They all sat around the table. Ben offered coffee, which was politely declined.
‘Now,’ Ben said, getting down to business. ‘What is it that brings you here, Auguste?’
The fair-haired woman still hadn’t been introduced, nor spoken a word. Kaprisky touched her hand. ‘This is my niece, Eloise. She speaks English, German and Dutch but very little French, having moved here relatively recently. I would like her to participate in this discussion, so may we switch to English for the remainder of the conversation?’
‘Of course,’ Ben said in English. Jeff looked much relieved.
Kaprisky made the usual introductions, in his rather stiff and formal way. Eloise offered a small smile and a limp handshake, and said very little.
‘Again, I must apologise for this intrusion,’ Kaprisky said. ‘My reason for being here is, as I said, that I – we – desperately need expert assistance with a matter of extreme urgency. I would have made contact to warn you in advance of our arrival, but what I’m about to reveal to you is, well, most delicate.’
Ben wasn’t surprised by the lack of communication. Kaprisky was an inveterate paranoid who worried neurotically about phone taps and email hacking. Ever since the attempt on his life, when a disgruntled business rival had lost his mind and assaulted Kaprisky’s home with an Uzi submachine gun, he’d spent untold fortunes turning his estate near Le Mans into a fortress within whose impenetrable walls the old man lived like a virtual recluse. When Jeff sometimes commented that Kaprisky was turning into Howard Hughes, he wasn’t joking. Only a serious emergency could have prompted the billionaire to leave his stronghold.
Kaprisky paused, spread his hands out on the table, seemed about to speak, then threw a covert sideways glance at Jeff.
‘Am I a third wheel here?’ Jeff said, catching his look. ‘No problem, I can make myself scarce.’
‘Whatever you’re about to tell me,’ Ben said to Kaprisky, ‘understand that I have no secrets from my business partner and you need have none either. I trust this man with my life.’
Kaprisky seemed satisfied with that. Eloise sat very still beside him, gazing at the table with a set frown wrinkling her brow.
‘I’m guessing this matter has to do with Eloise?’ Ben prompted.
Kaprisky nodded. ‘She is the only child of my late brother, Gustav. She is as dear to me as if she were my own daughter.’
Ben said, ‘Naturally.’ Then waited to hear what on earth this was about.
Talking as though his niece weren’t present in the room with them, Kaprisky went on, ‘Her full name is Eloise Petrova. Personally, I thought Eloise Kaprisky sounded far better, but in fact anything would have. The reason for this unfortunate change is that she married a Russian.’ Kaprisky spat that last word out as though his niece had married an alien slime creature. ‘Fortunately, she had the sense to split from him after a mere ten years. The divorce was an extremely acrimonious one. I will spare you the painful details.’
‘I’m sorry to hear of your family trouble,’ Ben said. Still wondering.
Kaprisky shook his head. ‘Not I. I have never tried to conceal my conviction that the marriage was a disaster from the start. Yuri Petrov is, has always been, and as far as I am concerned will always be, with no possibility of redemption whatsoever should he live for all eternity, the worst kind of pathetic excuse for a human being.’
‘So you don’t think much of the guy,’ Jeff interjected.
‘There is no man alive more unsuited to be a husband to my precious Eloise, or the father of her child. He is the most indolent, self-seeking, worthless piece of—’
‘We get the general idea,’ Ben said.
‘Forgive me,’ Kaprisky said, collecting himself and wiping flecks of spittle from his lips. ‘I get very worked up. It’s just that this haunts our lives, even two years after the marriage ended. Things were bad enough when this moron whisked Eloise off to live for a decade in Amsterdam, where he apparently had some kind of employment, the nature of which has never been clear to me—’
If that was a cue for Eloise to step in and say something, she didn’t respond to it. Her uncle carried on, ‘She then had to tie herself forever to him by having a child with him, despite all my warnings that she would come to bitterly regret it.’ Kaprisky halted mid-stream and grimaced. ‘I don’t mean the child herself. She brings nothing but joy and we love her dearly.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Ben said.
‘How I pleaded for her to see sense, but did she listen? No, no. Now she must deal with the fool every time they exchange custody of their daughter. To make matters even worse, the idiot has since returned to live in Russia.’ Land of the slime creatures, apparently.
‘What’s the girl’s name?’ Ben asked Kaprisky. There seemed little point in asking the mother, who still hadn’t offered a word to the conversation.
‘Valentina. She’s twelve.’ Kaprisky sighed. ‘As much as I despise her worthless father, I dote on that child. If anything should happen to her, I …’
Ben sensed the tone of desperation in his voice. Now, maybe, they were coming to the crux of the matter. ‘This is about Valentina, isn’t it? Is something wrong?’
Eloise Petrova went on staring vacantly at the tabletop. Kaprisky slowly nodded, his eyes filling up like dark pools of despair.
‘Yes, this is about Valentina. It appears that she and her father have disappeared. And we know why. The brute has kidnapped her.’
Now Ben understood why Kaprisky had brought this to him.
For several years after he’d quit the military, Ben had operated as a freelance ‘crisis response consultant’ specialising in the area of what was known as ‘K&R’. The acronym stood for ‘Kidnap and Ransom’. The fast-growing industry of misery, terror and death perpetrated by cruel men against the innocent and the vulnerable. It was the most innocent and vulnerable victims of them all – kidnapped kids – whom Ben had most tried to help. The taking of a child, whether to extort money from the frantic family or for myriad other reasons, was the thing he despised the most. He’d have despised it, and its perpetrators, even if he hadn’t gone through the anguish and horror of losing his nine-year-old sister to human traffickers when he was a teenager, and the catastrophic family breakdown that had followed.
Nothing he’d done in his entire Special Forces career had driven him the way he’d been driven to find those lost children, bring them home safe and punish the men who’d snatched them from their families. To this day he could remember the names and faces of every single kid he’d rescued. He often thought about them, what they were doing now that they were older, what life was like for them, whether they ever still had 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.