The Shadow Project

by Scott Mariani

  He glared at the strangers at the foot of his bed and thought about his secret. He was smarter than they were. Only he knew that he’d talked to Sabrina. She and his dad would have called the cops. There had to be the biggest search of all time underway by now.

  ‘You assholes had better let me go,’ he said darkly.

  The sandy-haired man grinned. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. Because my dad happens to be in the Special Forces, and if you don’t let me go home right now, he’s going to hunt you down and take you apart.’

  ‘Your dad sounds like quite a fellow,’ the sandy-haired man said. ‘But the thing is, Rory, I know you’re making that up. I’ve spoken to your dad. In fact, he and I are very well acquainted. And it might interest you to know that he’s on his way here even as we speak. You’ll be seeing him in no time.’

  Rory frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he and I have some business to take care of. But that needn’t concern you. All you have to do is sit quietly and wait.’

  ‘I think you’re lying.’

  ‘You’ll soon see, won’t you?’ the man replied. ‘Anyway, now that you’re awake, you might want to take a shower and change into the clothes we have ready for you. You must be hungry, too.’

  ‘I don’t want anything, jerkoff.’

  The man smiled. ‘Actually, the name’s Pelham.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Rory yelled at him.

  ‘Now, Rory. I’m sure your father wouldn’t like you to use language like that. We all have to try to get on, don’t you think? Better for everyone that way.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a kid,’ Rory spat.

  ‘You’re a brave boy,’ Pelham said. ‘And I know you’re also a clever boy who understands what’s best for him. So why don’t you settle down and behave, and the minute your father and I have finished our business together, it’ll all be over.’ Pelham smiled again. ‘Now, I’m sort of in charge here, and I have a lot to do, so you won’t be seeing too much of me.’ He motioned to the man standing next to him, who hadn’t spoken. ‘This gentleman here is called Ivan, and he’s going to be looking after you.’

  ‘Hello, Rory,’ Ivan said. His voice was gentle. Rory had heard accents like his in movies. He figured the guy was Polish or Russian or something. He glowered at him.

  Pelham looked at his watch. ‘It was good to talk to you, Rory. Ivan and I have to go now, but he’ll be back in a minute to show you where the bathroom is and get you something to eat.’ He turned to Ivan and they exchanged a few words in a language that Rory didn’t understand. After that, they left the room and Rory heard the sound of a key in the lock. He stared at the door for as long as he could hold in his tears, then buried his face in the pillow.

  No way was he going to let them hear him cry.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  If Bruges was the best-preserved medieval city in Europe, the motorway that sliced through the countryside to its outskirts was one of the fastest and most modern. Ben reached the place with just about enough time to make his rendezvous, left the car in an out-of-town parking complex and boarded a bus heading for the historic centre.

  Alone in the back row, he unfolded the fax sheet from his pocket and ran back through the details Luc Simon had sent him. The little family café-restaurant where Don Jarrett liked to have his lunch each day was right in the middle of the old town, off the largest of its squares. Afterwards, according to the Interpol agents who had been keeping tabs on him, it was the Holocaust denier’s habit to take a daily stroll down by the picturesque canals.

  Sweet, Ben thought.

  He got off the bus on the edge of the old town and mingled with the many tourists in the squares and narrow cobbled streets. He bought a Belgian newspaper from a little newsagent stand, then checked his watch and went looking for the main square and the location of Jarrett’s regular lunchtime haunt.

  It didn’t take long to find, and it was just as Luc Simon had said, next to the clock tower. On the adjacent side of the square was a bistro with an outdoor terrace. Ben took a parasol-shaded table between a romantic hand-holding young couple and an argumentative American family who looked like they were going for some kind of burgers-and-Coke speed record. He leaned back in the wicker seat and started flipping nonchalantly through his paper. Over the top of the pages he kept his eye on the restaurant entrance across the way.

