He had to blink several times before he was sure he wasnt dreaming.
The priest hed spoken to the day before had been found hanging from a bridge. Suicide.
Yuri stopped breathing. Dirty bastards. If theyd pressed the poor old man for information before they murdered him if they knew what Yuri had confided in him
He threw down the paper and instantly glanced around him at the passers-by on the busy street. It all looked innocent enough, but Yuri was thrown into a panic. Remembering to his horror that hed left the flash drive and tobacco tin containing all the incriminating evidence right there on his desk, he was suddenly terrified. Could they be watching the apartment? Did they know where he lived? Maybe, but it was a chance he had to take. He seized Valentinas hand. Quickly. Were going home. No time to lose, Sweet Pea. It was a pet name shed always loved.
Why? Whats happening? the girl asked, alarmed at the look on his face.
To pick up some things, then were leaving.
On a trip, like the other time? To see Uncle Grisha?
Thats right, Sweet Pea. You liked that, didnt you? But dont say his name, okay? Not until we get there.
Why?
Just because.
Armed thugs didnt pounce on them at the apartment, and to Yuris immense relief the evidence was still right where hed left it. He snatched the tin and the flash drive and stuffed them into his pocket. Okay, thats enough. Lets go, Valentina.
But my things the girl said, crestfallen.
They could be here any minute. No time, baby. We can pick up anything we need on the way. Come on!
Wait, my phone! It was by the bedside in the spare room. Pink, like most everything else Valentina owned.
Yuri was very aware of all the fancy geo-location toys the intelligence services could use to hack and track anyones smartphone. For the same reason, he was frightened to bring his laptop with him. No. You have to leave it behind.
But its mine.
Im sorry, baby. I cant explain why, but you cant bring it with you. Too dangerous.
Dont be silly, Papa. How can a phone be dangerous?
It just is. Come on, Valentina! Yuri could see she wouldnt listen. In his panicky frustration, he could think of only one way to end the dispute. He barged past his daughter into the spare bedroom, grabbed her phone, dropped it on the floor and crunched it several times with his heel until it was in bits. Valentina stared at the broken pink pieces, and in disbelief at her normally so placid father for what hed just done, then burst into tears.
There, he said, feeling awful. Now you dont need to worry about your phone any more. Lets go.
Yuri Petrov hurried his daughter away from the apartment, knowing he would never return to this place. All that mattered to him now was getting away from here.
Minutes later, the first attempt would be made to snatch them.
Chapter 4
Normandy, France
Several days later
The light summer rain filtered through the oak woodland canopy to fall as drips and splashes to the ground that was soft and spongy with decayed moss and leaves layered season on season for thousands of years. The trees grew thick and wild, blocking out the sunlight; here and there a fallen trunk overgrown with creeping ivy and barbed-wire brambles.
Once upon a time the Neolithic forest had spread far and wide, later to form a battleground for invading Roman legions and the Celtic Gaulish defenders of the land, whose swords and arrowheads still remained buried deep under layers of soil. The areas of woodland that had survived to modern times probably looked no different from when Druids had practised their strange magic and rituals here, and wild boar and red deer and roebuck roamed free, preyed on by wolves, bears and tribal humans.
Today, the prey and predators were of a different kind.
From the green shadows stepped a man. His hair and clothing were wet from the rain, his face streaked with dirt. Alone, unarmed and hunted, he had been evading his pursuers for close to two hours. At times theyd been so close to him that he could hear the rasp of their breath, smell the tang of their sweat. They were all around him, spread out through the acres of forest like a net, and they wouldnt give up until the fugitive was caught.
He paused, as still as the trees, scenting the air, his acute hearing filtering out the background hum of insects and the chirping of birds for the tiniest sound of his enemies closing in. There; three oclock from his position, no more than twenty metres away through the foliage: the crack of a twig underfoot, followed by a wary silence. Someone approaching.
The fugitive fixed his enemys position and moved on, padding over the rough ground as silently as a hunted animal when danger is near. His pursuers were a dedicated professional four-man team equipped with automatic rifles and sidearms. He was alone and had no weapons other than his wits and experience. Which gave him an edge over his hunters. And as he knew very well, having an edge was everything in war.
