The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET by Scott Mariani Page B

He watched Paris go by. It was getting dark as they left the outskirts of the city and the long, silent limo made its way outward along increasingly narrow, unlit country lanes. Bushes and trees, the occasional darkened building, and a little roadside bar flashed by in the headlights.
    His driver was short on conversation, and Ben lapsed into thought. Loriot was obviously a highly successful publisher, judging by the mode of transport that had been sent out to collect him. It didn’t seem likely that the success of his business depended much, if at all, on publishing titles with an esoteric or alchemical theme–a search of the
Editions Loriot
website had flagged up only a handful of them, and nothing that seemed related to what he was looking for. In any case it was hardly a very commercial sector of the book market. But Rose had said Loriot was a real enthusiast. It was probably just a hobby thing for him, perhaps a personal interest in the subject that he’d brought into the business as a sideline, to cater for like-minded alchemy buffs. Maybe he’d be able to point him in the right direction. A wealthy collector might even have rare books, or papers or manuscripts of his own, that could be of interest. Perhaps even…no, that was hoping for too much. He’d just have to wait and see where tonight’s meeting took him. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. They should be there soon. His thoughts meandered.
    He felt the Mercedes slow. Had they arrived? Helooked out past the driver at the dark road. They weren’t in any village, and there didn’t seem to be any houses nearby. He saw a large road sign lit up in the headlamps.
DANGER LEVEL
CROSSING
    The wooden barriers were raised upwards, allowing the car to pass underneath. The limo eased slowly onto the tracks and halted. The driver reached down to press a button on the console next to him and there was a
clunk
as the central locking was activated. A whirring sound, and a thick glass partition rose up, screening him off from the driver.
    ‘Hey,’ he called, rapping on the glass. His voice sounded hollow in the soundproof compartment. ‘What’s going on?’ The driver ignored him. He tried the door, knowing in advance it was going to be locked. ‘Why’ve we stopped? Hey, I’m
talking
to you.’
    Without a glance at him or a word in reply, the driver turned off the ignition and the headlights darkened. He swung open the heavy door and the car’s internal light came on. Ben noticed that the partition between them was steel reinforced, crisscrossed internally with a grid of stiff wire.
    The driver calmly got out of the car. He slammed the door shut and the interior of the car went dark. A bobbing beam of pale torchlight appeared as the man searched ahead of him, walking away up the empty road. The torch beam was sweeping fromside to side as though looking for something up ahead. The trembling pool of light settled on a black Audi parked at the roadside, some fifty yards away beyond the level crossing. Its taillights came on and a door was thrown open as the limo driver neared it. He got in.
    Ben hammered on the glass partition, then on the tinted window. The Audi’s taillights were all he could see in the dark. After a minute or so the car pulled away and disappeared up the road.
    He groped about in the back of the Mercedes for a way out. He tried the doors again, knowing it was pointless and fighting a rising tide of anxiety. There would be a way out. There was always a way out of everything. He’d been in worse situations than this.
    He heard a sound from outside, the ring of a bell. It was followed by a series of mechanical noises, and the wooden barriers came down. Even though he was blind in the darkness, he could visualize the scene all too clearly. The Mercedes was sitting astride the tracks, caught between the barriers, and now there was a train coming.
    ‘All taken care of, Godard?’ asked Berger, the fat guy behind the wheel, glancing over his