  Creatures of habit were easy to track. At 1.29 p.m. Ben saw a man cut across the square, head straight for the restaurant and go inside without glancing at the sign on the awning or checking out the menu beside the door. A regular customer for sure, but in his beige safari jacket and that conspicuous manner that the British always seemed to exude abroad, he wasn’t ever going to pass for a local. There was a large book under his arm, which told Ben this was someone intending to sit alone for a while. He looked to be in his early sixties, with a curly ring of grey hair around a bald crown. A good deal heavier and paunchier than in the picture Luc Simon had faxed through from Lyon, but it was definitely Don Jarrett.

  Now there was nothing to do except wait for the guy to have his lunch. A waiter came to Ben’s table, and Ben ordered a beer and a plate of mussels with French fries. He paid in advance so that he could leave quickly if needed.

  As he ate, he skipped idly through a few articles in the newspaper without taking in a single word, glancing frequently over at the restaurant window where he could just make out the top of Jarrett’s head above the Kronenbourg logo painted on the glass. The Americans at the next table finally had their fill and went off to argue somewhere else.

  At just after 2.15, Ben saw Jarrett walk out of the restaurant doorway with his book under his arm, take a right across the square and mingle into the crowds of tourists standing around and snapping pictures of the clock tower. Ben scattered a handful of euros on his table to tip the waiter and followed.

  Away from the main square, the streets between the old buildings were winding and narrow. Ben hung back a hundred yards or so as Jarrett walked, keeping him in sight without being spotted. Up ahead, the sunlight sparkled between the trees and across the rippling waters of the canal. Jarrett took a left turn and trotted down some steps towards the towpath.

  Ben followed. Jarrett walked on ahead, moving slowly, seeming to relish his surroundings. A couple of hundred yards further up the canal path, a pretty arched stone bridge spanned the water. Moored up to its side, bobbing gently on the current, was an empty tourist barge.

  There was nobody about. It was quiet down here, just the gentle lap of the water against the stone walls and the warble of a blackbird perched overhead in a tree. Ben quickened his step. As he walked, he took the Smith & Wesson from his bag and slipped it discreetly into his jacket pocket.

  Jarrett seemed to sense the presence behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, then half-turned, smiled and nodded with a polite ‘Good afternoon’ in English-accented French.

  Ben didn’t return the smile. ‘Don Jarrett?’

  Jarrett turned again and looked at him. The smile faded quickly, replaced by a wary glint in his eye.

  ‘You are Don Jarrett, aren’t you?’ Ben said calmly.

  ‘If you’re a journalist, I won’t talk to you. Not interested. So piss off.’

  ‘I’m not a journalist,’ Ben said. ‘But I didn’t come to Bruges for the sightseeing.’

  As he said it, he drew the Smith & Wesson out of his pocket. Normally he would have carried it already cocked and locked, Condition One, the way he’d been trained. That way, you only had to flip off the safety and it was ready for action. Efficient, but not particularly theatrical.

  Instead, he did it the showy way they did it in the movies, the way that gets you killed in real life, making a big deal out of reaching across with his left hand, racking back the slide and releasing it with that bright, splashy shlak-clang of metal on metal that he knew would strike fear into Don Jarrett’s heart.

  It did. And all the more so when Ben pointed the pistol at his hea
d.

  It wasn’t even loaded. Something the guy didn’t need to know.

  Jarrett backed away fearfully. He raised his hands, palms out, eyes pleading. ‘You’ve come to kill me, haven’t you?’

  ‘Expecting someone?’

  Jarrett eyed him uncertainly, with the look of a man facing up to something he’d been resigned to for a long time. ‘I’ve had threats.’

  ‘Seem like a popular guy. But I’m not going to kill you. Unless you make me.’

  Jarrett reddened. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I asked them where I could find the biggest turd of a Holocaust denier going. They told me you were it. So here I am, and you and I are going to have a little chat.’ Ben made a big show of uncocking the pistol, then put it back in his pocket.

  Jarrett looked a little more relieved. The fear had drained away from his face to leave a flush of indignation in his cheeks. ‘Who’s they?’ he demanded.

