Chapter Fifty-Nine

Ben leapt down from the platform and tore the gold-threaded tapestry away from the wall. He saw the entrance to a small hidden archway, dark against the shadowy stone. A cold breeze wafted from it. He stepped inside the dimly lit stone stairway and saw that it spiralled upwards. He could hear the sound of running footsteps echoing off the walls above him.

He threw a glance over his shoulder. The crypt was secure. There was nothing anyone could do for Cook. Aragon was propped wearily against a pillar, pressing numbers into a phone. The other three team members had the old men firmly cornered. They were Philippe Aragon’s responsibility now.

Ben had other business. He started up the spiral steps, two at a time. The staircase wound round and round. Over the sound of his own rapid footsteps he thought he could hear the two men running ahead of him. He was gaining.

A second later he heard the flat report of a pistol. Followed by another. They were just up ahead.

* * *

The moment she’d recognized Ben Hope in the ballroom, she’d known that her moment was approaching fast. It was the endgame, the culmination of all these years of fear and duplicity and self-loathing that Werner Kroll had put her through. She didn’t care any more. It had to stop here. Whatever happened.

She hadn’t lived as Werner’s prisoner all this time without finding out a few of his secret routes. The enormous rambling house was riddled with them, enabling him to slip unnoticed from one place to another. Even though he’d always kept the private crypt locked to her, she knew about the hidden stair and had thought he’d come that way. He always had a surprise card to play. He was like that. Too clever to let anyone catch him so easily.

Now it was time for her to surprise him. She’d gone to her room, changed out of the party dress into jeans and an old sweater, taken that detested wig off for the last time and fetched her purse. Then she’d come here to this dark, dusty part of the old house to wait for him, crouching in the shadows of the passage, staring at the iron-studded door that she knew he was going to emerge from sooner or later. Through a dark passage to her right, the stairway wound right up to the top of the house. She wasn’t going to let Kroll up there.

As she heard the footsteps and the rattle of keys in the lock of the old door, she slipped the Black Widow out of her purse and firmly snicked back the hammer with her thumb. The door creaked open, and she stepped out of the gloom to meet them.

Kroll stopped in the entrance and stared at her. Glass was with him. Kroll’s eyes flicked from hers to the muzzle of the little pistol and back up again. ‘Eve—’ he began, raising a hand.

She’d never pointed a gun at a living person before. But she didn’t hesitate. The rubber grip filled her palm. Her finger curled around the little spur trigger and squeezed.

The .22 Magnum fired a very small bullet at a very high velocity. The report of the supersonic round was vicious in the enclosed space and she almost cried out at the lancing pain in her ears.

Glass twisted and clutched at his neck. He swore and staggered back two steps. There was a spray of blood on the stonework behind him.

But he didn’t go down. He swayed on his feet and for an instant Eve thought he was going to come at her. She struggled with the little gun. Her hands had started to shake violently and she couldn’t get the hammer cocked for a second shot.

Glass staggered across the landing towards the next flight of stairs. She was still fumbling with the gun as he disappeared round the corner. She heard his footsteps racing unevenly up the wooden steps.

Kroll stood still in the middle of the landing. His eyes were wide.

The Black Widow’s hammer clicked back into place and she brought it to bear on him. ‘Eve,’ he said again, raising his eyebrows. ‘Think what you’re doing.’

‘It’s over, Werner,’ she said. ‘I can’t let you go on with it any more.’

His eyes pleaded. ‘Look into your heart, Eve.’ He took a step towards her. ‘You know that you don’t want to kill me.’

She saw the stubby little automatic in his hand an instant too late. His face tightened. He fired from the hip, without aiming. His first shot went through her hand. The .22 spun out of her grip. She screamed.

He fired again and caught her in the shoulder. The searing agony sliced through her. She fell back, slumped against the wall and slid down slowly to the floor.

Kroll smiled as he stood over her, his legs planted either side of her body. He aimed the little Colt auto between her eyes. ‘Goodbye, Eve,’ he said.

Then he went tumbling forward with a spasm.

Ben Hope was in the doorway. Through the pain and the ringing in her ears, Eve heard the muffled cough of his gun repeating in a rapid staccato as he emptied it into Kroll. The old man crumpled bloodily onto his face with nine bullets in him and lay half on top of her.

Ben grabbed Kroll’s dead body by the collar and rolled it aside. He knelt down beside Eve. He could see that not all the blood on her was Kroll’s. He ripped the neck of her sweater, searching for the gunshot wound.

The bullet had hit high on the right shoulder, between the collarbone and the upper chest muscle. He probed gently, fingers slick with blood. She was near to fainting as he ran his fingers over the back of her shoulder and found the small-calibre bullet lodged under the skin. It had passed through the shoulder without fragmenting. He breathed more easily. It wasn’t as bad as it looked.

The hand was worse, quite a bit worse. He winced when he saw the jagged bits of bone protruding whitely through the flesh. Her fingers were twisted in a way they shouldn’t be. She might never recover the full use of that right hand.

But she’d live. She’d been lucky. Kroll had been a bad shot. The sign of a man who had always paid others to pull the trigger for him. Or maybe just a sadist who wanted to take his time and cause as much pain and peripheral damage as he could before he killed her. Either way, it was over now.

‘You’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘You’ll be taken care of.’

‘Thank you’, she mouthed weakly. She tried to smile, and then passed out.

He looked at her for a moment, and reached out and caressed her cheek, leaving a smear of blood.

He stood up and looked down at Kroll. The old man lay twisted like a broken doll. The von Adler line had just ended, and with it two centuries of murder and corruption. Werner Kroll’s lifeless eyes were staring like oily porcelain. The thin wrinkled lips seemed to smile mockingly at him. For an instant Ben wanted to shoot him again.

But he had other things to worry about. Where was Jack Glass?

There was a spatter of blood on the wall. Splashes of it across the floor. They led towards the stairs. A slick red footprint on the first step. A big red splash on the second. Another footprint on the third. A bloody handprint on the banister rail. The blood led all the way up. But it was just a trail. Glass himself was nowhere.

Ben’s mind suddenly filled with a single thought.

Clara.