The Cassandra Sanction (12 page)

The watcher and his colleagues had been monitoring
the targets’ movements all that morning, ever since before nine when they’d left the apartment and driven north through the city to see the private investigator, Leonhard Klein. That visit hadn’t taken long. From Klein’s, a different car had shadowed them back to the bar on the edge of Glockenbach district and then reported back to base when, not long after, Fuentes and Hope had come running
out of the place as if they were onto something.

When Hope had suddenly veered to the side, for an anxious moment the watchers had thought they were blown. They knew he was good; very, very good; but they were experts and extra-careful about constantly switching between the three cars in the chase, keeping in constant contact via their mobile phone conference network that worked like unlimited-range
two-way radio and also allowed them to keep the Boss informed of their movements. Nobody was that good. After that false alarm, they’d dropped back and followed the silver Kia straight here. The two men in the grey BMW watched from a distance as Fuentes and Hope entered the pawnshop.

‘Are they still inside?’ asked the Boss on the phone.

‘Negative. They’re out and back in their car. Engine’s
off. Just sitting talking. Fuentes looks agitated.’

‘They know something,’ the Boss said.

That was how it looked to the watchers, too.

‘Time to make a move.’

‘Negative,’ the watcher said, eyeing the office workers. Another car hissed past. ‘It’s too public here.’

‘First chance you get. Take them down as planned.’

‘Roger that,’ the watcher said. ‘Hold it. They’re on the
move again.’ He’d seen fumes spurt from the Kia’s exhaust as its engine started. Its indicator started flashing to pull out into the traffic.

‘Stay with them,’ the Boss said. ‘Hacker, Ruddock, move into position.’

‘We’re on it,’ said Hacker’s voice.

‘Copy,’ Ruddock came in. ‘We’re circling the area.’

Cook, the driver of the BMW, checked his mirror as he waited for a yellow minivan
to pass, then pulled out. The silver Kia was two cars ahead, moving as if Hope was eager to press on. Cook followed, with the dogged, flat-eyed look of a man just doing his job. The tools of his trade were in a case on the back seat. He’d be using them soon enough, but the thought didn’t leave him much moved.

Some men fixed cars for a living. Others paid their bills by frying their brains
sitting behind computer terminals all day. Cook and his colleagues hurt and killed people. It was no big deal. Today would be no different, except it meant they could get out of this German shit hole. Fucking Germans. Cook hated the food, hated the language, hated the people. Then again, Cook hated just about everything, and his employer most of all.

The BMW stayed with the Kia for three kilometres
with Cook hanging carefully back and Lewis in the passenger seat maintaining phone contact. They peeled off as Ruddock and Dean in the black Fiat panel van took over for a stretch, Ruddock driving, Dean on the phone. Ideally, they’d have air backup and a couple of motorcycles to fill out the surveillance team. It wasn’t as if their employer couldn’t afford them. But his resources were scattered
elsewhere in pursuit of this mission, and in any case six on two was considered ample to get the job done. Which Cook had to agree it was, more or less.

Cook followed a parallel course as Dean reported the Kia’s progress. It was clear that Hope was returning to Catalina Fuentes’ apartment. The strike could take place there.

As the Kia hit Glockenbach, Nicholson and Hacker in the Opel Insignia
picked up the chase. When the Kia parked outside Fuentes’ building, Hacker pulled up fifty metres down the street, and Nicholson phoned in to say that Hope and Raul Fuentes had gone inside.

The Boss said, ‘Do it.’

The six-man team closed in from three directions and positioned their vehicles close to the building with the Fiat panel van parked near the entrance, two spaces behind the silver
Kia where the frontage of the building blocked its view from the apartment windows. Cook and Lewis left the BMW and joined Hacker and Nicholson, and the four of them stepped quickly into the back of the van, where Ruddock and Dean had already opened up the kit bags and started laying things out.

They togged up in silence. Body armour under black nylon jackets, thin gloves. The ski-masks would
go on at the last minute, before the assault. Lastly, they checked their weapons. Pistols only, for this kind of urban work. The hollow shell of the van resonated to the metallic noises of magazines being snicked home, actions being jacked, locked and loaded. None of them had a problem with doing a job like this in a busy city environment. They’d done it plenty of times before, for this employer
and others in the past. If there was any tension in the air, it was because all six of them knew what they were going in against.

