place you ever could imagine. I met a girl there.’

There were some whistles and grins. ‘Now you’re talking,’ McVicar chuckled, and was about to crack some crude joke but Ben signalled to him to let Wolf go on.

‘Her name was Sofia,’ Wolf said. He smiled again at the memory, shook his head wistfully. ‘Sofia Moncayo. I still remember her. It was the sweetest time. I was sorry to have to leave her.’

‘I’ll bet you were,’ Boney Gallagher said, nudging him with an elbow.

‘I don’t suppose she still lives there,’ Wolf said. ‘Most of the younger folks leave in search of better prospects in the cities. But that’s where I’d go back in a heartbeat, if you gave me half a chance. Just to go walking in those hills again, where there’s nobody there but you, and the land, and the sky. If there’s a God, then that’s where you’re going to find him, I reckon.’

Packham let out a loud snort. ‘You’ve fuckin’ lost it, you have. Gone soft in the head.’

Wolf gave him a gentle smile and said, ‘No, Baz. You’re just not getting it.’

Wolf was probably right about that. Maybe none of the other troopers got it, either. But Ben had understood exactly the almost prayerful sense of serenity and untroubled stillness that Wolf’s experience had invoked in him.

He said, ‘I get it, Jaden.’

And standing here in the wreckage of Wolf’s flat all these years later, Ben was suddenly getting it once again. Nobody else but him and the surviving members of the SAS unit who’d sat and listened to Wolf’s story that day knew the secret.

Ben gazed a few moments longer at the picture on the bathroom wall, then reached up and lifted it from its hook. The frame was made out of some kind of dark wood, not a bad job if a little crude and artisan-like, now quite worn and scuffed with age. Ben flipped the picture around in his hands. The backing board had been covered in brown paper and taped around the edges to prevent dust and damp from penetrating inside. It was clear that the artist must have done the framing themselves, since their signature was scrawled in faded ink on the aged brown paper, together with the words Agosto ’99. August, 1999.

A long time ago. Ben now understood that Wolf had been carrying that picture around with him all these years. And he also knew where Wolf had bought it as a memento of his romantic two weeks spent in the mountains of Spain with a girl called Sofia. Because scrawled beneath the date, in the same handwriting, was the name of the village depicted in the painting.

It said Albarracín, Aragón.

Ben murmured to himself, ‘I think I’ve just figured out where you went, Jaden.’

Chapter 10

Jeff and Tuesday had sat up for much of the night talking after Ben’s strange and sudden departure. Sometime in the wee small hours, over maybe his tenth or eleventh mug of coffee, Jeff declared, ‘I don’t know about you, mate, but this has got me worried.’

Tuesday was concerned too, but trying to look on the brighter side. ‘It’s obviously got to do with Grace. Why else would he have asked us not to return her calls or speak to her if she phoned here? They must’ve had a bust-up or something. None of our business. But it’ll get sorted out, one way or another. You know how these things are.’

Jeff, still emotionally a little tender from his breakup with Chantal, did indeed know how these things are. ‘He’s had his ups and downs in that department, sure. Brooke, then what’s-her-name in Cherbourg, and now this Scottish chick he’s gone all mushy on.’

‘I don’t think she’s exactly a chick.’

Jeff waved him off. ‘But that’s not the point, is it? There’s more to it than that. This is different. The look on his face. The tone of his voice. The way he insisted we had to keep out of it.’

‘He always does that. You know he likes to be independent, handle things on his own. That’s just his way.’

Jeff looked at his friend. ‘Are you on my side, or what? Saying there’s nothing to worry about here?’

‘I’m an optimist, that’s all.’

‘You don’t think he was acting odd?’

‘Okay, yes, I admit that he was acting odd.’

Jeff shook his head, adamant. ‘He’s scared, Tues. Scared as hell. And he doesn’t scare easy. Last time he had that look on his face was when Jude was on that tanker, remember?’

Tuesday remembered it well. He’d been involved in the whole drama when the ship Ben’s son had been a crew member on had been hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia. ‘The African thing. But that was a full-on hostage situation. Life or death. Ben was happy to have us along for the ride that time. So maybe, if this was really a big deal, he’d have asked us this time too.’

Jeff still wasn’t buying it. ‘No. There’s something else. Some other reason why he didn’t want us to even know what’s going on. It’s as if … I dunno, as if he was under pressure to hide it from us for some reason.’

‘We’ve no proof of that, Jeff.’

‘I’ve known him a long time.’

‘But you’re still just shooting in the dark. Like, if this is about Grace, then what’s he doing heading off to London? That’s five hundred miles from where she lives. Answer me that.’

Jeff frowned, thinking. ‘Might not be going to London. Might just’ve told us that, to put us off the track.’

‘Ben would never lie to us. You know that.’

‘But what if he did?’

‘Then we’d have even less of a clue.’

Jeff said nothing for a moment, then slammed down his mug of coffee and stood up. ‘You’re right. What we need here are facts. So let’s go and see if we can’t find some. I’m going up to his room.’

