Читать книгу Star of Africa - Scott Mariani, Scott Mariani - Страница 11

It was dark by the time the Alpina bumped down the track to the security gate that barred public entry to the complex at Le Val, three hours and twenty-two minutes later. Ben still had a pass card, and fed it into the scanner to open the gate and drive on through.

The November drizzle had been thickening steadily since nightfall. A cold mist swirled around the beams of his headlights as Ben drove into the main yard of what had once been his home. It seemed weird to be back after such a prolonged absence.

The dogs were the first to notice his arrival. The four German shepherds that freely roamed the twenty-acre compound like a pack of wolves would have been enough to petrify any unauthorised visitor, but the sight of them charging towards him out of the mist as he stepped from the car brought a wide smile to Ben’s face.

‘Storm! Mauser! Luger! Solo!’ He greeted them warmly in turn, crouching down to give each a hug as they swarmed happily around him, slapping him with their big hairy tails and panting their hot doggy breath all over him and slathering his face and hands with their lolling tongues. Storm was the pack leader out of the four, and had always been Ben’s particular favourite, often accompanying him on long runs and rambles through the Normandy countryside. Ben hadn’t seen him in such a long time that he hadn’t been certain if the dog would even recognise him. Storm’s delight at his master’s return almost brought a tear to Ben’s eye – not that he’d ever have admitted as much to Jeff.

The fifth dog to come bowling out of the darkness to meet him was less of a customary sight at Le Val. It was Scruffy, the wiry-haired terrier of indeterminate breed and independent spirit who, if he could be said to be anyone’s property, belonged to Jude Arundel and lived with him in the English country vicarage where he’d grown up. Ben patted the terrier affectionately. ‘Hey, Scruff. What the hell are you doing here?’ Then what the new guy had told Ben on the phone had to be true. ‘Where’s Jude?’ Ben asked the dog, but Scruffy wasn’t telling.

Just then, floodlights on masts burst into life and illuminated the whole inner compound and buildings: the big stone farmhouse and annexe, the training yard, the residential huts, the killing house and storerooms. Ben gazed around him, filled with all kinds of memories.

‘Ben?’ yelled a familiar voice. Ben turned to see Jeff Dekker running down the steps from the house. Jeff was wearing his usual winter attire, old-pattern DPM combat trousers and a submariner-style jumper. His eyes were huge with surprise, and a grin wider than the radiator grille on a ’58 Chevy Impala was spreading over his face. ‘Christ, it is you. Welcome, stranger.’

‘Hello, Jeff.’

‘Well, fuck me sideways. You’re about the last person I’d expected to turn up out of the blue.’

‘Lucky you,’ Ben said. ‘I did try to call to say I was coming.’

‘Are you staying? Or running off again?’

‘I just popped over to check you haven’t totally destroyed the place in my absence.’

‘Oh, I think we’re scraping by okay,’ Jeff said, grinning even more widely. ‘Come inside. I just opened a bottle.’

‘Scotch?’

‘’Fraid we don’t carry much of a stock of the hard stuff since you buggered off and left us. Make do with wine?’

‘Good enough,’ Ben said.

Jeff had moved out of his quarters in the annexe after Ben’s departure, and taken up residence in the farmhouse. He led Ben into the familiar old stone-floored rustic kitchen. Gazing around him, Ben saw that nothing had changed. The solid fuel range was lit and filling the kitchen with a rosy glow of warmth.

‘Cold tonight,’ Ben said.

‘Colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra,’ Jeff said. Jeff had always had that way with words. He grabbed an extra wineglass from the side and set about filling it up from the open bottle of Côtes du Rhône. They sat at the table where the two of them had spent many an evening drinking, playing chess, and sharing ideas about how they were going to make Le Val a success. Jeff slid Ben’s glass to him over the worn pine table.

They clinked. ‘Cheers,’ Jeff said. ‘To old times.’

‘Old times.’

‘And future ones, maybe,’ Jeff said.

‘We’ll have to see about that.’

‘So, dare I ask to what we owe the pleasure of your company?’

Ben savoured a gulp of the wine. ‘You can ask,’ he said. ‘Let’s just say I’m staying away from town for a few days.’ Dracul’s Taurus was still in his belt. He slipped it out, ejected the mag, locked back the slide to make the weapon safe and laid it on the table. ‘Might want to stick that in the armoury when you get a moment. Its owner won’t be needing it any more.’

Jeff gazed pensively at the gun. ‘On second thoughts, mate, I’m not sure I want to know.’

They spent a few minutes catching up. Ben had little to report on his activities since they’d last seen each other, even though there was enough there to fill volumes. He especially had nothing to report on the love life front. He wasn’t hiding anything on that score.

For his own part, Jeff revealed with a coy grin that he’d recently met a woman he liked. Her name was Chantal and she was a primary school teacher in the nearby village. It sounded serious, which was a departure for Jeff, whose long string of part-time, on-off, short-term girlfriends had been scattered across most of Lower Normandy and had seldom ever been brought home to Le Val – partly because he’d never met one he wanted to get too permanent with, and partly due to the sensitive nature of the business that went on there.

‘How is business?’ Ben asked, reaching for his cigarettes and Zippo lighter.

‘Oh, you know, booming.’ Jeff spent a few more minutes updating him on all the latest developments at Le Val, while Ben smoked and helped himself to more wine. Final touches were being put to the extended rifle range and the new classroom facilities, and they had contracts coming in from all over the place with a five-month waiting list because they couldn’t cram it all in.

