room. He went in without knocking.
Steiner was sitting at the top of the long table. Seated down its length to his left and right were a dozen men in grey suits and at varying stages of middle age, obesity and baldness, hunched over open files and whirring laptops that showed colourful flow charts and graphs and columns of figures. The man at Steiner’s right elbow had been in the middle of saying something when Ben and Ruth walked into the room. He shut up. Thirteen pairs of eyes stared up in alarm. Steiner’s face turned chalk-white, and his jaw dropped open.
‘Meeting’s over,’ Ben said. He jerked his thumb back at the door. ‘Everybody out.’
Silence up and down the table. Steiner’s associates all turned to him. His pallor had turned to beetroot-red. He swallowed, hesitated, then gave a stiff nod. The twelve men instantly got up from their seats, hurriedly gathering up their papers and closing down their laptops, stuffing them into briefcases. They filed out timidly past Ben and Ruth, looking down at their feet, none of them daring to say a word.
As the last of Steiner’s colleagues shuffled out, Dorenkamp appeared in the doorway. ‘Sir, shall I call security?’ he asked his boss.
‘There’ll be no need to do that,’ Ben told him. ‘But you can get Frau Steiner and Otto up here right now. Double quick.’ He snapped his fingers.
‘W-why?’ Dorenkamp stammered.
‘Because we’re having a family reunion,’ Ben said. ‘And I want everyone to hear what the Great Man has to say for himself.’
Dorenkamp left, and they heard his jittery steps echo away down the hall as he went to attend to his duty.
Steiner was still staring wide-eyed at Ruth. The look of noble pride had completely melted away.
‘You have a lot of explaining to do, Steiner,’ Ben said.
‘I know,’ Steiner murmured with a weary nod.
‘And then you’re going to pay for what you’ve done.’
Steiner said nothing. Ruth was looking at him like he was something she’d scraped off her shoe.
After a few moments’ silence, there were footsteps outside the door, and then it swung open and Silvia Steiner walked into the room. She looked just as well-groomed and elegant as Ben remembered, in a grey linen trouser suit and a gold necklace. She was followed by Otto, dressed as though Dorenkamp had fetched him straight from the golf course. Ben wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d still been clutching his driver.
The PA was about to creep away when Ben called him back inside. ‘I want you here too, Heinrich.’ Dorenkamp hesitated, then walked in and shut the door behind him.
Otto slouched nervously to the back of the room and leaned against the wall next to the French windows. He smiled uncomfortably at Ruth and gave a little wave. ‘Hi there, cousin.’
But Silvia was the one Ben was watching. She let out a gasp as she saw Ruth there. ‘Luna!’ They embraced tightly. Tears were in Ruth’s eyes as she hugged her mother, and Ben could see the love that was there.
Silvia turned to her husband with a look of complete confusion. Steiner said nothing, just hung his head. Then Silvia turned to Ben with a frown of recognition. ‘What is going on here?’ she breathed.
‘Let me introduce someone to you,’ Ruth said to her. ‘This is my brother Benedict. The one he—’ she pointed at Steiner ‘—told me died in a plane crash. Does he look dead to you?’
Silvia gaped at Ben a moment longer, then turned aghast to her husband. ‘Is this right?’ she said softly. ‘Max, is this true? This man is her brother?’
‘Yes, it’s true,’ Ruth said hotly. ‘He lied to you, to me, to everyone.’
‘Max, please say something,’ Silvia muttered. She seemed unsteady on her feet for an instant, and had to lean against the table for support.
Maximilian Steiner said nothing for a long while. Then he heaved a sigh and pressed his hands flat on the table. ‘What she says is true. I lied. I knew there was a brother still living. I paid to have the story of the plane crash fabricated.’ He looked at Ruth. ‘And years later, when you hired your own investigator, I protected my lie by buying him off too. I’m sure you have already worked that out for yourself.’
‘But why, Max? Why?’ Silvia burst out. ‘Good God, does this mean her real parents are still alive too? That we took their child—’
‘They’re dead,’ Ben said. ‘You didn’t take anyone’s child.’
‘But they didn’t die the way I was brought up to believe,’ Ruth said. ‘All my life. Just lie after lie.’
Steiner held up his hands. ‘Can I speak? Can I explain?’ He paused, searching for the right words. ‘Very well. I admit that I have been untruthful. But I did it only to protect you, Luna.’
‘Forget Luna,’ she said. ‘My name’s Ruth. Protect me? From what?’
‘To protect you from the terrible knowledge that your real mother took her own life over the shock of your loss. And that your father’s death was a direct result of it also. How could I burden a child with such guilt?’
Silvia was staring at him in utter horror, her fingertips white on the backrest of the conference chair she was leaning on.
‘I lied to you too,’ Steiner told his wife gravely. ‘I thought I was doing it for the best. Perhaps I was wrong. I can see that now.’
‘You deprived our child of her own brother,’ Silvia said slowly. ‘You say you wanted to spare her pain. But you brought her up believing this person she loved was dead. How could you have done such a terrible thing?’
‘I knew who he was,’ Steiner said, motioning at Ben. ‘My sources told me that he had gone wild. Joined the army. A reckless and wayward young man, not yet twenty. I thought for a very long time about contacting him. But how could someone like that have taken on the responsibility of a child? He could have been killed in action, and then she would have suffered the pain of his dying anyway, but worse.’
‘How very fucking noble of you,’ Ruth said.
Tears had formed in Steiner’s eyes. ‘And we loved her,’ he said to Silvia. ‘I saw how happy you were, from the moment we found this beautiful little girl living in the desert and brought her into our lives. After what we had gone through, I couldn’t bear that my dear wife could lose another child.’
Silvia Steiner slumped against the table with her head in her hands, weeping openly. Ruth ran over to her and held her. ‘What’s he talking about?’ she asked. ‘What child?’
Dorenkamp spoke for the first time. ‘He is referring to little Gudrun,’ he said solemnly. ‘You never met her. She died, aged seven.’
‘She fell off the pony I had bought her for her seventh birthday.’ Steiner was staring down at the tabletop as he spoke, talking barely above a whisper and fighting to keep his voice steady. ‘Her neck was broken. She was paralysed. The doctors believed they could save her. But shortly afterwards she slipped into a coma. Nine days later, she was dead.’
Ruth looked as though she’d been slapped. ‘You knew about this all along?’ she asked Dorenkamp. Dorenkamp nodded.
‘And you, Otto?’
Otto was still standing by the window, looking down at his feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘They told me never to tell you about it.’
Steiner looked at Ruth with red-rimmed eyes. ‘Why do you suppose we never allowed you to have a pony, no matter how bitterly you wanted one? I was only trying to protect you. That is all I have ever done.’
‘It’s why you insisted on the Flash-Ball weapons,’ Ben said. ‘You knew that one of the gang trying to kidnap you was your adopted daughter.’
Steiner nodded sadly. ‘I was terrified that she would be harmed if I sanctioned the use of lethal firearms. It’s also why I tried my best to keep the police out of it. I hoped we could resolve the situation and come back together again as a family.’
Silvia looked up, wiping her tears away. She pointed at Ben. ‘Max, when you hired this young man. You knew who he was?’
Steiner shook his head vehemently. ‘I promise you, I was completely unaware of it. When the team leader, Captain Shannon, was injured, the name he gave me for his replacement was Benjamin Hope. I noticed the similarity with the name Benedict, but I put this down to mere coincidence. It was not such an uncommon name, after all. But then, one night after I had sacked the team, you, Silvia, made a remark to me that made me think again.’
‘I remember,’ Silvia sniffed. ‘I had been trying to place his face. He looked so strangely familiar to me. We