Jeff led the way upstairs, flipping on lights with Tuesday following in his wake. Ben was the only one of the three whose personal quarters were within the main house. Jeff lived across the yard in a former outbuilding that had been converted into a small, cosy cottage, while Tuesday occupied a static caravan in the woods, complete with an outdoor barbecue smoker and a hammock for those lazy summer days that reminded him of life in Jamaica. As close friends as the three were, each man’s private space within the Le Val compound was hallowed ground and generally off-limits to the others, except by invitation. Jeff hadn’t been inside Ben’s simple quarters for a while, but he didn’t expect much to have changed. Tuesday looked uneasy as Jeff reached Ben’s door and pushed inside the room. Ben had left without turning off the light.

‘He wouldn’t want us poking around in here,’ Tuesday said.

‘Then stay out. I’ll do it on my own.’

Tuesday sighed, then stepped into the room after him. Jeff was already searching for clues. And there were plenty of those waiting to be found.

The first thing they noticed was the broken mirror on the wall. The next was the collection of items lying on the bed. A Springfield XD pistol with several loaded magazines. Two passports. A slim black Apple iPhone. A plain brown envelope. Jeff walked around the side of the bed and peered inside the wall safe that was hanging open. Then he turned back towards the bed. ‘There’s fresh blood on the duvet.’

Tuesday pointed at the broken mirror. ‘Now we know how he cut his hand. Who takes a swing at a mirror like that?’

‘The elephant man?’

‘Don’t be facetious.’

‘I don’t know, mate. You’re the psychologist.’

‘Someone with a hell of a lot on his mind,’ Tuesday said. ‘That’s who.’

‘So you’re agreeing with me that something’s wrong?’

‘I’m not sure yet.’

Jeff picked up the iPhone from the bed and recognised it as Ben’s main carry device. ‘Left it behind.’

Tuesday frowned at it. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘You tell me, Sherlock.’ Jeff turned the phone on and examined it for a moment. ‘There’s a voice message. Looks like it’s from her.’

‘You can’t listen to his private messages, Jeff.’

Jeff listened to it anyway. Grace had called and left her message late last night, just after eleven, after Ben had already packed up and gone. Jeff put it on speaker for them both to hear. Her voice sounded bright and cheery. Her accent was crisp and pleasing to the ear.

‘Hi babes, got your text. Missing you already. Talk soon, okay? Love ya.’

Jeff turned the phone off and replaced it on the bed. ‘Babes.’ He picked up the brown envelope and gave it a shake, finding that it was empty. Then he examined the two passports. ‘Hm, that’s odd. This one’s his real passport. This other one’s an expired fake.’

‘What the hell would Ben want with a fake passport?’ Tuesday asked. He was a relative newcomer to the family. Ben and Jeff had been running Le Val for a few years when they’d hired him. As a result, the younger man knew little about the secretive career that Ben had pursued after quitting the military.

Jeff was far better informed. He explained, ‘Never met the guy, but Ben used to employ a forger called Thierry Chevrolet to cook up phony ID for him, back in the day. Supposed to have been the shit-hottest counterfeiter in France, or so Ben said.’

‘I’m not even going to ask.’

‘Anyway, I happen to know that he keeps two more fake passports in his safe, which I have to assume aren’t expired like this one, or he wouldn’t have taken them. They’re missing. Which means, if he has gone to London, he didn’t want to travel on his real name. The plot thickens, mate.’

‘Shit,’ Tuesday said.

‘Also missing are his two burner phones, plus a bunch of cash that I also happen to know he had stored away in there for a rainy day. And that’s not all. He’s taken his Browning nine-milly, too.’

Tuesday looked even more perplexed. ‘How’s he going to get that into the UK?’

‘He has his ways,’ Jeff said. ‘Still think this is just a lovers’ tiff? Me neither.’

‘Not good,’ Tuesday said.

Jeff picked up the handgun that Ben had left behind. He knew that Ben would always opt for the old workhorse Browning if he was in trouble. After a quick examination of the Springfield, Jeff tossed it back on the bed.

Tuesday eyed the weapon with a frown. ‘He’s such a stickler for firearms safety. Tear a strip off anyone who left a live weapon lying around unguarded like that.’

‘So what does that tell you?’ Jeff asked.

‘That he left in a hell of a hurry without thinking twice,’ Tuesday replied. ‘Like nothing else mattered to him except his objective. You were right. He’s scared as hell. But of what?’

Jeff said nothing. He walked over to the shattered mirror and stared for a moment at his splintered reflection. Something cracked underfoot. He looked down and saw the bloody shards of glass on the rug. And something else, too. He bent down and picked up the item that had fallen to the floor, half hidden under the foot of the bed. He showed it to Tuesday: a four-by-six photo print with a crease down the middle.

Tuesday gazed at the picture. It showed their friend posing against a wintry mountain backdrop with his arm around the shoulders of a slim and attractive dark-haired woman. Both were smiling and looked happy. ‘I’m presuming this is Grace?’ Tuesday had never seen her before. Her face matched her voice.

‘I’d say you presume right, buddy.’

Tuesday ran a fingertip down the crease in the middle of the photo. ‘It looks like he’s been carrying it around folded inside his pocket, or his wallet. Strange that he’d leave it lying on the floor.’

Jeff’s expression was thoughtful. ‘I reckon he was looking at it when he punched the mirror. I reckon it’s the reason he did.’