‘If things keep up at this crazy pace, we’re going to outgrow this place and need to start up another, just to meet demand,’ Jeff said. Just when things had been getting ridiculously busy, Paul Bonnard, who had been with the team since the beginning, had left to take a job at the renowned Gunsite tactical training academy in Paulden, Arizona. Jeff had employed two new staff members to fill the gap left by his departure. One was Ludivine Tournoy, a sixty-year-old former bank manager’s secretary from the nearby village who was now coming in part-time as an office assistant.

The other was a young British ex-infantryman who went by the name of Tuesday Fletcher. He was twenty-four, had done three years with the Royal Fusiliers and seen some warm action in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. His ambition, though, had been to become the first British Jamaican ever to qualify for 22 SAS. An ambition he might have achieved, if he hadn’t taken a bad fall during the endurance phase of selection testing in the Brecon Beacons. Tumbling down a rocky hillside with fifty kilos of gear on his back, Tuesday had broken four ribs, his left wrist, his left femur and his tibia in two places. When he’d bounced back two months later, still temporarily on crutches after complications and surgery, his military career was over.

‘He got a shitty deal from them, if you ask me,’ Jeff said. ‘But that’s the army for you. Won’t be long before they’ve got more Health and Safety officers than they have combatants.’

‘What’s he doing here?’ Ben asked.

‘Sniper trainer,’ Jeff said. ‘He’s got some skill with the rifle, I tell you. Better than anyone I’ve ever seen. Better than you, even.’

‘No, I mean, what brought him here?’

Jeff smiled. ‘He wanted to work with you, Ben. I had to tell him your absence was just temporary, or he wouldn’t have taken the job. Said they still talk about you in the Sass. Said you’re his idol. Said—’

‘I get the message,’ Ben said irritably.

Jeff smiled wider. ‘You never did take compliments well. Tough shit, ’cause I’ve got another one for you. I suppose you must’ve heard the news about old man Kaprisky?’

Auguste Kaprisky was an eighty-one-year-old Swiss-French billionaire with a château and estate near Le Mans, who couldn’t spend enough on personal security. While still at Le Val, Ben had provided advanced VIP protection training to his small army of bodyguards.

‘No, what about him?’ Ben asked.

‘It was all over the TV for a while. You must have been, um, busy.’

‘You know I don’t watch TV.’

‘Papers?’

‘You know I don’t read those either.’

‘How can you know what goes on in the world if you don’t follow the news?’

‘Because the less you follow the news,’ Ben said, ‘the more you know what goes on.’

‘You’re weird, you know that?’ Jeff shrugged. ‘Anyway, couple months back, a business rival of his went crazy over some lost deal or other that cost them a packet, got hold of an Uzi from somewhere and took a pop at the old boy.’

‘Is he dead?’

Jeff shook his head. ‘About a thousand holes in his house, but the ninjas took the bad guy down in short order. Nice job, too. Kaprisky swears he wouldn’t have survived it if we hadn’t trained up his team so well. You got a very nice letter of thanks, which I took the liberty of opening in your absence. Usual kind of thing, “Ben Hope saved my life; Ben Hope kicks arse; Ben Hope walks on water”, etc., etc., blah, blah, and there’s nothing he won’t do for us in return. He’s also recommended us to a bunch of his rich pals, three of whom have already been in touch wanting to make bookings.’

Ben disliked the spotlight, but he was pleased to hear things were going well. So far, though, he noticed, Jeff hadn’t said anything about Jude being there. Which Ben thought was a little odd, so he decided to raise the subject himself.

‘I gather you have a visitor?’ he said. ‘Someone I might know?’

Jeff’s hesitation in replying gave away what Ben already suspected. ‘He told you not to tell me, didn’t he? Why? Where is he?’

‘He’s not here,’ Jeff said.

‘Don’t fuck about with me, Jeff.’

‘I’m not. He was here, for the last seven weeks. But you missed him. He’s gone.’

‘What was he doing here?’ Ben asked. ‘Seven weeks?’

‘He wanted to do some training. That’s what we do here, isn’t it?’

‘Training for what?’ Ben said suspiciously.

Jeff looked at him. ‘What is it with you two? First he’s all cagey about you finding out he was here. Now you’re firing questions at me, like it’s such a big deal. Why get so het up about what Jude wants to do? He’s over twenty-one, isn’t he?’

‘Just.’

‘So what? I know you were close with his folks, but—’

‘Training for what, Jeff?’

‘Navy,’ Jeff said with a sigh. ‘Why he asked me not to tell you, it beats me. But now I have, so do me a favour and keep it to yourself, okay?’

Ben set his wineglass down. ‘He wants to join the navy?’

‘That’s what I said. He’s serious, too. Got the initial interview lined up in February, then the medical and PJFT two weeks later.’ Jeff was talking about the Royal Navy’s strenuous pre-joining fitness test, which all recruits had to pass before they could even commence the ordeal of basic training. ‘So when he called me and said he wanted to get in shape and talk to me about what navy life was like, I said no problem, come over.’

‘I see,’ Ben said, tapping his glass with a fingertip.

‘He’s a natural,’ Jeff said. ‘Always saying how much he loves the sea, so I took him up to the Pointe de Barfleur to watch him swim. He’s like a bloody fish in the water. Then we did weapons training, physio, technical knowledge, the works. He won’t have a problem getting past the tests. In fact I’ll eat my boots if he doesn’t come top of the class in all of them. Where he gets it from, vicar’s son and all that, who knows?’

Ben frowned.

Jeff went on, ‘So, yeah, he hung around for a few weeks, helping out around the place to earn his keep. I enjoyed having him here, and he had a good time too, even if I worked him like a bastard. Like I said, you just missed him. He left for Africa this morning.’