He would not be caught. He refused to fail.
The fugitive stalked his way through the trees, pausing frequently to listen and observe. Then he stopped. The man whose careless footstep had given away his position was right there up ahead, just five metres away with his back turned, quite unaware that his quarry was creeping up close behind. His rifle was slanted across his chest, gripped tightly in his gloved hands. Like the fugitive, he was dressed in military disruptive pattern material camo, except the utility belt around his waist held a holstered pistol and a commando knife. He was glancing left and right as he paced slowly between the trees. The stress of the long, gruelling hunt was telling on the mans tense body language and the rapid rate of his breathing.
The fugitive smiled. Those were good signs. The enemy is at his most vulnerable when hes nervous. Get him spooked enough, grind down his morale, and hes ripe for defeat.
All at once, prey became predator as the fugitive suddenly struck out of the shadows. It was all over in an instant: the pursuer down on the ground, face pressed into the moss and leaves, unable to make a sound for the strong hand clamped over his mouth. The fugitive unsnapped the commando knife from the mans sheath and touched the flat of its blade against the soft flesh of his neck. The words the fugitive whispered into the mans ear chilled his blood and froze him in mid-struggle.
Youre dead.
The man relented, and the tension went out of his muscles as he realised it was over for him. The fugitive kept the pressure of the blade on his neck as he trussed the mans wrists one-handed with a thick plastic cable tie. He did the same for the mans ankles. Then he thrust the knife into his belt and picked up the fallen rifle. He moved on, still listening hard for the crackles and snaps of the remaining hunters moving through the forest.
He could sense them not far away. The map of their ever-shifting positions was like a three-dimensional model inside his mind, marked by the points of an imaginary compass. The nearest one was roughly southwest, less than forty metres off. The fugitives nostrils flared and twitched at the scent of him. Lesson number one: dont wear aftershave when you embark on a manhunt after a seasoned operator.
In less than a minute, the fugitive was right behind his enemy. He touched the barrel of the captured rifle to the mans back and whispered, Bang. The man turned, put up his hands, immediately accepting defeat. Moments later he was trussed, gagged and helpless in the bushes, like his comrade before him. Without a sound, the fugitive dragged his captive over the ground to where hed left the first one. The two lay helplessly side by side in the leaves, wriggling like caught fish and muttering stifled curses behind their gags. The fugitive left them to resume his stalk. The pursuit had gone on long enough. It was time to end it.
The last two were paired up together, slipping furtively through the trees when a section of shadow to their left seemed to come alive and detached itself towards them. By the time they saw the movement and the gun aiming at them, it was too late to react.
Lose your weapons. On the ground. Flat on your faces, arms out to the sides.
The fugitive secured their wrists behind their backs and relieved them of their sidearms. He left their ankles unbound so that he could march them back at gunpoint to reunite them with their companions. Once all four were lined up sitting on the wet ground he slashed their plastic bonds and they rose warily to their feet, rubbing their wrists and looking up at him with just a little resentment in their eyes. They were unhurt, but thoroughly humiliated and dismayed. They had travelled to this location as a team, in the hopes of demonstrating their skills. This outcome was far from the one theyd anticipated.
The fugitives name was Ben Hope. He leaned against a tree trunk, reached into the pocket of his camouflage combat vest for one of the blue cigarette packs he always carried and went through in large quantities, and lit up with a battered steel lighter. As he contentedly puffed the Gauloise, he studied the expressions on the faces of his students and smiled.
Dont feel so bad, boys. Educations all about making mistakes and learning how to avoid making them again. Thats what youre here for.
The location of the training exercise was a place called Le Val, in rural northern France. In some circles it had become a key facility, just about the only place in the world where certain specialist skills could be acquired by those prepared to pay the fee and take the strain. Le Val was jointly owned and operated by Ben and his business partner and longtime friend, Jeff Dekker. It had been steadily growing for some years now, the latest development being the purchase of an additional forty-acre parcel of forest to add to the existing spread of the estate. It had been a huge undertaking to fence off so much extra land to keep it secure from intruders, unwitting or otherwise but the investment meant Le Val could now offer courses in pursuit and tracking skills on top of all the other educational services they provided to the police, military and private security trainees who came to them from all over the world.