‘Then this does have something to do with her, after all. Not a lovers’ tiff. Something else.’

‘Something a fuck of a lot more serious,’ Jeff agreed. ‘Why else would he have taken a weapon with him? She’s in danger. That’s what my gut tells me, anyhow.’

Tuesday raised an eyebrow. Dubious. ‘Didn’t sound like it, from her message. Sounded like she was perfectly okay, not a care in the world.’

‘A person can’t be in danger without knowing it?’ Jeff said.

‘I get that. But what kind of danger could she be in? She’s a rural police officer in what’s got to be the lowest crime area in the whole of the British Isles.’

‘How do you know it has to do with her?’ Jeff pointed out. ‘It could be to do with something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know, mate. Something to do with Ben himself. How’d he get involved in the first place? He must’ve found out about it somehow.’

Tuesday sat on the bed, trying to figure it out. ‘When he called from Inverness airport to say he was on his way home, he sounded perfectly normal, too.’

‘Yeah. Which means that whatever happened, must’ve happened in the meantime,’ Jeff said. ‘Something totally unexpected. Out of the blue. That’s what got him so rattled. It’s the reason he came back home to pick up the things he needed, knowing he was going to have to shoot straight off again.’

‘Okay, I read you, she’s in danger,’ Tuesday said.

‘But maybe not imminent danger, or else he’d have gone straight there instead of London. And he warned us not to answer the phone if she calls, right? So she’s not a hostage, or anything like that, because hostages don’t generally have free access to a phone. Unless the kidnappers pressure them to call someone, like a family member, asking for money.’

‘In which case, he’d have wanted us to know about it and keep him informed,’ Tuesday said.

‘And she wouldn’t have left a message like that anyhow,’ Jeff said. ‘So we can pretty much agree that she ain’t been kidnapped. Right?’

‘This is getting complicated.’

Jeff’s brow creased like corrugated steel as he racked his brain. ‘It’s more like there’s a threat hanging over her. Someone watching her, maybe, ready to make a move but holding back. She obviously doesn’t know about it. But Ben does.’

Tuesday said, ‘So sometime between him getting on the plane in Inverness and coming home, someone must have called him or approached him. Boom, suddenly everything changes. Is that what you’re saying?’

Jeff nodded grimly. ‘That’s how I see it. It’s like someone’s got him over a barrel. Using the threat against her to coerce him in some way.’

Tuesday bit his lip. ‘That would maybe explain why he was so scared to tell us anything. He could have been told not to make contact with her, or else.’

‘Whatever it is, I don’t like it. I don’t like it one fucking bit.’

‘I’m with you,’ Tuesday said. ‘But the question is, what are we going to do about it?’

Chapter 11

Spain

Two days earlier

The small town of Albarracín was almost exactly the way Wolf remembered it. There were a few new or refurbished buildings scattered here and there, a few incongruous satellite dishes, and a few more cars and motorbikes than before; but by and large the place had changed remarkably little since his first and only visit all those years ago. Coming back here again, having dreamed about it for so long, brought on a rush of memories and emotions.

Shortly after his arrival it struck him how little he’d eaten since his escape from London, and he felt suddenly very hungry. A couple of streets away from the Catedral del Salvador he found a cosy little tapas bar and restaurant with simple decor and mismatched chairs and tables, which suited him nicely. He devoured a large plate of cold meats with a salad and some bread and washed it down with a jug of water. Wolf never touched alcohol.

It was Sofia who had taught him his first stumbling words of Spanish. Over the years he’d tried to pick up a few more from books, though he was by no means fluent in the language. As he paid for his meal, he got talking to the proprietor, a swarthy middle-aged guy by the name of Tomás, who was proud of having lived here in Albarracín all his life. Wolf introduced himself as Jack Cullen, a traveller from the UK. He said he’d been here before, once, years ago, and asked whether Tomás might happen to know if the Moncayo family still lived in the town.

If Tomás had said they did, Wolf had no special desire to try to reintroduce himself to Sofia, or in any way rekindle what had been the most fleeting of youthful romances. He just wanted to see her again, from a distance, and make sure she was well and happy. As it turned out, Tomás informed him that Pero Moncayo, Sofia’s father, had died several years back and the rest of the family had moved away to Zaragoza.

Wolf was saddened to learn the news, but he covered it well and quickly put it behind him as he left the tapas bar and spent a while wandering the streets of the old town. The scrubby hills loomed all around, and the warm mountain breeze was laden with all the scents of herbs and vegetation that he remembered. He passed a small bank called the Caja Rural, and briefly considered exploring the possibility of checking his heavy cash-filled holdall into a safe deposit storage. He soon changed his mind and decided not to take the risk of letting the money out of his sight.

Walking on, he came across the little guest house where he’d stayed before. A number of other hotels seemed to have sprouted up in the area to cater for the growing tourist trade; but Wolf preferred solitude and elected to journey up into the hills and find a suitably sheltered and private spot to set up camp. He had no problem living rough during the warmer season, though with the perpetual glaciers of the Pyrenees not far away he knew that the winters would get cold up here. Over the coming months he might scout around for a remote rural property for rent, or spend a portion of his cash on a little patch of land where he might build a small, simple home for himself. Maybe he’d keep a few chickens, or a goat or two, and grow his own vegetables. Learn to speak the language better, so he could fit in with the locals. Maybe take up the guitar, something he’d always wanted but never got around to.

