nightmares about being taken and held prisoner. For him, the memories of children locked in damp, filthy basements, imprisoned in cages, chained to beds, blindfolded in the dark, often drugged, too often abused in other ways, would never fade. Thinking about it now, he felt his fists clench tight.
‘I haven’t been involved in that for a long time,’ he said to Kaprisky. ‘I’m not even going to ask who you’ve been talking to. It’s not exactly public knowledge what I used to do.’
‘I have many connections, my young friend. And there are many people in this world, whose names you and I both know, who still regard you as their saviour. Rest assured they are extremely discreet to whom they divulge such information, but they will never forget what you did to reunite families torn apart by monsters.’
Ben looked at Eloise, who still hadn’t said a word since they were introduced, then back at her uncle. ‘And that’s what you believe Valentina’s father is, a monster?’
Kaprisky said, ‘Parents have been known to kidnap their own children, have they not?’
Ben had indeed known several cases of that happening. It was usually done to harm the other partner in some way, the ultimate expression of a catastrophically fragmented relationship. That variety of kidnapper seldom chained their own kids up in basements or deliberately harmed them – although it wasn’t unknown to happen; but there was nonetheless a serious risk of harm coming to the kids as the ring closed around the offending parent and they became increasingly desperate to get away. More than one had ended up endangering their child’s life in a high-speed car chase or a volatile armed standoff with bullets flying in all directions.
That was why, in Ben’s experience, the often heavy-handed tactics of official law enforcement frequently did as much damage as good. Many of the stricken families who had come to him for help in the past had heard the horror stories and decided to forgo police involvement in favour of more unorthodox, yet far more effective, methods. Ben had no problem with bullets flying, but he liked them to be properly aimed where they were meant to go: into the kidnappers themselves, and preferably not into their hostages.
‘Have you reported this to the authorities?’ In his K&R rescue days it was always the first question he’d asked prospective clients, bracing himself for the reply.
Kaprisky shook his head. ‘Informing the police would, I agree, be the first and most obvious recourse. However, as you know, I value my privacy, and also that of what little family I have left. For that reason I would prefer not to have my niece’s private affairs disclosed to strangers.’ He paused. ‘I am also a highly cautious man, who has learned never to step on ground without having first made certain it was safe to walk on. It takes only the minimum of research to reveal that, if the many tragic reports of ineptly mishandled cases are true, involving the forces of conventional law and order in such instances is all too often the worst error one could possibly make.’
‘That’s your choice,’ Ben said.
‘And so, that option must remain the very last resort, not the first. I would do anything to keep this in the family, so to speak, if at all possible. I consider that I owe you my life, Major Hope. That is as good as a blood connection for me. And that, as you have surmised, is why I am here.’
Ben hated being called by his military rank, but the old man got some kick out of authority titles and nothing would dissuade him of the habit of addressing Ben that way. ‘I’m honoured, Auguste. But I’ll only tell you what the police would have told you. Genuine kidnap cases are mercifully rare. There could be other possible reasons to eliminate before we start jumping to radical conclusions. Why don’t you run through exactly what happened? From the beginning.’
Kaprisky knitted his long, bony fingers in front of him on the table. He licked his lips, as though they’d gone dry. ‘May I trouble you for a glass of wine? My nerves are shattered.’
‘Of course.’ Ben stood, grabbed four glasses from the cupboard and a bottle of Chante Clair, Le Val’s current house red, from the rack. He pulled the cork, poured out the glasses and sat down. ‘You won’t mind if I smoke?’
Kaprisky took a long drink of wine. Eloise didn’t touch hers. Jeff knocked his down at a gulp and refilled it. Ben lit a Gauloise and leaned back in his chair.
‘As I said,’ Kaprisky went on, ‘Valentina’s father now resides in Russia. Moscow, to be precise. Since the divorce Eloise and Valentina have come to live on the estate at Le Mans, where they are very happy and Valentina is home-schooled by the finest private tutors money can buy. The unsavoury custody terms of the divorce settlement are that she spend a week with her worthless father every two months, which we have been honouring except in winter when it was too cold. As you know, I have my own personal jet on permanent standby not far from home.’
‘Indeed I do,’ Ben said. The previous year, Ben’s grown-up son Jude had got into serious trouble off the east coast of Africa that had required a very rapid intervention by Ben, Jeff and Tuesday. Kaprisky had provided the Gulfstream G650 as emergency transport, without which Jude would be dead now.
‘So, whenever it has been his time to have her,’ Kaprisky continued, ‘we put Valentina on the Gulfstream and fly her over, where he is supposed to meet her at the private terminal at the airport, to drive her to the dive of an apartment he keeps in some squalid part of the city. She normally stays for five days. At the end of each interminable visit, the process reverses and she flies home to us. In this way, the poor girl has been passed back and forth like the ball in a game of long-distance tennis. Scarcely the most satisfactory arrangement, but we have endured – until now.
‘Four days ago, at what should have been the end of her most recent trip to Moscow, Valentina failed to come home. The pilot called us to say that neither she nor her father showed up at the airport. I eventually had him fly the empty plane back to Le Mans. We have been frantically trying to contact them ever since, without success.’
Jeff knocked down another gulp of wine and made a frown that rippled his brow into corrugated creases. ‘So, Yuri just decided a week with his kid wasn’t long enough, or what?’
Kaprisky snorted derisively. ‘I suspect a far less wholesome motivation than fatherly attachment is at work here.’
‘Four days,’ Ben said, more to himself than Kaprisky. His mind was spinning through a hundred possibilities. On the one hand, a four-day absence wasn’t that long. On the other, a lot of very bad things could happen in less time.
‘But I have not been sitting idly waiting,’ Kaprisky replied. ‘No sooner had the aircraft returned without Valentina than we were ready to refuel and fly straight back there, with a team of my best men aboard. One of them, Andriy Vasilchuk, grew up in the Ukraine and speaks some Russian. I additionally employed a Moscow private investigation firm to assist the team in their enquiries. Their instructions were to go immediately to Petrov’s apartment and commence the search for him and Valentina.’
‘And they didn’t find them there, obviously.’
‘Not only that, but on questioning neighbours in his apartment block, it transpires that nobody there had glimpsed any sign of Petrov, nor of the child, for days before he should have delivered her to the airport.’
Kaprisky let out a long breath through his nose, leaned forward and fixed Ben intently with his piercing eyes. ‘I am no expert and would always defer to your superior judgement in these matters. But, to me, this situation bears all the suspicious hallmarks of an abduction. Please tell me if you can think of any other possible explanation.’
Ben
