The Shadow Project

by Scott Mariani

  One of the principal advantages of committing crimes against criminals was that they tended not to call the police to complain about it afterwards. But in Ben’s experience you could never be too careful, and that was what the felt pen was for. He rolled the bearded guy over on his back and used it to write on his forehead.

  ICH WEISS WER SIE SIND.

  I know who you are, in big bold letters from temple to temple. The message ought to get them thinking. Ben smiled grimly at his handiwork, then got to his feet and ran back to the car, mapping out in his mind the best route into France without going through border checkpoints.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  On the way back to Le Val, Ben’s phone rang. It was Brooke.

  ‘Just wanted to check in and see how things were going.’

  ‘Things are … interesting,’ he said.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘On my way home. I should be there by midnight.’

  ‘Did you find her?’ Brooke asked after a pause.

  ‘Yes. I did.’

  ‘And it’s definitely Ruth?’

  ‘It’s definitely Ruth.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Ben.’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ he replied.

  ‘So what’s happening? Where is she now?’

  ‘Here with me.’

  ‘She came with you?’

  He hesitated. He’d already lied once to Brooke about his sister in the last few days, and he wasn’t about to do it again. ‘She’s in the boot,’ he said simply.

  A moment’s shocked silence on the line. ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘I said she’s in the boot. But she’ll be all right. She’s tough.’

  ‘Ben, do you realise what you’re telling me? That the sister you lost because someone kidnapped her is now a prisoner in the back of your car because you went and kidnapped her back? This is insane. You can’t go around snatching people.’

  ‘I didn’t kidnap her. I rescued her. That’s what I do. I got her out of there, and now I’m taking her home and she and I are going to have it out.’

  Another long silence on the other end. Then Brooke said firmly, ‘Right, that’s it. I’m coming over. I’ll be there in the morning.’

  ‘I can deal with it, Brooke. Stay put.’

  ‘No, Ben. I seriously don’t think you can. I think you need help. Maybe more than she does. Have you lost your mind?’

  ‘What about Sabrina? You can’t just leave her there on her own.’

  ‘Sabrina will be fine. She can take care of herself.’

  ‘I don’t think—’

  She cut across him. ‘See you at Le Val.’ Then, before he could protest, she ended the call.

  He drove on into the night, thinking about his cargo in the back and how he was going to handle the situation when he got to the house. He had to admit he was flying blind now. No situation he’d ever found himself in before came remotely close to this.

  Just before midnight, he arrived at the Le Val security gate and saw the figure of Raymond come out of the gatehouse. He and his colleagues Claude and Jean-Yves were the three-man local security outfit Ben had hired to man the gates and patrol the perimeter. Ben rolled down the window and greeted him, trying to look as natural as possible without hanging around long enough for the guy to spot the bullet-riddled back end of the car or hear its occupant moving about inside. Raymond didn’t notice anything.

  Ben’s heart thumped as he drove on through the gate. This was it. He wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable confrontation.

  He parked the Mini inside the Dutch barn, and stepped outside to scan the buildings. What he was about to do didn’t require an audience, not even a close and trusted friend like Jeff Dekker, and Ben was glad that this was happening while he was out of the picture. The whole place seemed deserted, apart from the four German Shepherds, led by Storm, who’d been sleeping in a nest of straw at the back of the barn and now came trotting over to the car to investigate. The dogs quickly picked up the scent of someone in the back.

  ‘Leave,’ he commanded them in a low voice, and they instantly backed off and retreated to a distance, watching intently with cocked heads and pricked ears as he opened the boot.