But all that was for the future. There was no rush. No pressure. All the time in the world. Such money as he had, though by no means a fortune, would carry him a very long way here. Wolf was free to go where he pleased, do as he wished, and he no longer answered to anyone. He’d never felt so happy. Not even the joy of achieving SAS selection, until then the crowning glory of his life, could compare with the sense of liberation that flooded his mind. It was almost enough to make him forget the terrible things he’d seen and done in his life.

Almost. The nightmare of the human sacrifice on the island – because that was exactly what he believed he’d witnessed, just days ago – would remain with him for as long as he lived. He never wanted to think about those filthy bastards again, though he would, over and over.

Wolf stopped, set down his bag and shielded his eyes with his hand to scan the rugged landscape. To the east of Albarracín rose a high rocky escarpment that his instinct and training told him would be a perfect place to make camp for the night. He could seek out a little hollow, an eagle’s nest, from which he could see for miles and observe the sleepy little town. If he discovered the perfect spot, he might stay there for weeks. From time to time he could venture back down to civilisation, when he needed provisions or fancied another tasty meal at La Taba.

Heaven. It already felt as though he was putting down roots here in his new home. Smiling to himself, Wolf shouldered his bag and set off on what would be a long, hot, dusty trek up into the hills.

He had reached the edge of the town when he heard a sound that caught his attention. More correctly, it was a mixture of sounds. Ones that didn’t go well together, and set off alarms in his mind. The throaty laughter of a group of men mingled with the frightened, high-pitched yelping of a dog. Wolf slackened his step and looked around him. The sound was coming from the other side of an old, partially ruined stone wall. Part of the wall had collapsed a little way further on. Wolf headed towards the crumbled gap, following the sound.

The other side of the old wall was a patch of waste ground, in which a group of six men had gathered and were standing around in a circle. They were a rough-looking bunch, the eldest maybe in his mid-forties, the youngest in his early twenties. Wolf remembered Sofia telling him about her father’s strong dislike for the gitanos, Romani gypsies, whom Pero Moncayo regarded as a criminal scourge living on the margins of decent society. Wolf didn’t know if these guys fitted that bill, and he didn’t care what or who they were. He only cared about what they were doing.

In the middle of the encircled group of men was a dog. It was a nondescript kind of mongrel mutt with brown and white markings, a crooked ear and only three legs. It looked undernourished, and Wolf guessed that it was probably nobody’s pet, but a stray that made its living foraging for scraps. The missing hind limb was an old injury, and the dog seemed to be coping fine hopping around on three legs. What it wasn’t coping so well with was the fact that the men had fastened a rope around its neck to prevent it from escaping while they kicked and beat the hell out of it. Which they seemed to be enjoying quite a bit, judging by their raucous laughter. Two of the men were whacking the yelping, howling, panic-stricken animal across the head and back with heavy sticks, while a third was brandishing a steel chain and whirling it around trying to get in a good strike.

The oldest of the men was standing back enjoying the show, his grizzled features split wide in a grin. He wasn’t taking part in the beating, but he had other plans. He was clutching a plastic bottle that Wolf realised was barbecue lighting fluid, and there was a large matchbox protruding from the back pocket of his jeans. He was unscrewing the bottle cap and clearly intended to spray the dog with the liquid. They were going to set the poor creature on fire, just for fun.

Except that wasn’t going to happen. No chance.

Wolf set down his holdall and walked towards the group of men. They had all been too preoccupied to notice him appear through the gap in the wall, but now as he came closer the youngest of the gang saw him. With a nervous flash of eyes he reached out and nudged the older one with the bottle, who turned and shot a hostile stare at the approaching stranger.

The kicking and beating stopped. The dog kept on screaming and yelping, desperate to get away. Wolf came a step closer. He sensed that the oldest of the group, the sadistic firebug, was the leader of the gang, and so he focused most of his attention on him. For a moment, nobody said a word. All eyes were on Wolf.

Wolf spoke first. He wanted to say, ‘Sorry to interrupt the party, but I can’t let you burn that dog. Let it go.’ But the words in Spanish didn’t come to him, so he just pointed at the animal, shook his head and said, ‘No.’

The leader’s eyes bulged and he gave Wolf a long, hard stare before he raised his eyebrows in mock amazement and replied in a deep, raspy voice, ‘¿No?’ He turned to his buddies and made a gesture, like saying, ‘What is it with this joker? Doesn’t he like burning dogs?’

Most of the gang found this amusing. But a couple of them didn’t laugh, and a growing anxiety showed in their expressions. They were right to be anxious.

‘No,’ Wolf repeated. He felt very calm and there was no anger in his tone. He pointed at the dog. ‘Stop what you’re doing. Leave the dog alone. Dejar al perro solo.’ He wasn’t sure if that was right. But his message was clear. And if these guys had any sense, they’d take heed of his advice. It was their choice.

But instead of listening to reason, the leader of the gang did something he’d regret for a long time to come. He tossed away the bottle of lighter fluid, dipped a quick hand into his hip pocket and came out with a fancy bone-handled switchblade knife. The blade popped open with a clack and the bright steel flashed in the sunlight. The guy’s eyes glittered and he gave another wide grin.