If Fuentes had been on his own, this would have been an easy one, straight in, get it done, clear out and gone. It wasn’t going to be so simple. Even unarmed and caught off guard, Hope was dangerous. Whatever his involvement, his presence made Fuentes a hard target.
For that reason, the team had come doubly prepared.

Cook clipped his pistol into its concealed holster, zipped up his jacket and stuffed the ski-mask into a hip pocket ready for use. He scanned the five serious faces and said, ‘Okay?’ Nods and grunts all round. Nicholson leaned over the front seats so he could peer out of the passenger window at the entrance of the building.

‘We’re clear,’
Nicholson said.

Cook picked up the phone and said, ‘Moving in.’ He signalled to Hacker. Hacker went to open the back doors. Once they committed themselves, speed was going to be everything.

‘Wait,’ Nicholson said from the front, raising a hand. ‘Hold it. They’re out.’

Cook shoved Nicholson out of the way to look out of the window, just in time to see Hope and Fuentes stepping out of
the building and walking fast to the silver Kia. Fuentes was carrying a holdall, Hope had a green canvas bag slung over his shoulder, old-spec British military issue. The two climbed into the Kia, Hope taking the wheel once more.

They hadn’t been inside the apartment five minutes. Cook noticed the way Fuentes looked jumpy and on edge. This could be it.

Cook reached again for the phone.
‘Standing down. Targets are in motion. Looks like something’s happening, for sure.’

‘Stay with them,’ said the Boss. ‘Do not bugger this up.’

Cook snapped off the phone.

The silver Kia started up and pulled out sharply and moved off fast into the traffic. Cook waited three seconds, watching the car disappear into the distance, then he and Lewis burst out into the street and raced for
their BMW and Nicholson and Hacker ran to the Opel while Ruddock and Dean clambered into the front of the van.

The BMW took the lead, chasing fast up the street in the direction the Kia had gone. The targets were out of sight by now, but they wouldn’t get away. Strategically, Cook faced a decision whether to concentrate all his forces on going after Hope and Fuentes or to send Nicholson and
Hacker to check out the pawnshop connection.

He decided to leave that for later. If the hit went smoothly, they could forget about the pawnshop. And for now, they needed the numbers to take down Ben Hope.

Chapter Fifteen

Motorways radiated from the city of Munich like the arms of a starfish, E52 to the northwest towards Augsburg, E53 to the northeast in the direction of the Czech border, E54 to the west heading to Landsberg and the River Lech, and E45 and E533, forking southwards in opposite directions east and west for Liechtenstein and Austria. The location punched into the Kia’s satnav
lay two and a half hours’ drive to the west, in the Alpine foothills on the Bavarian side of Lake Constance.

‘I was one of the only people who even knew about the place,’ Raul was saying as they left Munich behind. ‘The last thing she wanted was a bunch of reporters showing up there, or fans. She bought it under a company name and only told people she absolutely knew she could trust. It was
like a hideaway for her. She used to stay there often.’

‘You said it was an observatory.’

Raul nodded. ‘Yes, with a small house attached. Not much more than a cottage, together with a few other buildings. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, about five kilometres from the nearest village, so it was ideal for privacy as well as astronomy. No light pollution. Although she did a lot of observing
during the day, too.’

Ben looked at him. ‘What kind of telescope can see the stars during the daytime?’

‘Just the one kind, and just the one star,’ Raul said. ‘
Our
star. The sun, viewed through a solar scope. Catalina is a specialist in solar physics. That has always been the biggest part of her work. Have you ever seen the sun up close?’

‘Not that I can recall,’ Ben said.

‘The
one time I went to visit her observatory, she took me into the dome and let me look through the solar telescope. Some piece of equipment, I can tell you. I’ve never seen anything so amazing in my life as this giant ball of fire, more huge and powerful than we can even imagine.’

