Chapter 9
One thing was for damn well sure: the 2016 intelligence sources proclaiming Nazim al-Kassars demise were wrong. Badly wrong. It felt like history repeating itself once again. Ben needed to know how that could have happened, and why the hell a supposed dead man was walking around a European city leaving bodies in his wake.
Ben was deep in thought as he rode the subway train the long way back towards the safehouse. He could think of very few people with the right kinds of connections to help shed light on the questions in his mind. In fact, when he boiled the list right down, it came to just one man. Tyler Roth, the Delta Master Sergeant from Task Force Red.
Through the same grapevine that had fed him the inside track on ISIL activities, Ben happened to know that Roth had gone on to greater glories after Operation Citation. Promoted to captain, hed served another twelve years with Delta. His long career had hit a peak in October 2013 when, as part of the Juniper Shield operations in North Africa, his undercover team had successfully captured Abu Anas al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda member on the FBIs Most Wanted Terrorists list, in Tripoli. Then a couple of years later, in May 2015, Roths unit had carried out a raid on Deir Ezzar in eastern Syria, targeting the financial operations chief of ISIL. The target had been killed in the ensuing firefight, but Roths guys had captured his wife along with a cache of ISIL operational records and plans that had proved a goldmine for the intelligence spooks.
Or so Ben had heard, at any rate. Like the SAS, Delta worked so much in the shadows that nobody really knew anything about their activities, or couldnt talk about them if they did.
One thing Ben was fairly certain of was that the Deir Ezzar job had been Roths last hurrah with US Special Ops. Shortly afterwards, having survived a decade and a half at the top of his profession without having taken so much as a scratch, hed quit. Not to spend the rest of his life golfing in Florida, nor to retire to Italy to grow tomatoes like Bens old SAS comrade and mentor Boonzie McCulloch. Instead, Roth had opted for the path that many men of their level of training and expertise took, and slipped into the murky world of PMC. Which was short for Private Military Contractors.
In one word, Roth became a mercenary. Still employed, for the most part, by the same US government hed served in his previous career, but working for much bigger pay cheques. The real money was in fighting wars so dirty and secret that nations like America and Britain wouldnt even involve their blackest, most covert SF operators for fear of getting caught in the middle of an international flap.
He had heard nothing of Roth in years. As far as he knew, though, the American was still in the PMC game if he hadnt met a bullet in some squalid little conflict nobody was supposed to know about.
Ben picked up some Lavazza coffee beans on the way home, and when he reached the safehouse he threw a handful in the grinder, brewed himself a cup of dark roast, lit a cigarette and got on the phone. His first call was to Jeff Dekker at Le Val, to say something had come up and hed be delayed getting back. Jeff didnt ask what, and Ben didnt need to explain. Jeff was like that. But Ben knew that if hed asked, his friend would have been ready to drop everything and join him without hesitation.
Jeff was like that, too.
Bens second phone call was to a guy he knew in London, with whom he hadnt spoken in a long, long while. The guys name was Ken Keegan, and he was the director of a small but strangely lucrative firm called Simpson Associates Ltd, based in Canary Wharf. Needless to say, no real individual by the name of Simpson was, or had ever been, involved in the business. The company acted like a talent agency, fielding top-dollar PMC assignments and farming them out to the operatives best suited for the job, in return for a hefty commission. Keegan was a wealthy man, and worked eighteen hours a day. For years after Ben left the SAS the guy had constantly been pestering him with offers of lucrative contract work in Sudan or Sierra Leone or whichever high-risk hotspot happened to be attracting soldiers of fortune like sharks to blood that week. Ben had turned them all down, and eventually the phone had stopped ringing.
Keegan answered his direct line in less than two seconds, all eager and raring to go. Ben said, I like to see a man whos happy in his work.
Fuck me. If it aint the one and only Ben Hope. Keegan spoke in the piping, breathless voice of the seriously fat. Which he was. Probably the largest man Ben had ever seen, on the one occasion when theyd eaten out together at a pub in London and hed watched in morbid fascination as the guy consumed a steak and kidney pie the size of a wagon wheel. That was at least ten years ago. Keegan was probably twice as big now.