Wolf shrugged. Okay by him, if that was how they wanted to play it. He took another step towards the leader. He was wary of the knife, but at the same time he could tell the guy had no real idea how to use it. Whereas Wolf had been trained by the world’s best teachers in all forms of combat, and particularly excelled at this one. He said nothing. Advanced another step and waited for the guy to make his move.

Wolf’s lack of fear was the most unsettling thing for the men. The youngest of the gang muttered something in Spanish that might have translated as ‘Screw this, I’m out of here’, turned on his heels and bolted away across the patch of wasteland. Two others backed off and looked ready to do the same.

But the leader was committed, and couldn’t lose face by retreating from the crazy stranger. His grin was faltering and his confidence was already shot to pieces as he made a half-hearted jab at Wolf’s throat with the blade. Wolf had seen it coming even before the intention formed in the guy’s brain. He sidestepped the strike, moving like water past his attacker as the knife darted through empty air. Trapped the guy’s hand, folded it effortlessly back on itself and jointed the wrist with a crack of bone that was almost as loud as the guy’s scream of pain. The knife spun to the ground. Wolf swept it away with his foot while keeping hold of the guy’s broken wrist and using the leverage to bring him down to his knees. Then Wolf kicked him savagely in the face, not hard enough to cause irreversible brain damage, but the dislocated jaw would give the guy plenty to think about for a while to come, every time he tried to chew solid food.

Wolf let go of his groaning, bleeding and prostrated adversary and turned to face the rest. The one with the chain was scowling and looked as if he might want to have a go. Wolf said, ‘Come on, then.’ But then the chain guy had second thoughts, let the weapon slink to the dirt and took off at a run. The one holding the dog’s rope let it go and followed him, along with the sixth guy, who had no desire to be left there to face the enemy alone. The three-legged dog bounded away in the opposite direction. Wolf watched the men run, and shook his head in disgust. ‘Cowards.’

When they were at a safe distance, three of the gang turned and shook their fists, yelling threats. Wolf didn’t need a translator to understand that they were promising that this wasn’t over. Wolf said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ First day in a new place, and he was already making friends.

The guy on the ground looked up at Wolf with dustcrusted features and pain blazing in his eyes. His jaw was at a distorted angle but he managed to blurt out ‘¿Quién eres tú?’ Who are you?

Wolf replied, ‘No soy nadie importante.’ I’m nobody important.

He went over to his holdall and picked it up. As he was walking away, he felt eyes watching his back and looked over his shoulder to see the dog standing there. Its head was cocked and it was observing him with a kind of curiosity. The rope was still attached to its neck. Wolf walked slowly over to it, extended a gentle hand for it to sniff, then carefully removed the rope. He said in a soft voice, ‘Well?’

For a moment the dog seemed to be deciding whether or not to tag along with him; then it turned, trotted lopsidedly off and disappeared. Wolf wouldn’t have minded its company, but he understood. He’d always been a loner, too.

He muttered, ‘See you around, amigo.’ And set off towards the hills.

Chapter 12

Ben had entered Wolf’s apartment at 4.45 a.m. and spent less than an hour inside. It was 5.38 when he got back to his car, already working out his next move.

Now that he knew where he needed to go from here, he considered his travel arrangements. A flight from Heathrow or Stansted to Zaragoza or Valencia, plus checking-in and waiting-around time, plus the extra driving distance to his final destination, was going to take a few hours but was his fastest option. By road, he faced a sixteen-hour marathon journey, or even longer if he factored in minor details like the need to eat or rest – but with the important advantage of being able to travel armed, as long as he didn’t get caught. Getting caught was bad. But going after Wolf unarmed was worse. At least the customs officials wouldn’t kill him and make his body disappear.

Ben made the choice to go by car. Retracing his steps from London back to the coast, he stopped on his way south to replace his gun in its hiding place. He arrived in Folkestone at 7.07 a.m., grabbed a paper cup of sour-tasting coffee while waiting for his Eurotunnel connection, and got the car on board for a 7.30 crossing. By 9.06 local time, he was rolling out the other side in Calais. After parading his concealed stash of weaponry right under the noses of the customs officials for the second time in hours, he grabbed another coffee and a sandwich to munch en route, and was off. His route would steer him southwards past Paris and cut straight down across France: through the nature reserves of La Brenne and Perigord-Limousin, then Montauban, Toulouse and the French Pyrenees before he hit the Spanish border. He would zip by Aragón’s capital city of Zaragoza before the final two-hour leg of the journey took him to Albarracín. A long way for a single person to drive, but Ben had driven longer.

He made two stops for fuel, one at a crowded motorway services and the other at a quieter countryside station where he popped the bonnet and retrieved his Browning and ammunition, which he tucked under the driver’s seat. The rest of the way, he stayed sharp by burning through two packs of Gauloises and forcing himself to keep mentally revisualising the video footage Saunders had made him watch. The combination of fear and nicotine made for a powerfully stimulating cocktail that impelled him to cover the fifteen hundred kilometres like a racing driver on amphetamines and shave nearly ninety minutes off his estimated journey time.