Giant balls of fire were something Ben could take or leave. Even the small ones he’d come into contact with, usually
in the form of enemy incendiary devices, had been more than hot enough for him. ‘So this place of hers is out in the middle of nowhere and you’ve been there only the once?’ he said to Raul. ‘What are the chances you can find it again?’

‘I’ll find it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell anyone about this place before?’ Ben asked him. ‘Why not the police? Why not Klein?’

Raul shook his head. ‘Everything
has changed since then. Before, I wasn’t thinking she might have gone back there. I wasn’t really thinking at all. I only knew she was alive, and that while she was alive I was betraying her trust in me if I told her secret. I kept telling myself that one day, everything was going to be normal again, and her life would go on as it had before. Then later, when I started to think she’d been kidnapped,
I never thought about the place. She wouldn’t be there, she’d be in some place the person had taken her. I imagined the worst places. A cellar, full of rats and filth. A box buried deep under the ground with just an air hose to breathe through. All these awful images in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about her trapped, frightened, calling for help.’

He stared ahead, his eyes fixed on the
road as if he could reel in the horizon and bring them instantly to their destination. ‘But she
is
there. I know that’s where we’re going to find her. Frightened, and in terrible trouble. But safe and unharmed. I
know
it.’

‘Maybe,’ Ben said.

Raul glanced at him sharply. ‘Yes, maybe. But maybe is good enough for me right now. Maybe is all I have. Faith, remember?’

‘Faith,’ Ben repeated.
They were still over two hours from finding out whether that faith would be justified or not.

The long road carried them westwards past towns and lakes. Landsberg, Buchloe, Mindelheim, Memmingen. Some time during the drive, it occurred to Ben that this must be the most miles he’d ever clocked up on a rental car without being personally responsible for getting it destroyed, pulverised, burned,
blown up or shot to pieces in the process.
Touch wood
, he thought, and looked around the Kia’s plastic interior for anything resembling wood.

When he couldn’t see any, he abandoned such weak-minded superstitious notions, lit another of his dwindling pack of Gauloises instead and went back to thinking about Catalina Fuentes. Whichever way he tried to arrange the pieces of the puzzle in his
head, he couldn’t make any sense of what was going on. Something crucial was missing from the picture, and if they didn’t find Catalina lying low in her astronomical bolthole in the mountains, they’d have to hope they dug up more to go on – or else Ben had no idea where they could turn to next.

He hated it when the success or failure of the mission depended on just a single scrap of a lead.
Funny how it never seemed to be any other way.

The first half of the afternoon had ticked past by the time they finally reached Catalina Fuentes’ observatory in the Alpine foothills, two hundred and forty kilometres west of Munich. The motorway was far behind them, the road having grown progressively narrower and quieter as they neared their destination near the small town of Klosterkirche.
Raul’s memory proved just a little less precise than he’d given Ben to believe, and it was only after getting lost three times in the forest roads bordering Lake Constance that they finally stumbled on the right path and Raul started to recognise the landmarks. ‘This is it, I’m certain,’ he said.

After turning off the road onto a stony trail that looked like no more than a farm track, they
wound and snaked uphill for nearly ten minutes through empty hillside before the place came into view at the top of a rise. The first thing that caught Ben’s eye was the white fifty-foot dome that stood like a temple overlooking the forested valley below and the blue lake waters in the distance, seventy kilometres from end to end and smudging the boundaries of three countries. Adjoining the dome
was a rambling single-storey cottage. Nothing ostentatious, just a simple stone building with ivy trailing up its whitewashed walls and small, cottagey windows. It looked clean and maintained, but the message was clear: all the money had gone into the dome. The dwelling itself was secondary, like a bunkhouse.

A cluster of smaller buildings stood behind the house, looking like old storerooms
and animal pens converted from their original use. The property was fronted by a beaten-earth yard that ran off to patchy grass and then to a wooden fence that ringed the perimeter. Faded grass and the last wildflowers of the year waved in the breeze. As the land sloped up towards the hills the terrain became rougher, strewn with rocks. There were stumps where trees had been cut down. Trees being,
Ben supposed, the universal bane of astronomers everywhere.

So this was where Catalina Fuentes had been in the habit of escaping to from the pressures of celebrity. Now they were about to find out whether her remote hideout was an escape from something else.