Still not dropped dead of a coronary, then, Ben said.
Take more than that to stop me, mate. So what brings you sniffing around my door? Let me guess, had enough of the soft life and feel like doing some real work for a change?
I need something from you, Ben said.
I dont like the sound of that.
Relax. Just a number, thats all Im after.
Keegan sounded suspicious. Okay, but whose?
You still in touch with Roth?
Keegan was quiet for a few moments. Ben could hear him thinking. He was waiting for more, but Ben felt no need to offer specifics. Especially not the mention of the name Nazim al-Kassar. Keegan would just think he was nuts.
Keegan said, Youre not the only one whod like to talk to that fucker.
Why? What did he do?
Fucking went and retired on me, thats what he did. Just when I had all kinds of plum jobs lined up for the ungrateful sod.
Im sorry to hear that, Ben said. I might have had something for him myself.
Anything in it for me?
I guess well never know now, will we?
Keegan gave a high-pitched wheeze that sounded tubercular. Bastard. Anyway, I thought you were well out of all that, years ago. Whats the sudden interest?
So do you have a number for him, or not?
Come on, mate. Quid pro quo. This aint bleeding directory enquiries, is it?
How about as a special favour to an old friend?
How about in return for you taking on a job for me? Ive got more work coming in than I got guys to delegate it out to. Matter of fact I have one here on my desk thatd suit you down to the ground. Ethiopia. In and out, eight days tops, big money.
Let me think about it, Ben lied.
Yeah, well, dont think too long. Clients breaking my balls something terrible. I need this yesterday. Keegan broke into another whistling, hacking cough, like a cat with a hairball in its throat. He went silent for a long moment, and Ben thought maybe hed slumped dead at his desk. Then Keegan said hoarsely, Okay, Ill see what I can come up with. Roths a right awkward bugger to contact, even at the best of times. Gone all reclusive and paranoid in his old age. Easier to have a conversation with the fuckin Duke of Edinburgh.
I appreciate your help, Ken. Really. I dont care what they say about you.
Who? What?
You dont want to know.
Fuck you very much too. And dont keep me waiting on that Ethiopia job, will you? Yes or no. Im down to the sodding wire on this one, mate.
I appreciate your help, Ken. Really. I dont care what they say about you.
Who? What?
You dont want to know.
Fuck you very much too. And dont keep me waiting on that Ethiopia job, will you? Yes or no. Im down to the sodding wire on this one, mate.
What an enchanting character, that Keegan. Ben ended the call, put away his phone and took out the one that had belonged to Romy Juneau. He gazed at it for a moment, getting his thoughts straight.
Somewhere, there had to be some clue as to how and why shed got herself hooked into the world of the likes of Nazim al-Kassar. It couldnt be a coincidence that hed turned up at her place to murder her, much as he enjoyed killing women. And from her nervous behaviour that morning it had been clear she was afraid of something, or someone. It was just as clear that Nazim hadnt been working alone, but had at least one accomplice, the getaway driver in the silver Merc.
Had they been following her in the street earlier that morning? Had she been on her way somewhere, maybe to work, when shed noticed them tailing her, become frightened and doubled back towards home where she felt safer? If so, it hadnt done her much good. But it also meant that she must have known the identity of the man, or men, following her.
Which suggested she was definitely involved with them somehow. Ben found it hard to believe that someone like Romy Juneau could be knowingly mixed up with terrorists. But then, what did he really know about her? He had barely even met her. For all he knew, she was a top operative for ISIL. Or maybe a CIA field agent they needed to eliminate. Which seemed just as unlikely to Ben, but you never could tell.
Whatever she might have been involved in, he doubted whether her phone would reveal much. But with so little to go on, he had to start somewhere.
Turning the device on he felt none of the self-conscious pangs hed felt earlier. Now that she was dead, things were different. It would no longer seem like prying into someones personal affairs. In any case she was no longer in a position to resent the intrusion.
He stubbed out his cigarette, drank some more coffee and got to work.