  Ben shrugged. ‘Them.’

  Jarrett said, ‘The same bastards who persecuted me, ruined my life and put me in jail.’

  ‘I’d say you brought that on yourself, no?’

  ‘I’m not a Holocaust denier.’

  Ben smiled coldly. ‘You’re denying that, too?’

  ‘They call me a Jew hater, a fascist, a terrorist. I’m none of those things, all right? I’m a revisionist historical scholar whose only crime was to ask questions about things that everyone else was afraid to. I’ve served my time. Now why don’t you just bugger off and leave me alone?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Now I have some questions to ask you.’

  ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘Let’s you and I go for a boat ride.’

  Ben ushered the man down the path. He was pretty certain they weren’t being followed by any of Luc Simon’s people, but he didn’t want eavesdroppers. The last thing he needed was to draw Interpol’s attention to whatever it was that his sister had got herself involved in. That was something for him, and him alone, to deal with.

  As they approached the bridge, a small thin man with a straggly moustache and a money pouch on a strap around his shoulder appeared at the side of the canal, hovered near the boat mooring and eyed them expectantly.

  Ben pointed down at the barge. ‘How much for the tour?’ he asked, and the guy told him it was twelve euros each. The boat had a little wheelhouse at the front, and behind it was seating for about a dozen passengers. Ben reached for his wallet, counted out a hundred and eighty euros and handed it to the boatman. ‘Just him and me. No other passengers. There’s a little extra for you.’

  The boatman shrugged and stuffed the cash in his pouch.

  ‘I don’t like going on the water,’ Jarrett muttered. ‘I can’t swim.’

  ‘Good.’ Ben shoved him towards the edge and made him climb down the ladder to the barge. Ben went down after him and pushed him towards the stern, as far from the wheel-house as they could get. The boatman climbed down, started up the gurgling engine and cast off.

  The canals wound gently through the old medieval city, past ivied stone buildings and under trees that leaned far out across the water. Jarrett held on tightly to the chrome railing at the barge’s stern, looking down at the wake that the barge’s lazy propellers were churning up behind them. Ben stood next to him, watching him.

  ‘I’m happy in this place,’ Jarrett said quietly. ‘I like the way people leave me alone. I can lose myself here and forget about all the shit that’s out there, and all the things that were done to me.’

  ‘I know exactly how you feel,’ Ben said.

  Jarrett looked at him in surprise.

  ‘You feel betrayed. You showed the world what you thought was the honest truth, and you were stood on. You feel hard done by. And you know what? I don’t give a shit about your burning martyr act. I despise you and I don’t want to be here. But unfortunately, I need your help.’

  Jarrett’s face was twisted in hate. ‘Like what?’ he spat out.

  ‘Like information.’

  ‘On?’

  ‘Your speciality,’ Ben said. ‘What’s in it for me?’

  ‘A lot, Jarrett. Believe me. Talk to me and good things will happen. Like not being found floating in the canal with a bullet in your brain. How’s that for starters?’

  Jarrett stared at him for a long time, then seemed to decide that Ben meant it. He let out a sigh, seeming to deflate a little so that his shoulders drooped. ‘OK. I get the picture. What do you want to know?’

  ‘I want to know why a bunch of neo-Nazi terrorists would be interested in Hans Kammler.’

  Jarrett’s eyebrows climbed up his high brow. ‘Kammler? SS General Hans Kammler?’

  ‘Is there another one I need to know about?’

  Jarrett leaned on the rail and puffed out his cheeks. ‘Might help if I knew what it was about Kammler they were after.’

  ‘Right up your street,’ Ben said. ‘Some documents that could allegedly prove that the Nazi Holocaust didn’t happen.’

  Jarrett frowned. ‘My street? Hold on. I’ve never said it didn’t happen. Just that it was grossly exaggerated. That only just over a million died, not the six million that are claimed. And that it wasn’t the big Jewish extermination it’s cracked up to be. That was a Zionist fabrication cooked up by the British to help gain control over the Middle East by filling Palestine with poor, suffering Jewish refugees in 1947.’