Todays group were part of a specialist fugitive manhunt agency based in Belgium and affiliated to INTERPOL, seeking a five-day CPD training in the art and science of capturing a fleeing subject in a rural or wilderness environment. The first job of the Le Val Tactical Training Centre was to expose, break down and analyse their weaknesses as a team. That first mornings session had revealed some issues. Now it was time to start examining what had gone awry.
The post-operation debrief took place in a prefabricated hut in a pretty wildflower meadow close to the edge of the woods, outside which were parked the two long-wheelbase Land Rover Defenders that would later shuttle everyone back to Le Vals farmhouse HQ. Ben was joined by Jeff Dekker and their business associate Tuesday Fletcher to run through the results of the morning class. The various weaponry consisting of trainer rifles, pistols and knives that felt and weighed exactly like the real thing but were made of bright blue plastic were stacked on a table beside them, next to the obligatory canteen of hot coffee brewed up on the military Jetboil stove.
The Belgians were visibly demoralised and exhausted, and so Jeff spared them the scathing criticisms that were half-hanging off his tongue and contented himself with standing against the wall with his arms folded and a sneer of contempt on his face. After half an hours lecture detailing the many missteps that had allowed the teams target to not only evade capture but turn the tables on them, Ben decided they had suffered enough.
Okay, folks, lets break for the day and get some rest. Youll need it, because tomorrow were going to repeat the exercise all over again and see if we can improve on todays performance. Any questions?
There was a chorus of groans. One of the trainees complained, If itd been for real, wed have had dogs.
Its a fair point, Ben said. But relying on a K9 unit is a luxury you might not always get to enjoy. Imagine the dogs have copped it. Put out of action by pepper spray, wire traps or a bullet. Now youre on your own. Depending on your own skills. Thats whats being tested here.
Yeah, but you were an SAS major, moaned another. Not even in the same ballpark as most of the crooks we go after. How many guys like you are we ever going to have to catch, in real life?
Jeff just glared at them and shook his head. Tuesday was having a hard time not laughing but then, the young Jamaican ex-soldier had a habit of always seeing the funny side, even when he was being shot at.
Ben shrugged and replied, The Roman army used to train their legionaries with lead swords, three times heavier than their regular sidearms. Why? So that when it came to the thick of battle where the metal meets the meat and a mans nerve is tested like never before, they felt invincible because their issue weapons were like a feather in their hand. If you dont believe in your abilities, youre already the loser. Belief is confidence. I want your team to leave here confident that you can catch not just some ordinary Joe, but anyone. Because you never know who you might be sent to take down.
And nobody likes making a total bollocking fool of themselves, now do they, fellas? Jeff added, apparently unable to resist getting in some slight dig.
Ben was about to say something a little more reassuring when the thud of a fast-approaching helicopter suddenly rattled the huts windows. The chopper wasnt passing over, it was coming in to land and that definitely wasnt part of the days schedule.
Hello, whats this all about? Jeff muttered.
They stepped outside to find out.
Chapter 5
The afternoon sunlight made little starbursts on the choppers shiny red fuselage as it settled down to land in the meadow a little distance from the hut. Ben and Jeff walked out to meet it, both wondering who their unexpected visitor might be. The blast from the spinning rotor blades ruffled their hair and flattened a circle of grass and wildflowers around the landed aircraft. They could see the pilot through the Perspex window, shutting everything down. As the pitch of the turbine began to dwindle and the rotors slowed, a rear hatch swung open and the choppers two passengers stepped out.
The first to emerge was an elderly man named Auguste Kaprisky whom Ben and Jeff both knew well, due to the fact that hed been a client of theirs in the not-so-distant past. Born August Kaprisky in Rottweil, Germany, eighty-two years earlier, he had become a devoted Francophile in his middle age, moved his home and business to Le Mans and suffixed the e to his first name to make it sound more Gallic.