  Ruth’s eyes glittered in the moonlight, glaring up at him with rage and hate and fear like those of a cornered wildcat. She kicked and writhed as he bent down and lifted her out of the confined space, carried her over to the house and up the stairs to his private apartment. Once upstairs, he used her feet to shove the door shut, then laid her on the sofa and left her there struggling against her bonds while he went to attend to the windows. The whole house had sturdy wooden shutters that could be locked from the inside. Ben had fortified them with heavy-gauge steel wire, and only a really determined intruder with a sledgehammer would have got through them. He didn’t think she could get out too easily, just in case she tried. He secured each window in turn, dropped the keys in his pocket, then fetched a bottle of mineral water from the cupboard and set it down on the low table by the sofa.

  Then he kneeled down beside Ruth, gently peeled the tape away from her mouth and ignored the raging stream of abuse she fired at him as he snapped open his clasp knife and carefully sliced the plastic cable-ties around her wrists and ankles. She immediately tried to jump to her feet, and he shoved her back down. She sat glaring at him, rubbing her wrists.

  He offered her the mineral water, and she grabbed it from him, took several long swallows and then dashed the bottle in his face. Her eyes blazed as she yelled at him in German. ‘Du Scheisse, warum hast du mich hier gebracht?’

  Why have you brought me here?

  He replied in English, and they were the strangest words he’d ever spoken in his life, a surreal moment that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. ‘It’s me. Ben. Your brother. I’ve brought you home.’

  She stared at him for a long moment, her face wild and full of suspicion. ‘You’re not my brother,’ she screamed at him. Just a trace of a German accent. ‘What is this, some kind of twisted fucking joke?’

  Ben’s throat felt very tight. ‘You’re Ruth Hope. You couldn’t possibly be anybody else.’

  ‘You’re a fucking liar,’ she yelled. ‘What have you done with Franz and Rudi?’

  ‘Relax. Your little Nazi friends are fine. Probably licking their sores and pacing up and down wondering where you are.’

  ‘Nazis,’ she spat. ‘We’re not Nazis.’

  ‘I think you’d better start talking to me, right now.’

  ‘Fuck you. He sent you, didn’t he?’

  ‘He?’

  ‘My fucking father. Where is he?’ She looked about her, as if expecting someone to walk into the room and readying herself for the confrontation.

  ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ he protested. ‘What father?’

  ‘I’m Luna Steiner,’ she yelled. ‘Do I need to spell it out for you, arschloch? My father is Maximilian Steiner. And last time I saw you, you were his bodyguard.’

  Chapter Forty-Six

  It was as though all the air had been sucked out of the room. Ben found it hard to speak.

  ‘The Steiners don’t have any children,’ he said weakly.

  Her face reddened. ‘Who told you that?’ she demanded. ‘That lick-spittle Dorenkamp? Or my bastard pig of a father? Of course they’d say that, wouldn’t they? I’m the dark little secret they want to keep quiet. Easier to pretend I don’t exist.’

  Ben reeled with confusion. ‘Listen to me. You are my sister. When you were nine years old—’

  But she didn’t let him finish. Her arm flashed out. On the windowsill behind her was the old naval paraffin lamp he still used sometimes when the storms took out the power. She grabbed it and hurled it at him. It was a heavy lump of brass, and it could have put a dent in his skull if he hadn’t ducked out of the way. It smashed into the chest of drawers behind him, splintering the wood.

  ‘You let me out of here right now!’ she sh
outed.

  ‘Not until we talk and straighten this whole thing out. If you’re Steiner’s daughter, then why were you trying to kidnap him?’

  ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’

  ‘After. What about Adam O’Connor and his son?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go.’

  ‘Why did you want the Kammler papers?’

  She stared at him, her rage suddenly giving way to suspicion. ‘What did that bastard tell you about Kammler?’

  ‘Steiner? I think he told me a pack of lies.’

  She snorted. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘And you’re going to tell me the truth. I want to know what’s going on.’

  ‘Why the fuck should I tell you anything? Let me go to the bathroom, unless you want me to piss all over this pretty rug you have here.’

  ‘All right. You go. But the door stays open.’

  ‘So you can watch?’

  ‘I don’t want to watch my sister taking a piss.’

  ‘I’m not your sister, buddy.’