It was just gone 9.45 p.m. when he arrived in Albarracín. Every mile of the way, the same nagging voice at the back of his mind hadn’t stopped telling him how thin his lead was. If he was on the wrong track, he had no idea what to try next. He felt nauseous with worry and exhaustion and badly needed to sleep a while, but couldn’t stop moving or shake from his mind the image of Saunders’ spooks shadowing Grace, ready to step in and put a bullet in her head if he failed in his quest.

He parked the Alpina in a quiet layby on the edge of Albarracín, took out his phone and a notepad and pen, and got to work using Google Maps to put together a list of all the hotels, boarding houses and guest houses in the town and the surrounding area. The sure knowledge that his target would have been travelling incognito gave him nothing to go on, except for Wolf’s picture. It meant that he’d have to do this the hard way, hoofing it from hotel to hotel with some pretext for showing the picture to people in the hope that someone might recognise it and point him in the right direction. With his list complete, Ben sat staring at it for a long time before he felt a stabbing ache in his temples and realised that this wasn’t the right approach. He ripped the page from the notepad and crumpled it. Then reclined into the driver’s seat, closed his eyes and tried to let his mind take a step back.

To catch a wolf, you have to think like a wolf.

The Jaden Ben knew wasn’t the type to check into a hotel. He was a man who sought solitude and loved the wild places. Chances were that he’d be living rough in the hills somewhere close by. By Ben’s reckoning, if indeed Wolf made his way straight to Albarracín from London, travelling as discreetly and covertly as possible, he probably hadn’t been here much longer than a couple of days. Long enough to have picked a spot to make his camp, somewhere up there on the high ground overlooking the town. But not so long that he’d have got itchy feet and started drifting further afield. He had a sentimental attachment to this place that wouldn’t wear off so fast. He might even be planning on remaining here long-term. If he was here at all, then he’d be somewhere not far away, within easy range of Albarracín for the purposes of restocking provisions whenever he needed them.

That psychological profile worked for Ben. Now he refined it further, thinking that when Wolf first arrived here, he’d have hung around the town for at least a couple of hours or so, getting his bearings, maybe revisiting some of his old haunts from the long-ago visit that he’d talked so fondly about that night in Afghanistan. Ben recalled that he’d mentioned a young lady. What had she been called? Sofia. Easy to remember, because it was the most popular name for Hispanic parents to give their little girls. Wolf might have been interested in tracking her down. Might have asked around to find out if she was still living there.

The newly arrived Wolf would also have needed to eat. And so did Ben, before he passed out from energy depletion. He took the Browning from under his seat, loaded it and slipped it in his waistband, then locked up the Alpina and headed through the town on foot. It was a beautiful night, in a beautiful place, if only Ben had been in the mood to appreciate either. The older part of Albarracín dated back to medieval times, with narrow winding streets in places barely wide enough to drive a car through. He found a little restaurant that was still open late, went inside and took a corner window table with a view of the street, just in case his target happened to come wandering by. Ben ordered a steak and a whisky. No salad, no trimmings. Meat and alcohol were the things he needed. Rare and strong, in that order. He ate and drank fast and felt re-energised, relaxed and ready to go to work.

Ben had first studied Spanish at the Ministry of Defence’s Centre for Languages and Culture in Shrivenham, and later refined his fluency during his years as a private kidnap rescue operator. As he was paying for his meal he showed the waiter the photo of Wolf and said in Spanish, ‘This is my brother, Mike. Said he’d meet me here in town, but he hasn’t shown up. Wondered if you might have seen him in here?’

The old standby. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. When the waiter looked blank and shook his head Ben asked, ‘Think anybody else here might have seen him? It’d be within the last couple of days or so.’

The waiter shook his head again. ‘I’m always here, six days a week. This job, you have to be good with faces. If your brother – you said his name is Mike? If he had been in here, I’d have noticed him.’

Win some, lose some. Ben thanked him and left.

He was wandering further through the town, deep in thought, when he came across another restaurant in the maze of narrow, winding streets. It was a tapas bar, smaller than the place he’d eaten in. They were closing up for the night but the door was still open. Ben looked in, saw the simple decor and the mismatched chairs and tables, and his instinct told him this was more the kind of place that Jaden Wolf would gravitate to. A woman with an apron and black hair tied back was sweeping the floor. She turned as Ben appeared in the doorway and said, ‘We’re closed.’

He stepped inside. ‘I know, and I’m sorry to bother you, but you might be able to help me. Do you have a moment?’

He gave her the same story that he was looking for his brother. She leaned on her broom handle while she gazed at the photo, then shook her head no. Ben thanked her anyway and was about to take the photo back when a middle-aged guy emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel, and she called him over. They related like husband and wife. ‘Tomás, this gentleman is looking for his brother.’ She showed him. Tomás peered at Wolf’s picture, frowned at Ben and said, ‘Your brother?’

Ben said, ‘Technically my half-brother. We don’t look much alike, I know.’

Tomás touched a finger to his own lips. He asked, ‘Does he have—?’

Ben felt a little electric current whirr in his chest. ‘Gold teeth?’ he replied, beating Tomás to the punch. ‘That’s him. He had an accident when he was younger.’

‘His name is … Jack? Jack Cullen?’