Chapter 10
The first time Ben had gone through Romy Juneaus phone hed gone no further than her address book, which had told him all hed needed to know at that point. Now it was time to delve a little deeper.
He began with the call menus, starting with sent calls. There were plenty of them for him to sift through. Some were identifiable as names from her contacts list, like her parents, whom she seemed to call often, her workplace and the person called Michel Ben had noted earlier, whoever he was. Shed called Michel frequently over a period of a few months, though the phone correspondence seemed to have stopped a month or so ago, with the exception of one brief call two days ago and another even briefer one just that morning. The last call had happened just minutes before Bens encounter with her in the street.
Ben wondered if the call had had something to do with the fact that she seemed so distraught. Out of curiosity he used his burner phone to call Michels number, but got no reply and didnt leave a message. Then he listed the other numbers shed called that werent stored in her address book, and called each in turn. There was a television repair man, a home insurance company and other assorted useless stuff that he crossed off his list one by one until there was nothing left.
Moving on to received calls he went through the same process. The mysterious Michel had also phoned her often, though not in the last month or so. Her parents phoned her from time to time, less often than she called them. The rest of it was just as inconsequential. This kind of detective work was seldom very exciting.
Next, texts and emails. Which were all work-related and concerned various dull administrative matters that Ben couldnt make head or tail of. The outgoing mails bore an automatically added text at the foot of the message, which said R. Juneau, Research Development Officer, ICS, with the Institutes address in the eighth arrondissement of Paris. A fairly swanky location, even though it was probably knee-deep in riot wreckage these days.
Ben keyed the Segal Cultural Institute into his search engine. It was a private organisation founded in the early nineties and run by a top French archaeologist called Julien Segal. Ben had never heard of him, though there was no reason why he should have. The Institutes website described its mission as the preservation and protection of ancient art treasures, specialising in the ancient Middle East. They were one of the leaders in the development of new technologies to digitally reconstruct art treasures damaged by war, natural disaster or the ravages of time, and restore them using 3-D printing.
Middle East. War. Ben thought, Hmm.
Then he thought, Middle East. War. Nazim al-Kassar. ISIL.
Hmm again. Tantalising. Not exactly what a detective would consider hard evidence of an actual connection. But enough to make Ben curious to know more.
The website featured a little About Our Founder bio of Julien Segal. A small photo showed a man in his early fifties, with a full head of silver hair and a craggily handsome face with striking, penetrative eyes like a hawks. He had spent decades travelling the world and been personally responsible for the rescue of countless ancient artifacts that otherwise would have been lost. He supplied museums, private and corporate collections, gave lecture tours and worked closely with international cultural heritage groups such as UNESCO and ECCO, the European Confederation of Conservation Organisations.
Ben dialled the Institutes number on his burner phone and was put through to a female receptionist. He could tell right away from her tone of voice that the police must already have been in touch. She sounded as if shed been crying, and might be about to burst into tears again at any moment.
Ben asked to speak to Monsieur Segal. The woman replied, Im afraid hes currently out of the country. He travels a great deal. Can I be of any? Shed been about to say assistance, but before she got that far her emotions got the better of her and she choked up. It took her a few moments to regain her composure. Please forgive me. Weve just received the most awful news. In fact the Institute is closing early for the day. One of our colleagues was found dead this morning. Its its just so heartbreaking. Romy was so loved by everyone here. She had only recently returned from a field trip overseas. And now Her voice trailed off with a sigh.
Thats shocking. My sincere condolences. Im so sorry if I called at a bad time.
Shed sounded at first as though she wanted, or needed, to talk, which Ben was pleased about because the more information he could fish for, the better. But now the woman seemed to compose herself and tighten up, as though suddenly conscious that she was blurting out her heart to a total stranger. Im afraid I didnt catch your name.
Dubois, Ben said. Bernard Dubois. And you must be?
Jeanne.
Of course, thats right, he said, bluffing like hell. Sometimes you could win them over with a little charm. Jeanne, I wonder if you can tell me when Monsieur Segal is expected back in the country?