  He grabbed her arm as she strode towards the bathroom, and jerked her round to face him. She tried to get away, but he held her tight.

  ‘That scar on your arm,’ he said. ‘You want me to tell you how you got it? You were seven years old. We were burning leaves. You, me and our father. Not Maximilian Steiner. Our father, I’m talking about, Alistair Hope. You tripped and fell against the incinerator. Do you remember?’

  She said nothing. Her whole body was tense.

  ‘Maybe you remember Polly? She was your horse. A Welsh mountain pony, twelve hands, grey. And then there was your fluffy toy dog. You called him Ringle-the-Wee and you wouldn’t be parted from him. I still have him.’ He pointed. ‘I have a whole box of your things, there under my bed. Things I’ve kept all these years. Do you want to see them? Will that make you believe me?’ He ripped his wallet out of his back pocket, opened it and took out a passport-sized picture. ‘Look at this. It’s you, about a week before you disappeared. I’ve carried it with me everywhere since.’

  Ruth glanced at the picture, then stared at him defiantly. ‘Stick it up your ass. Go tell it to your boss.’

  Anger seized him then, and he shook her violently. ‘Steiner didn’t send me. He’s not here. We’re not in Switzerland, we’re in France. Normandy, at my place. Steiner doesn’t know you’re here.’

  ‘Let go of my arm. You’re hurting me.’

  He held her tighter. ‘I came looking for you because I wanted to save you, Ruth.’

  ‘Save me!’

  ‘From yourself, you stupid little idiot. I don’t know what crazy stuff you’re into. I just know that it’s going to end with you getting arrested or killed, all right? But if you want, if you really want, I only have to call Steiner and he’ll send someone right over to pick you up. I’m sure he’d be very interested to meet the woman who’s been trying to kidnap him. I might even take you there myself.’

  Her eyes were full of alarm at his words. She twisted furiously against his grip. ‘Let go of me!’ she screamed at him.

  He did, and she ran to the bathroom and slammed the door in his face, threw the bolt on the inside.

  He thought about breaking the door down, then relented and stood there helpless with his head hanging. Maybe he needed to back off a little.

  Perhaps Brooke was right – he couldn’t handle this alone.

  Feeling suddenly a hundred years old, as if every last drop of strength had been drained out of him, he left his quarters and locked the door. She couldn’t escape from in there. Even if she broke through the shutters, it was a long drop to the concrete below, and there was no way she could climb down.

  He trudged wearily down the stairs, snatched a bottle of whisky from the kitchen, carried it back through to the dark hall and sat with it on the bottom stair. He could hear the sounds coming from the landing above. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out she was locked in. As he cracked open the whisky, she was already pounding furiously on the door, screaming to be let out.

  Then, as he was into his second gulp, the smashing began.

  He could only imagine what was happening up there. He sat there staring into the darkness and sipping the whisky, and after a while the sound of his possessions being hurled and broken into pieces just washed over him. He closed his eyes, felt his head nod. And gave in to it.

  When he awoke, slumped uncomfortably on the stairs with just the half-empty bottle for company, the house was silent and sunlight was streaming through the hallway from the fan light above the door. He got to his feet, stretching and rubbing his back, and staggered through to the kitchen hoping that a strong coffee would drive away the sharp ache that had set up camp in his temple.

  Someone else was awake, too. As he made his way down the hall the pounding and screaming started again upstairs. The sound of glass shattering. Another lamp, or maybe the mirror.

  Let her get on with it. There couldn’t be much left up there that wasn’t already broken, anyway.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table five minutes later, burning his tongue on scalding black coffee, when he heard the diesel chatter of a taxi pull up outside. The front door opening, familiar footsteps in the hall. He turned to see Brooke walk into the room.

  ‘I told you you didn’t have to come,’ he said. ‘But it’s good to see you.’

  ‘You look terrible. Where is she?’

  He pointed upwards. ‘Can’t you hear?’

  ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘Smashing the place up. She’s been doing it on and off since last night.’

  ‘I need a coffee,’ Brooke said, rubbing her eyes. ‘I was up at five to catch the plane.’

  Ben got up and poured her a cup. ‘She says her name’s Luna, and she’s Steiner’s daughter,’ he told her.

  ‘As in Maximilian Steiner, the guy she was trying to kidnap?’

  He nodded. Another crash came from upstairs. More screaming.

  ‘Why would she do that?’ Brooke asked, puzzled. ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ he said. ‘I’m going up there to talk to her.’

  ‘I’ll come too.’

  ‘No way, Ben. You’re staying here. Don’t interfere with this.’

  ‘She’s wild. She could hurt you.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing.’ Brooke gulped down her coffee and left. Ben heard her climbing the stairs. Her soft knock and her voice saying, ‘Luna? Can I come in?’ before unlocking the door. Then it clicked shut and he heard no more.

  The two women were alone up there a long time. After ten minutes the smashing and yelling had become much less frequent, and after twenty it had stopped altogether. Ben knocked back cup after cup of coffee, pacing up and down in the kitchen and fighting the urge to go creeping up the stairs and listen at the door.

  What the hell was happening? That was his sister up there – no doubt about that. And yet, she was – or said she was – Steiner’s daughter. Steiner’s adopted child? It was feasible, but the possibility was dizzying.

  Questions poured through Ben’s mind. Had Steiner known of the connection all along, and somehow contrived to hire him for that reason? But that seemed impossible. Shannon would have had to be in on it too. Deliberately provoking Ben into hurting him, one unlikely event tripping the next like a line of dominoes. Absurd. So what was the answer?

  Consumed with frustration and impatience, he just had to do something. He still had a card in his wallet with the main office number of the Steiner residence. He snatched up the phone and punched the keys, and asked for Heinrich Dorenkamp.

  When the man came to the phone, Ben came right to the point. ‘You told me the Steiners didn’t have any children. Were you lying to me?’

  A pause. ‘I – ah…’

  ‘Did the Steiners adopt a child? A girl of nine, more than twenty years ago? Yes or no, Heinrich? It’s simple.’

  ‘I’m afraid I cannot help with your enquiry,’ Dorenkamp said in a stiff tone. ‘I am very b
usy at the moment. Goodbye.’ And hung up.

  Ben was about to redial the number and get nasty when he heard the door open behind him and turned for the second time that morning to see Brooke walk in.

  He glanced at his watch. She’d been up there for nearly two hours. She looked tired as she pulled up a chair and sat down.

  He looked at her. ‘Well?’

  Brooke sighed. ‘Well, we talked. She listened to what I had to say. And… ’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And you were right all along, Ben. She’s who you said, and she knows it. I think she knew it before I got here. Things you said to her last night, things that only her brother could have known.’

  ‘So now I’m going to talk to her,’ he said. ‘There’s something else, Ben. The situation’s stranger than you think.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘She was convinced that her brother was dead.’

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Ben pushed open the door to his quarters and kicked aside the debris that littered the floor. Everything that could be broken, overturned or torn down, had been. Brickwork showed through the plaster where a chair had slammed into the wall. The chair itself lay in splintered pieces on the carpet. The place looked as though a tank had driven through it.

  ‘I’m sorry about the room,’ said Ruth quietly from behind him. He turned and saw her sitting in the corner, hugging her knees. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face drawn.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’d have done a lot worse. Not a stone left standing.’

  ‘You and I,’ she said. ‘We’re Hopes.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come round to thinking so.’

  She paused. ‘I can’t believe this is real. My brother’s supposed to be dead.’

  ‘It’s been tried,’ he said. ‘But it hasn’t happened yet.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about you.’

  He nodded. ‘We have a lot to talk about. And I think we’d better start at the beginning.’

  ‘I could use some air,’ she replied.