Ben was glad he hadn’t said it was Mike. ‘That’s right, Jack. So when was he in here?’

‘Oh, two, three days ago. I remember that he asked me about the Moncayo family.’

Ben nodded. ‘He was friends with their daughter Sofia.’

‘They’re gone now. Living in Zaragoza.’

The buzz of excitement in Ben’s chest became a momentary stab of worry. ‘Did Jack say he was going there too?’

‘No, no, he said he was staying here in Albarracín. Waiting for you, maybe, no?’

‘That’s what we’d planned.’

‘He said he loves it here.’

‘It’s a beautiful town,’ Ben said. ‘Did Jack happen to say where he was staying?’

‘No, he just said he would come back to our restaurant sometime soon. He loved Maria’s cooking.’ Tomás touched his wife’s shoulder. ‘Everyone does.’

Ben smiled. ‘I’ll have to try it myself. Sorry I missed out tonight.’

Tomás said with a grin, ‘Never mind. Come back tomorrow and we’ll feed you a great meal.’

‘Sounds great. Maybe I’ll have caught up with Jack by then.’

Ben thanked Tomás and Maria for their help, and went on his way.

So there it was. Brother Jack, aka Jaden Wolf, one of the most capable military operators Ben had known back in the day, a man he had liked and admired and now must kill to save the life of the woman he cared for, was definitely here in Albarracín. The easy part was over. All Ben had to do now was narrow down his search and finish the job.

He reflected on the challenge ahead as he slowly walked back to the edge of town where he’d left the car. He decided to kip for a couple of hours in the Alpina’s back seat before his hunt began in earnest. Pausing for a moment to light a cigarette before getting into the car, he looked up at the sky and took a long, deep breath of the cooling night air. The heavens were filled with stars, a vivid and breathtaking display. Against the diamond-glitter backdrop the tall blackness of the surrounding mountains circled the horizon. Closer to the east, a tall rocky escarpment overlooked the town. Ben thought that if he were Jaden Wolf, the escarpment might be somewhere he’d choose to make camp.

Ben finished the cigarette and was about to toss away the stub when, from up in the hills he’d been gazing at just a moment earlier, a distant sound caught his attention and he stiffened, listening hard. From this far away it was just a random POP … POP-POP … POP, carried on the soft breeze and easy to miss. Maybe someone out in the sticks was having a fireworks celebration, but Ben didn’t think so. He could see no pyrotechnics lighting up the night sky. And to his experienced ear the crackle of sporadic gunfire was unmistakable.

This time of night, Ben doubted that anyone was out hunting. Not for animal quarry. It was the sound of violence. It had drawn him a thousand times in the past, and like a magnet it drew him again now.

He got into the car, rolled down the windows and set off in the direction of the shots.

Chapter 13

Ben sped out of Albarracín, heading into the hills on a narrow, winding road with his windows cranked all the way down so he could maintain his bearing on the source of the gunfire. As he left the town behind him and the rocky escarpment rose tall against the night sky he killed his headlamps. The moon was bright enough to drive by its light alone, and he didn’t want his approach to be seen by whoever was doing all the shooting up there.

The road became a track. The lights of the town receded into the distance behind him. Loose gravel and stone pattered under the Alpina’s wheels and rattled against its underbody. Over the engine note he could hear the reports growing closer. POPPOPPOP … POP-POP. Whatever was happening up there on the escarpment it was still in full swing, and it no longer sounded like distant fireworks.

Spotting the dark shape of a stationary van up ahead on the track, Ben took his foot off the gas and let the Alpina roll to a halt a few yards behind. It was an ancient Peugeot J7 utility commercial from way back sometime in the seventies with battered, dirty bodywork and rusty skirts. Its lights were off and both its front doors and the side sliding door were open, and it appeared to be empty. He waited a few seconds to make sure, then got out of the car with his Browning in his hand and walked towards it.

There had been a pause in the shooting. Ben stepped around the driver’s side of the van and looked in the open door. The keys were still in the ignition, as though its occupants had got out in a hurry. The bonnet was warm and the engine ticking as it cooled.

Ben stepped back from the van and looked around him. It appeared as though whoever had left the vehicle here had headed on foot up a pathway that led off the main track, too narrow and steep and rocky to drive up. He knelt and examined the ground by the moonlight, and soon found fresh footprints in the dry, dusty dirt. He reckoned on at least five sets of prints, maybe six. Stones were dislodged and blades of coarse, sun-yellowed grass were snapped and bent where they’d hurried by.

Ben rose to his feet and moved up the track. Just as he was wondering what it meant that the shooting had stopped, now it suddenly started up again with a fusillade of reports that sounded much closer by, no more than a few hundred metres away beyond a rocky mound further up the path. It sounded to Ben as though the action up there was moving across the terrain, a running battle. He kept moving quickly up the track, chasing the sound. The going was steep and treacherous in places. In less than a minute he’d climbed a long way. Glancing back over his shoulder he could see the lights of the town far in the distance, and his car and the van like miniature models below. The rocky mound was just up ahead of him, overhanging the slope and surrounded by scrubby bushes. He stuck the Browning in his belt so he could use both hands to scramble up around it; and now he had a clear view of the escarpment above him.