  ‘Save the lecture for someone who might actually swallow it,’ Ben said. ‘Just answer my question.’

  Jarrett was silent for a few moments. The only sound was the singing of the birds, the soft burble of the boat and the distant throb of traffic. Finally he said, ‘Well, I can see why a Holocaust revisionist might be interested in any documents written by Kammler, if they were to shed light on the Auschwitz business.’ Jarrett nodded to himself. ‘I can certainly see that.’

  ‘What Auschwitz business do you mean?’

  ‘I take it you’re aware that Kammler was in charge of the SS Building Division that built the so-called death camp, and personally oversaw the design of the alleged gas chamber?’

  ‘I’m aware of it,’ Ben replied. ‘I’m not so sure about the “so-called” and “alleged” part, though.’

  Jarrett gave a grim smile. ‘That’s the whole crux of the debate. This is the very thing the bastards put me in jail for. You see, revisionists believe that the gas chamber you see today if you go on a guided tour of Auschwitz is really just a reconstructed air-raid shelter, dressed up to look like it was used for homicidal purposes, when in fact that’s anything but the case. There’s a whole load of stuff they don’t want you to know.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Yes, they,’ Jarrett said hotly, and the thread veins in his cheeks burned red. ‘Like the fact that the work camp inmates had their own theatre and swimming pool. The fact that there are virtually no traces of the lethal Zyklon B compound in the gas chamber walls, far less than in the delousing rooms where they used it solely for the inmates’ hygiene. Even pro-Holocaust historians have admitted that ninety per cent of the stuff was used for routine health maintenance, as a pesticide. I mean, why go to the trouble of looking after your prisoners if you’re just going to exterminate them anyway? Doesn’t make sense. Then there’s the little detail that the holes in the gas chamber ceiling, through which the Nazis were supposed to have poured the crystals to produce the cyanide gas, were demonstrably added after the war by the Soviets as a deliberate propaganda stunt.’

  Ben listened carefully. This was exactly the kind of well-rehearsed poison he’d expected to hear from a man like Jarrett, and it just washed over him. What he found painful was the thought that his own sister, whose memory he’d clung to so dearly for all these years, could have ever bought into these terrible distortions.

  He put that concern aside and focused on the matter at hand. ‘So you’re suggesting that these people want to get their hands on the Kammler documents because they believe they’ll find evidence of what the gas chamber was re
ally used for?’

  ‘Showing that nobody was ever actually gassed there,’ Jarrett finished with a smile. ‘Exactly. But those are documents that I’ve never heard of before. I’d be kind of interested to see them myself. Where are they?’

  ‘As if I’d ever tell you.’

  ‘Shame. There are a lot of unanswered questions about Hans Kammler. Nobody even knows what happened to him, or why a guy so high up in the Nazi hierarchy, answerable only to Hitler himself by 1945, was never even mentioned at the Nuremburg Trials after the war. Deep conspiracy stuff. CIA plots and all that. Outside of my area.’ Jarrett gave a dark chuckle. ‘You’d have to talk to a guy called Lenny Salt for that kind of thing. Actually, he was interested in Kammler too, come to think of it. It was a long time ago. I’d forgotten until now.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Conspiracy freak. Some kind of scientist, I think, at Manchester University. Physics, it was. Strange-looking fellow. Came to one of my talks once.’

  ‘One of your revisionist pals?’

  Jarrett seemed about to object to Ben’s tone, then bit his lip and shook his head. ‘Hardly. He wasn’t interested in my views at all. In fact, he was quite violently opposed to them. But I did get the impression that he seemed to know an awful lot about Kammler. More than I do, for that matter.’ He paused, pursing his lips. ‘And I’m sure he would be interested in these documents you mentioned, unless he already has them, that is.’

  ‘He doesn’t have them,’ Ben said. ‘I know that for a fact. How well do you know this Lenny Salt?’