LITMIR.BIZ

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and kept his foot down at a steady eighty, stopping only for fuel and tolls. The concentration of driving helped, but it didn’t completely silence the voices in his head that asked him over and over again: Why? Why?

      When the voices reached a fever pitch he just gritted his teeth, gripped the wheel tightly in his fists and stared fixedly ahead as the white lines in the road zipped towards him and waited for his mind to go numb. It never really did.

      Sometime in the afternoon he started seeing the first signs for Switzerland, and a little while after that he passed over the border. Most of the traffic was bound for Bern and Lausanne, and thinned out as he followed the winding route upwards into alpine country. The road carved through rolling valleys and pine forests, green fields criss-crossed with country lanes and dotted with farms and villages. He passed through golden acres of sunflowers under a vivid azure sky. Watched the sunlight glitter off the blue-white mountains that hovered over the landscape like distant mirages. The shimmering reflection of the trees was mirrored in the surface of a vast lake. A wooded island rose up out of the water, the grey stone towers of an old monastery peeping through the foliage.

      It was the kind of scenery that could take a person’s breath away. But Ben could leave it until another time to appreciate things like the majestic splendour of nature. He kept moving on hard, following the directions he’d been given, and, as the sun turned from gold to red and sank down to kiss the mountaintops, he found himself approaching the secluded Steiner residence.

      The estate wall seemed to go on forever. Then, arriving at a set of high iron gates, Ben was stopped by uniformed guards who questioned him and scrutinised the photo on his ID very carefully before waving him inside.

      The gates whirred open to let him pass. Cameras mounted on the gateposts and the pretty stone gatehouse swivelled to watch him as he drove on through. Then there was another mile or so of private road, winding through a wood so neat that it looked as if every tree had been placed there by a designer. Ben came to a second set of gates and more guards with radios who waved him on without a word. He drove through a high stone archway and down a broad gravel path, and the trees parted and he caught his first view of the great Maximilian Steiner’s home.

      Even with all the troubles on his mind, he whistled to himself at the sight of it. He’d been in some moneyed environments in his time, but this was the kind of property that mere millionaires could only dream of.

      You couldn’t call this a house, nor even a mansion. The alpine château was a thing of fantasy. The sun’s dying rays glimmered off towers and turrets, columns and arches. It could have been the home of a Bavarian monarch from three centuries ago, but the gleaming white stonework looked as though it had been built yesterday. Around it, acre after endless acre of sweeping lawns and gardens that looked like they’d need an army of groundskeepers to maintain them. Ben wondered at the size of the staff that Steiner must keep on site.

      Now he was one of them. Great. Just great.

      He ran back through what he knew about his new employer. He’d dug up plenty of information online to explain how the Steiner billions were generated: pharmaceutical companies, oil refineries, heavy industry and aviation, with one of Europe’s largest fleets of corporate jets. By contrast, virtually nothing was revealed about the man himself that could have shed more light on the kidnap threat against him.

      But even without knowing the full details, Ben could imagine the scenario pretty well. The kidnap business was just like any other. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, barring the occasional revenge job or sex abductions, it came down to money, pure and simple. And he’d seen enough of that world to know the kind of people who would be drawn to the idea of grabbing a guy of Steiner’s extreme wealth, whisking him away to some dingy basement somewhere nobody could ever find him, keeping him chained and starving with a pair of bolt-croppers on standby in case the family needed persuasion of their serious intentions. A finger in the mail was a highly effective means of getting the ransom paid. Ben had seen it all before. And had kind of hoped he wasn’t going to see it again.

      The château loomed like a sculpted quartz mountain as he approached, and he felt ridiculously dwarfed by it. He pulled the Mini up on the gravel at the bottom of a flight of polished white stone steps that were maybe not quite wide enough to accommodate the wingspan of a Boeing 747 and climbed out, stretching his legs after the long drive.

      Someone was coming down the steps to meet him. A man in a beige suit, around fifty, a little shorter than Ben and lightly built with the delicate frame of a lifelong desk guy. As the man walked closer, Ben could see his eyes were sharp and his face lean, the thin hair neatly parted and combed. He put out his hand and greeted Ben in English, which he spoke with only a trace of an accent. The warmth of his smile seemed genuine.

      ‘Mr Hope? So pleased to meet you. My name is Heinrich Dorenkamp. I am Herr Steiner’s PA. I trust you had a pleasant journey?’

      Ben wasn’t in the mood for niceties, but he returned the smile as Dorenkamp seemed to warrant it. ‘Very pleasant, thank you.’

      ‘Herr Steiner is very much looking forward to making your acquaintance. Regrettably it will not be today. He is tied up in meetings for the rest of the evening.’

      ‘A busy man,’ Ben commented.

      Dorenkamp flashed a grin and chuckled. ‘You have no idea.’

      A guy in his early twenties who looked like a valet emerged from a side entrance and walked over to them.

      ‘Dieter will take your car and have your luggage sent on to your quarters,’ Dorenkamp told Ben. ‘The garage blocks are situated to the rear of the east wing. All fully secure, naturally.’

      Ben handed the Mini’s key to Dieter, and watched as his little car was driven off across the gravel and round the side of the château. He wondered how anyone was ever going to find it again among the Rolls-Royces, Aston Martins and Bugattis that he imagined filled the garages of a man like Maximilian Steiner.

      Dorenkamp smiled again. ‘Now, please allow me to escort you to the guest accommodation, where the rest of your team are waiting for you. They arrived here late this afternoon.’

      My team, Ben thought, and cursed himself one more time for good measure. From the opposite direction another member of staff came rolling up in a white golf buggy. Dorenkamp motioned to the back seats. ‘We generally use these for getting around. It is a big place.’

      Ben didn’t reply as he climbed into the open buggy. Dorenkamp settled in beside him and the electric vehicle darted off through the grounds with surprising speed. As the sunlight faded, concealed floodlamps were beginning to burn brighter, lighting up the house and grounds. Around the side of the château, the view opened up to show more panoramic acres of perfectly clipped lawns, so green that they looked unreal. Ben said nothing, taking in his surroundings as they cut across the estate. In the distance he could see the little flags of a golf course waving in the light breeze.

      ‘You play, Mr Hope?’ Dorenkamp asked.

      Ben shook his head and was about to reply when the buggy rounded another gigantic column and the PA said, ‘And here are your quarters.’

      The accommodation was no château, but it was still spectacular enough to make Le Val look like a rustic hovel. The ultra-modern building was built into the side of a hill, its roof grassed over and dotted with wildflowers. Its white facade was smooth and undulating, a post-modern complex of caves with huge oval windows. Stylistically it was completely at odds with the château itself, but Ben had never seen a building so organically blended into its natural environment.

      Dorenkamp noted his reaction with approval. ‘Designed by the architect Peter Vetsch. The inside is extremely well appointed. I don’t think you will be unhappy here.’

      The inside was as white as the outside, the lines clean and elegant. The floors were granite tile that had been polished to a mirrored sheen, and the furniture was gleaming oak and white leather. Kandinsky and Paul Klee adorned the walls, and Ben would have bet they weren’t copies. A giant TV and sound system nestled discreetly in an oval wall alcove.

      The

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