Jones looked up at him. His eyes were rimmed with blood. ‘I’m going to go mad,’ he whispered.
‘Yes. You are. Now answer the question.’
It might have been the effect of the drug, or it might have been just the horror in the man’s mind, knowing that he was going to spend the rest of his life as a babbling lunatic. But something snapped in Jones’s head. Ben read it in his eyes – but reacted too slowly.
Jones was suddenly rearing up to his feet. Ben reached out to press him back down, but there was some kind of mad power in him that allowed him to force past.
Before Ben could stop him, Jones had covered the ten steps to the edge of the hayloft platform. There was no rail or barrier to stop him. He didn’t slow down. He hurled himself off the edge and sailed out into space, twisting in midair. Ben caught a glimpse of the wild light in Jones’s eyes as he dropped towards the floor below.
He didn’t hit the floor.
His fall was arrested by the upward-pointing fence post that he’d tried to spear Ben with earlier. It caught him between the shoulder blades, and his falling weight drove it right through him, through organs and ribcage and right out of his chest. The wooden point protruded grotesquely, slick with gore.
Jones stared upwards at Ben. His head was thrown back at an unnatural angle. The blade of the old circular saw was embedded in his skull. Blood and cranial fluids oozed down the rusty steel disc, down the housing of the machine to the dirt floor.
Ben shut off the phone, dropped it in his pocket. He grabbed up his bag and climbed back down the ladder. His mind was still reeling from what Jones had said.
It seemed insane, and for a moment he wondered whether what he’d heard was genuine or the brain-frazzling effects of a drug that turned men insane.
But no. There had been something in Jones’s eyes, even as his sanity was slipping away. He was telling the truth.
Ben stood staring at the CIA man’s corpse, trying to understand what he had meant.
Then he tensed, alerted by the sound outside. He ran to the barn door and out into the sunlight. The wreckage in the yard and the alleyway was still blazing, hot on his face. Through the shimmering heat-haze and the slowly rising pall of smoke he saw the helicopters landing beyond the farm gate. Four of them, so dark green as to be almost black, the letters FBI in white across their sides.
The first one to touch down was the big twin-prop Boeing. Ben hadn’t seen one since his army days. Hatches slid open. A man stepped out. He wasn’t wearing tactical clothing, but a grey suit. His sandy hair fluttered in the whipping blast of the rotors as he hurried across the grass, keeping his head low.
Behind him was Alex. Her eyes were wide as she took in the devastation of the farm, the burning buildings, the wrecked choppers. Then she caught sight of Ben and her face lit up.
Ben walked towards them out of the carnage. He reached for the Beretta in his belt and tossed it away into the dirt.
More personnel were spilling out of the helicopters as they landed. The grey-suited man strode purposefully up to Ben. His hand went to his jacket, and came up holding a badge. Armed agents swarmed round his flanks, pistols trained on Ben.
Ben wearily raised his hands.
‘I’m Special Agent Callaghan,’ said the grey-suited man. ‘And you’re under arrest.’
Chapter Fifty-Five
Ben was frisked and ushered briskly into one of the choppers by big, silent men in dark suits and dark glasses. He watched through a window as Callaghan put Alex and Zoe on the second chopper and boarded with them.
The flight took a long time, and it was evening when the helicopters touched down at a private airstrip where black SUVs stood on the runway together with men with guns. Ben was escorted across the tarmac to a sleek jet. The guards kept him away from Alex and Zoe.
Some time later, the jet landed at what looked like a military airfield. More black cars were waiting for them. Ben was marched across to one of them, a door held open for him, an agent sitting either side of him. Callaghan climbed into the front passenger seat and the car took off at high speed, leading the way for a procession of vehicles. Nobody spoke.
But Ben could guess where he was being taken.
Langley, Virginia, CIA Headquarters. As the cavalcade of cars approached the vast sprawl of buildings, he saw his guess was right. Armed security personnel guarded the tall steel gates that bore the eagle-and-star seal of the Central Intelligence Agency. Callaghan flashed a card as they went through, and a series of gates glided open for them. They drove through building complexes with thousands of windows, illuminated like starships in the dusk, past floodlit lawns where rows of US flags fluttered in the breeze. Everything was immaculate, a monument to unflinching national pride and self-possessed superiority.
Then the car stopped and Ben was led inside a building. The place was milling with activity, more layers of security to pass through and hundreds of workers swarming through the wide corridors. Callaghan walked briskly, and Ben followed, aware of the men in black suits right behind him. Glancing over his shoulder he spotted Alex fifteen yards behind. She was being escorted along by more of the same dark, taciturn men. She smiled at him, but it was a nervous smile. Zoe was nowhere to be seen.
Ben followed Callaghan through an open-plan labyrinth of operations rooms that were heavily cluttered with desks and computer terminals, staff and security personnel swarming everywhere. The place looked like the London Stock Exchange. Rows of clocks displaying the times in different countries. Hundreds of monitors flashing and blinking, giant screens on the walls showing news broadcasts from all over the world. Brightly lit electronic political maps of the globe, animated to show movements and developments that Ben could only guess at as he walked by. Everywhere he looked, scores of people were glued to the screens as though American national security would collapse into rubble and anarchy if they glanced away for just an instant.
At the far end of the last operations room they walked through was a set of glass sliding doors. The room beyond was hidden behind vertical blinds. A security guard rose from a desk as they approached. Callaghan handed him a card. The doors glided open with a slick
In the middle was a glistening table, surrounded by leather chairs. Three walls were panelled with wood, the fourth was a large mirrored window flanked by a pair of flags, the US Stars and Stripes on the left and the emblem of the CIA on the right, embroidered in white and gold thread. The ceiling was low and studded with spotlights.
The silent agents ushered Alex into the room and left. The doors glided shut and clicked. She glanced at Ben, clearly full of things to say but feeling compelled to stay quiet. He held her gaze for a second, putting reassurance in his eyes.
Seated at the head of the conference table was a large, broad-shouldered black man in his early sixties, wearing a sombre suit and a navy tie. There was an air of gravity about him, like a judge. Callaghan walked around the table and took a seat to his right, straightened his tie and looked to him for the first word. It was obvious who was in charge here.
‘My name is Murdoch,’ said the big man. His voice was deep and mellifluous. Ben could clearly see the intelligence in his eyes. He gestured at the chairs on his left, calm and slow in his movements. ‘Please. Take a seat.’
Ben sat, and Alex sat three feet away. She coughed nervously.
Ben was determined to seize the initiative here. The place was designed to intimidate. That wasn’t going to happen. ‘Where’s Zoe?’ he demanded.
‘Miss Bradbury is in very good hands,’ Murdoch replied calmly. ‘Agent Callaghan here is in charge of her protection.’
‘She’s in CIA custody?’
‘She’s safe,’ Murdoch said. ‘That’s all you need to know.’ He pursed his lips, formulating his thoughts. He leaned