Craggy rocks cast long, dark shadows everywhere in the darkness. As he scanned left to right, watching for movement, the momentary white blossom of muzzle flash lit up a patch of rocks at eleven o’clock from Ben’s position. A millisecond later, the blast of a rifle shot shattered the silence and the crashing echo rolled out across the valley. Ben redrew his weapon and kept moving towards the source of the gunshot, staying low, keeping to the shadows, not taking his eyes off the spot where the muzzle flash came from. Now he spotted the running figure of a man break from cover and dart across a gap between the rocks, just fifty or sixty yards ahead. The man was a silhouette, half swallowed by shadow and too dark to make out any detail except that he was clutching what was unmistakably a scoped hunting rifle. Ben froze. Kept watching as the figure paused in his stride and seemed to be looking around him, as though searching, hesitant, unsure of himself. Ben wondered what was happening.

That was when one of the patches of impenetrable shadow that lay all around the figure of the man seemed to flicker. It was the briefest movement, so barely noticeable that Ben couldn’t even be sure he hadn’t imagined it. But the man with the rifle must have sensed something too, because Ben saw him turn abruptly around and raise his rifle as though startled.

And then the man with the rifle disappeared. He was there; and then he wasn’t. As if the shadows had simply reached out and taken him, without a sound or a struggle. From the rocks where Ben had seen the muzzle flash before came a hoarse yell in Spanish. ‘¡Diego! ¿Dónde estás?’

Diego must be the man with the rifle. One of the men from the van. Diego’s cronies hidden back there among the rocks sounded anxious, even frightened. Ben had no doubt that they were armed like their comrade – but they held their fire, no doubt worried about hitting the vanished Diego in the darkness. Nobody came out.

Ben could guess why that was. These hunters who had come here tonight, seeking to do violence against someone, were beginning to realise that they should have brought more men. They were not the predators in this scenario. They were losing their confidence and growing fearful of what was out there waiting for them.

Ben wanted to know who the hunters had come after. Wanted to know if his guess was right.

Keeping low to the ground, he ran up the slope to where Diego had vanished. It took him half a minute to get there, bush to bush, rock to rock, fast and stealthy and unseen. He covered the last few yards with extreme caution, pistol ready, watching the shadows, watching everything. Diego’s pals could open fire if they spotted him. But Ben sensed that Diego’s pals weren’t the greatest danger up here on the escarpment.

As for Diego himself, he was no longer a threat to anyone. As Ben crept like a panther through the shadows he saw the body slumped among the rocks. Diego was a rough-looking character, or had been, with a mess of curly black hair and a bristly moustache. He lay on his back and stared up at the stars with bulging eyes that were unblinking, unseeing. Something dark and wet oozed from his neck and pooled on the ground. His throat had been slashed, straight and surgical, from ear to ear. The scoped hunting rifle was gone.

Only one kind of person could have sneaked up on an armed opponent from close quarters and taken him down so fast and efficiently. That was a trained professional like Jaden Wolf.

Ben flinched and ducked behind the rocks as another shot rang out. At first he thought Diego’s friends had spotted him and opened fire, mistaking him for the man they’d come here to kill. But then another shot crashed and echoed across the escarpment and this time he spotted the yellow-white muzzle flash coming from a V-shaped cleft further up the slope. The sparking impact of a bullet strike told him that the shooter was aiming down towards the rocks where Diego’s friends were taking cover. Whoever he was, he had an excellent position and an open field of fire.

His third shot found its mark. There was a short, sharp scream and a dark figure staggered out from behind cover, tottered, spun around and then tumbled down the slope to come to a sprawled-out stop against a boulder in a pool of moonlight. Ben could see the body clearly from his hiding place. The man was lying face-down with his arms and legs outflung. He wore jeans and a denim jacket. Tattoos laced the sides of his neck and his skull was shaved smooth, showing the gaping exit wound of a perfect headshot glistening in the moon’s glow.

Ben looked back up towards the cleft and thought that he saw a slinking shadow dart from cover and down the slope towards the rocks. Seconds later, he knew that his eyes hadn’t cheated him. There was a brief, furious exchange of gunfire. Four, five, six detonations of rifle shots. A scream. Two more loud reports. Another strangled cry. A man stumbled from the rocks, dropping a rifle and clutching at his chest, then jerked backwards to the boom of another gunshot that caught him in the head and sent him rolling down the slope like his dead buddy before him.

Then silence. The shooting stopped. With two bodies on the ground that Ben could see, and by his conservative estimate at least one more dead man lying out of sight behind the rocks, or maybe two or three, he sensed that the battle must be all but done. He saw the same flitting shadow slip away and thread a path back up the escarpment and out of sight over a ledge. By now there remained little doubt in Ben’s mind as to the identity of the skilled operator he’d just witnessed eliminating the last of the men who, for reasons as yet unknown, had come here to hunt him down.

It seemed that Jaden Wolf had wasted little time since his arrival in Albarracín to make some unwanted new acquaintances. Ben very much doubted that Diego and his unlucky cronies were killers sent by Saunders. First, because hiring a bunch of rough-arsed thugs didn’t seem to be Saunders’ style. Second, because only Ben knew who and where he was.

And that was something Wolf was about to find out.

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