The Shadow Project

Ben closed his eyes and remembered that day in Switzerland. Replayed the events in the clearing, the kidnappers coming out of the trees in their black combat clothes and masks. The swastika badges on their jackets.

He remembered them clearly. He hadn’t imagined it. And much as he despised the idea of his sister wearing that badge, until now he’d at least had some clear grasp of what was going on – or had thought he had. It had seemed to fit so perfectly with what Steiner had said. Yet what Salt was telling him blew the whole logic of the situation out of the window. Suddenly everything was changed, turned upside down.

Now his head was aching with concentration as he tried to make sense of it all. There was just one clear thread running through the mess. It was the clear, unalterable fact that, whatever the hell this was about, this woman calling herself Luna, but who was really his lost sister Ruth, had attempted to talk to Lenny Salt about Kammler. He didn’t know why she had – that could come later. For now, all that mattered was the evidence he was looking at on the screen in front of him. She’d come a long way to talk to Salt, and that meant she was determined. Determined enough, perhaps, to want to talk to someone else when Salt failed to honour their rendezvous.

Ben thought about it for a moment, then looked up at Salt and asked, ‘This group, this crew or whatever it was. Was it just you, Michio and Julia? Just the three of you?’

Salt shook his head. ‘There were four of us, for a while at least. Until Adam dropped out.’

‘Adam?’

‘Adam Connor. O’Connor now. Changed his name. Irish roots, but he’s American. He was Professor of Applied Physics at the University of New York.’

‘You haven’t mentioned anything happening to him. Does that mean he’s still alive?’

‘He was when I talked to him a few days ago,’ Salt said.

‘You told him your theory about Michio and Julia?’

Salt nodded. ‘I warned him, and if he’s got any sense he’ll keep his head down, like me.’

‘How did he react?’

‘Oh, he probably thinks I’m paranoid. Mad old Lenny. Serve him right if they do get him.’

Ben paused, thinking hard. ‘When did you take down the Kammler page on your website, Lenny?’

‘When all this happened. To protect myself.’

‘Before you took the page down, was Adam’s name mentioned there?’

Salt looked puzzled. ‘Yeah, it was, until he made me take it off. He didn’t want to be associated with us any more. Thought it was bad for his reputation or something.’

‘So Luna could have found him, the same way she found you.’

Shrug. ‘I suppose.’

‘Is Adam into conspiracies the way you are, Lenny?’

Salt flushed. ‘No, he’s got his head in the sand like everyone else.’

‘So if she’d turned up, he wouldn’t necessarily have tried to avoid her. But months later, nothing’s happened to Adam. So she can’t have been involved with whatever happened to your friends.’

‘Maybe that’s just what they want us to think,’ Salt said. ‘See how they fuck with our minds, man?’

Ben ignored him. He was thinking about this American guy. The man sounded like a sensible kind of person, as different from Lenny Salt as it was possible to be. Nothing made sense any more, and maybe it was an outside chance – but what if Adam had actually spoken to Ruth? He might know something. She might have given him a phone number, an email address. Even terrorists lived normal lives, lived in regular homes like everyone else. Or she might have given him a surname. Even a fake name could be a useful lead.

‘You’d better give me O’Connor’s number. I’d like to talk to him.’

‘I can’t give it to you. I don’t have it.’

‘Lenny—’

‘Seriously, I don’t have his number. I never did. I don’t like to use phones, man. They’re always listening.’

‘I’m going to be pretty annoyed if I have to travel all the way to America just because you don’t like to talk on the phone.’

‘He’s not in America any more.’ Salt pointed west, through the trees. ‘He’s just across the water there.’

‘Across the water?’

‘Ireland. He moved there, out in the Wicklow Hills near Dublin. Got a smart house business, lives out in the sticks by a lake.’

‘Will he be at home?’

Salt shrugged. ‘Don’t see why not. He said something about expecting a visitor to stay when I saw him, so I don’t think he’s going anywhere.’

Ben looked at his watch. It was nearly quarter to two. He could drive from here to Pembroke Dock, catch the first ferry and cut across to Rosslare, then head north towards the Wicklow Hills. He should be there by nightfall.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Night was falling fast and early over Teach na Loch as the gathering storm rattled the glass in the windows. Sabrina looked out at the black clouds scudding across the sky and the ripples distorting the moon’s glow on the surface of the lake. Then, as she watched, a cloud passed in front of the moon and the water went dark. The gently rolling hills were suddenly black, ominous silhouettes against the even blacker sky.

Not a prick of light anywhere to be seen, not a single person for miles. It made her feel very alone in the isolated house, and she found herself wishing she were back in noisy, cramped London.

The cream floor-length curtains suddenly swished shut without warning, making her jump before she realised that it was the house detecting the sudden change in the light and closing the curtains automatically. Three side lamps came on simultaneously a second later, the eco-bulbs glowing dull at first and then brightening.

‘Would you like the fire on?’ asked the soothing, electronic female voice from somewhere and nowhere.

‘Go screw yourself,’ Sabrina said to it. Every time she came here, Adam had installed some new piece of gadgetry, and it always took her by surprise. Pretty soon there’d be a robot arm in the bathroom waiting to wipe your ass.

She walked over to the big, soft sofa, stretched herself out on it and went back to her thoughts.

Still no word from Adam all day. She’d been hoping he’d at least call her from Edinburgh to let her know when he was coming back. She’d tried calling him, but his phone was always off. And of course it was way too much to expect him to bother to answer the three messages she’d left him.

It was getting harder to know what to do. Why was Adam acting so oddly? Had he stashed Rory away at tennis camp so that he could go off with some woman he’d met? But that didn’t make sense. If he’d met someone, why the furtiveness? It wasn’t like he had anything to hide. Oh, wait, maybe she was married. That would explain a lot. He wouldn’t want to let his little sis know about that kind of thing. Little sis who was pushing thirty but still had to be treated like a kid.

Or maybe Adam wasn’t acting oddly at all, and he was right about Rory’s practical joke, and there was a glitch with the email dates, and Rory had got himself another phone, and she was just winding herself up pointlessly with bullshit delusions. That would make more sense, Sabrina thought – and it was almost certainly what the cops would have said about it all, if she’d been dumb enough to go to them. She’d been tempted a few times that day to call them. Glad she hadn’t.

She jumped up from the sofa, a vision of a gin and tonic in a tall, frosted glass suddenly filling her mind. As she padded down the corridor in her bare feet, the house sensed the movement and turned lights on to guide her way. She walked into the kitchen and it was suddenly a blaze of white light.

‘I am capable of flipping a switch, you know,’ she muttered. ‘Fucking smartass house.’

The house didn’t respond. At least it didn’t ask her, Shall I put the kettle on?

‘Frank Sinatra,’ she called out.