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 was thinking hard. He said nothing as Kaprisky went on staring at him with such intensity that the old man was almost trembling.
Just then, Eloise spoke up for the first time since she’d sat down. Despite a marked German accent, her English was perfect. ‘There’s more you need to know. My uncle hasn’t mentioned the fact that, before this happened, I had been investigating my legal options to restrict Yuri’s right of parental access.’
Ben narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Why? Are you suggesting—?’
She flinched visibly at the notion. ‘Abuse? No, nothing of that sort.’
Kaprisky gave another snort, as if to say, ‘Who knows what that creep might be capable of?’ His niece shot him a look and went on: ‘What it is, Monsieur Hope, is that on several occasions when Valentina was sent to visit her father, he failed to show up at the other end to collect her, and she had to be flown back home without having even seen him. No apologies from my ex-husband, no attempt to explain, not even a call. Finally, after two missed visits in a row, I lost my temper and sent him a message.’
Ben could see where this was leading. ‘You threatened him.’
‘I had consulted my lawyers earlier that day, who were confident we could make a case against Yuri on grounds of neglect. I told him straight out that I had had enough of his behaviour, that I would be putting things in motion and that Valentina’s next visit to him would be her last.’ Eloise shook her head. Her eyes clouded and she dabbed at one of them with a knuckle, smearing her mascara. ‘I was so angry with him. I didn’t realise what I’d done. This is all my fault.’
‘Absolute rubbish,’ Kaprisky said. ‘The blame lies entirely with that reckless imbecile. You did the right thing, my dear. How many times have you complained to me of that man’s unreliability, his complete lack of responsibility, the way he pours so much vodka down his throat that he reeks of the