‘Some of the way in.’
Ben took a deep breath. It seemed insane, but it was their only option. The facility was rumbling like the world’s biggest volcano about to erupt. ‘Can you crawl?’ he asked Adam.
‘Just leave me here,’ Adam slurred. ‘Get my son out.’
Ben ripped his tactical webbing belt out of his trouser loops. ‘You’re going up that vent if I have to drag you. Hold this and don’t let go.’
Then it was the frantic scramble up the tunnel. Rory led the way, followed by Jeff. Ben half-dragged Adam behind him on the end of the belt, praying it wouldn’t snap. After half a minute of crawling, he could taste the cool air from outside and there was a definite glow of moonlight up ahead. But would they ever reach the end? The metal walls were heating up fast, burning their hands and knees. The nausea was crippling.
At that moment, the world seemed to come apart. The explosion was like nothing Ben had experienced before. A horrible sensation of weightlessness as they seemed to be falling, falling, followed by a barrage of enormous impacts. The steel pipe was as fragile and vulnerable as a twig tossed around in a hurricane. Ben heard Rory’s scream of terror as it rolled over and over, battering them around inside. The pipe groaned as unimaginable outside pressures tried to stamp it flat. An ear-splitting shriek of rending steel, a cascade of dust and stones showering over them.
And then, nothing. As suddenly as the insane forces of destruction had reached their climax, it was over. There was silence, just the sound of grit and pebbles slithering down the inside of the pipe, and the soft groans of the others.
Ben raised his face out of his arms and blinked. The awful sensation was gone, the headache and nausea quickly clearing. Raising himself on his hands and knees, he realised he could stand. The pipe had ruptured above them, creating a jagged opening through which he could see moonlight and twinkling stars. He slowly, painfully got to his feet. A couple of metres away, Jeff was doing the same, looking stunned, his hair white with dust.
Rory stirred, let out a whimper and went scrambling over to his father. Adam O’Connor groaned in pain and joy as he sat up and hugged him.
The moon shone down on a transformed landscape. Kammler’s mountain was gone. It had collapsed in on itself, the facility swallowed up, vaporised. All that was left was a giant crater of rubble and debris and twisted metal, like the scene of an air disaster without the plane.
Ben knew he’d never be able to describe what they’d just witnessed. The power of Kammler’s machine was too incredible to contemplate. Now it was buried forever in its rocky grave – the Nazi weapon that might have saved the Earth or destroyed it was going to remain a secret for the rest of time.
Nobody spoke for a long while, just breathing the air, listening to the silence and savouring what it felt like to be alive. Ben stepped over to where father and son were holding each other tight. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘You saved us, Rory.’
Adam O’Connor gripped Ben’s hand in his bloodstained fist.
Ben just smiled.
‘Who the hell are you, anyway?’
‘Nobody much,’ Ben replied. He looked towards the sweeping forest, and pointed across the tree line to where they’d left the Porsche Cayenne, a few hours and a lifetime ago. ‘There’s a car down there. Let’s get you to hospital, and then home.’
While Adam was getting patched up in Budapest the next day, Sabrina flew out from London on a Steiner aircraft. Meanwhile, Ben was on the phone to Switzerland. Heinrich Dorenkamp told him the news. Ruth was on her feet and had already discharged herself from hospital after arguing with the doctors. As for Maximilian Steiner himself, he had come out of intensive care, weak and grieving for his nephew, but stable and headed for a full recovery.
Ben didn’t bother watching the news, because he knew nothing would ever come to light about the incident in the wilds of Hungary. What had happened there was buried and gone, just as surely as the legacy of SS- Obergruppenfuhrer Hans Kammler. Nobody would ever know the whole truth about who had been behind it. With Otto Steiner dead and his operation in ruins, the faceless, nameless figures who’d financed the project would now slip back into the shadows and wait for their next opportunity. That was just the way things worked. Always had, always would.
Ben hung around for a while in the hospital while Adam and Rory were reunited with Sabrina. He smiled to himself at the emotional scenes. Things hadn’t worked out too badly in the end.
He walked away without anyone noticing. Jeff was sitting in the Porsche outside. Ben climbed in next to him, and they headed for the airport.
It was the next afternoon, when Ben was sitting with Storm in the kitchen at Le Val, feeding him pieces of sirloin steak and watching him grow stronger by the hour, that he heard a car outside, and a minute later the door opened.
He turned, half expecting to see Jeff.
It was Ruth. Other than the sling around her arm, she looked fine.
‘Is he all right?’ she asked, looking with concern at the bandaged dog.
‘People who’ve been shot don’t just travel about the place,’ he scolded her.
‘Would you take that kind of advice from anyone?’
‘No,’ he admitted.
She swiped a glass off the side, pulled up a chair at the table and poured herself some of the wine he was drinking. ‘How are you, bro?’
‘I heard about Maximilian. I’m glad he’s going to pull through.’
She shrugged. ‘Me too. I feel pretty bad about what’s happened.’
‘Some of the things you did were wrong,’ he said. ‘But you did them for the right reasons, and that’s what’s important.’
‘You’re too nice to me. Fact is, I have some changes to make to my life. A lot of amends to make, and it starts here. Did Heinrich tell you that Maximilian is thinking of retiring?’
Ben shook his head. ‘Meaning what?’
‘Well, Silvia’s not interested in running a business. So, with Otto gone, that just leaves me.’
‘Sounds like something new for you,’ Ben said.
‘Franz will help me. We’re going to build the greenest multinational corporation you’ve ever seen. Use its power and money to do something for the world.’
‘Something that doesn’t involve Zero Point Energy?’
‘Maybe that’s still a little ahead of its time. We’ll find other ways to make a difference.’
‘Something tells me you’ll do pretty well.’
She smiled. ‘Now, enough about me. Did you call Brooke?’
‘We’ve left messages for each other.’
‘You’re nervous about talking to her.’
‘Things were left a little up in the air,’ he said.
‘She and I have been talking a lot on the phone. She told me a few things. Like the fact that your business is in deep shit because of that guy Rupert Shannon.’
With all that had been going on, Ben had almost managed to forget the Shannon situation. The prospect of losing Le Val returned like a toothache. ‘Back down to earth with a thump,’ he said.
‘Is it true?’
‘It’s true. But I’ll sort it out somehow. I’ll be talking to Dupont at the bank soon. Whatever happens, we’ll survive.’
‘Well, maybe you won’t need to,’ she said enigmatically as she reached into her bag and took out an envelope.
Ben slipped out a single folded sheet from inside. It was a letter from the new CEO of Steiner Enterprises,
