The Mozart Conspiracy: A Novel

off in the snow, but then Jack Glass had always been crazy. He was proud of that.

The helicopter began to lift off. Ben could see Clara’s pallid face through the perspex window. Her mouth was open in a scream that was drowned out by the huge noise and the wind.

He ran across the helipad. The chopper was in the air, driving the snow into a storm of flakes that stung Ben’s eyes. He picked up the fallen .44 but didn’t dare to fire.

He looked around him in desperation as the hovering chopper spun slowly round on itself. Along the edge of the roof was a stone parapet, about four feet high. He ran to it and leapt up on top of it. He shoved the long barrel of the revolver through his belt and steadied himself with his hands. It was a long way down. The chopper dipped its nose as Glass hit the throttle.

Ben launched himself. For an instant he was weightless. The floodlit grounds of the mansion were below him. He saw the flashing lights of police cars swarming down the driveway. The party was in chaos.

He began to fall. Then his flailing hand clasped the cold metal of one of the chopper’s skids. The craft veered to the right, moving away from the house. The thudding wind tore at Ben’s hair and clothes as he dangled in space. He reached up and clapped his other hand onto the skid, kicking with his legs to haul himself up. Below him, the ground spun dizzily.

Glass felt the chopper unbalanced with Ben’s weight. From the cockpit he could see him hanging there, desperately trying to climb up to the side door. He smiled and turned the chopper towards the house. He couldn’t shake him off, but he could scrape the bastard off.

In the darkness a chimney stack loomed large. Glass banked hard towards it. Ben had a glimpse of brickwork rushing towards him. He raised his legs clear and the chopper roared over the roof. Glass brought it round again, the G-forces stretching Ben’s arms as he hung on to the skid.

Glass headed for the roofs again. Ben’s flailing legs raked violently up an incline of tiles, some of them coming loose and tumbling down to the ground below. Glass banked the chopper another time, laughing. One more pass and he’d leave Hope smeared like a bug across twenty feet of stonework.

But he banked too early. The tail rotor caught the side of the roof with a crashing shower of sparks and twisted metal. The helicopter juddered. The controls went crazy as the craft began to spin away from the house and towards the trees.

Ben had a foot on the skid now. Reaching out with an effort he clasped the handle of the side door and ripped it open. He threw himself inside the cockpit as the chopper gyrated out of control over the treetops, its lights tracing a wild circle over the snowy green pines and the naked branches of oaks and beeches.

Glass lunged at him with the lethal syringe. Ben dodged the stab and drove Glass’s wrist against the controls. The needle clattered to the floor. The two men wrestled over the seats, gouging and punching. Ben dug his fingers into Glass’s cropped hair and slammed his face against the dials, and again, and again, until Glass’s forehead was streaming with blood.

The helicopter was going down, spinning faster and faster. Glass’s fingers clawed at his face. Ben hammered him against the door, punched him in the teeth, slammed his head against the controls again. Glass flopped limply in his seat as the chopper banked violently to one side and twisted downwards towards the treetops.

Ben heaved on the controls but there was nothing he could do. The chopper spun wildly for another hundred yards before it hit. The rotors disintegrated and flew apart as they sliced into the treetops. They tumbled down, snapping branches raking and tearing at the fuselage, engine stalled, pieces of twisted rotor crashing down with them. Ben was hurled against the floor and the roof as the craft flipped over and over.

Thirty feet from the ground, the Bell tore free of the lower branches. Through shattered perspex Ben glimpsed the snowy forest floor rushing up to meet them. The impact flung him hard against the instruments. The chopper buried its nose in a snowdrift. Splintered branches and pieces of aircraft rained down.

Glass was lying slumped across the control console. Sparks crackled from somewhere behind the dials and the strong scent of aviation fuel reached Ben’s nostrils.

He hauled himself painfully upwards through the dark, smashed cockpit. Above him, Clara was wedged on the back of the front seats. Her lip was bleeding. She desperately tugged at the chain that connected her wrist to the steel tubing of her seat.

Ben heard the crackle and whoomph and looked over his shoulder. Flames licked at the inside of the glass, searing across the controls and the front seats. In seconds the helicopter was going to blow.

He yanked at the handcuff chain, glinting in the flames. It held fast. Clara’s eyes were bulging, her hair plastered over her face. She strained to tear her little wrist out of the steel bracelet, but it was tight against the skin.

The flames were catching. Ben clambered down towards Glass’s slumped body and felt in the pocket of his bloody tuxedo for the key to the cuffs. It wasn’t there. The heat was unbearable. A tongue of fire licked Ben’s back, scorching his jacket. There wasn’t time. The chopper was going to explode.

Over his pain and fear he remembered. The gun. He jerked it out of his belt and pressed the muzzle against the handcuff bracelet that was locked around the seat tube. Fire seared his sleeve. He squeezed the trigger.

The stunning noise of the .44 revolver cut away all sound. For an instant Ben was disorientated, lost in a surreal world of silence with the high-pitched whine in his ears filling his head.

Another rolling wave of liquid flame poured across the blackened interior of the chopper and he came to his senses. Clara was free, the broken chain dangling from the cuff around her wrist. They struggled across the cockpit. Ben kicked against the door with all his remaining strength. The door buckled open and he grasped the little girl’s arm and somehow they crawled through the gap just before the fire engulfed the whole cockpit.

He dragged her stumbling across the snow. Before they’d staggered twenty yards, the forest behind them was suddenly filled with white light. Ben dived behind the trunk of an oak tree, shielding Clara’s little body with his as the fuel tanks ruptured with the heat and the chopper exploded into a massive ball of searing flame. The whole night sky was lit up. Trees burst alight. Burning wreckage spewed in all directions. Clara screamed and he held her tight.

Chapter Sixty-Two

The Bristol Hotel, Vienna

Three days later

Ben walked in off the Kartner Ring and entered the lobby of the luxury hotel. His clothes felt too new and stiff, and every time he moved a stab of pain jolted his side.

The place was milling with journalists and photographers. He already knew that Philippe Aragon and a small army of his people had occupied a whole floor as their base for the series of press conferences that the media were screaming for everywhere. The police raid on the von Adler mansion was the biggest news event for years and Aragon was right in the centre of the frenzy. Ben had deliberately avoided TV and radio for three days but even he hadn’t been able to escape it.

Behind the scenes, Aragon had been pulling more strings in those last three days than most politicians pulled in a lifetime. He had the kind of high-level influence that enabled certain details to be smudged for the media. The deaths at the mansion had been attributed to Kroll’s own people. As for Ben and his team, they had never been there.

It had taken forty-eight hours to clear up the carnage. Nothing remained of the burnt-out helicopter except blackened fragments scattered across the forest floor by the explosion.

No trace remained of Jack Glass, either. At the kind of temperature generated by blazing aviation fuel, human tissue, even teeth and bones, would be reduced to fine ash. Ben had seen it before.

He pushed through the throng filling the hotel lobby and was met by a man in a pinstriped suit. He was around the same age as Ben, but balding and on the scraggy end of thin. He offered his hand. ‘I’m Adrien Lacan,’ he said over the buzz. ‘Philippe Aragon’s personal assistant. Glad you could make it, Monsieur Hope.’

Lacan escorted Ben through the lobby to the lift. Some cameras flashed as they walked. Ben kept his face turned away. Security men pushed back the journalists who had started crowding them, and they stepped into the lift alone. Lacan punched the button for the top floor and the lift whooshed quietly upwards. ‘It’s insane,’ he said,