The Shadow Project bh-5

by Scott Mariani

  ‘Good. Now, enough talk. I want to show you something that very few people have seen in more than half a century.’

  Adam was still speechless as Pelham led him out of the office. The guards were standing outside the door, weapons dangling at their sides. They stood to attention as their boss strode out of the doorway and followed, pointing the guns at Adam’s back. Pelham led the way back towards the hangar, past the corroded hulk of the Me 262 and over to a doorway on the far side of the huge space, where he stopped and gave a sharp command. One of the guards produced a large key and unlocked the door.

  On the other side of it was a large circular chamber, fifty yards across. Light streamed in from holes in the rough dome of a ceiling and Adam could make out the marks of picks and chisels in the craggy stone walls. He shivered as he thought of the doomed concentration camp slaves who had carved this space out of the solid rock of the mountain under the watchful eyes and cocked weapons of their Nazi masters. The smell of death was soaked deep into the walls of this place.

  Running around the circumference of the chamber was a circular metal walkway, with a rail at chest height. Adam stepped to the rail and peered over the edge. His eyes widened. The centre of the chamber was an abyss, a round vertical shaft about fifteen metres across that plummeted straight down further than the eye could see. A rusted iron gangway led across from the edge of the chamber to a steel cage housing an open-sided industrial lift, the kind Adam had seen in pictures of old mines. Pelham walked briskly across the clanking gangway, opened a mesh door, and Adam followed him wordlessly into the lift. One of the guards accompanied them, and the other went over to a switch panel on the wall.

  As the lift groaned downwards and the craggy shaft walls rolled by, Adam saw that the guard was looking down at his feet, fingering his weapon a little nervously. Nobody spoke. Down and down. Adam estimated they must be hundreds of metres inside the mountain. There was no ventilation down here, and the air was thick and foul.

  The lift touched down and they stepped out into a circular gallery like the one above. A single arched passage led off it, lit down its length by age-yellowed lamps. Pelham led the way. The passage widened steadily, then came to a dead end.

  Facing them, glowing dully in the lamplight, was a giant steel door. It filled the entire wall, tall and wide enough to drive a Panzer tank through. It looked to Adam like the entrance to the world’s biggest bank vault. The rivets stamped into its edges were the size of baseballs, and six massive steel deadlocks cut deep into the rock. Painted onto the door’s matt grey surface was a sign with a skull-and-crossbones image and the words ‘VORSICHT: GEFAHRENZONE’ in stark red letters.

  The danger warning was loud and clear. Whoever had put that door in place must have known what terrible forces were to be contained behind it. Adam wondered if his captors had even the slightest idea of what they were dealing with.

  Pelham gave a command to the guard. The man nodded, unslung his weapon and handed it to his boss. Stepped towards the huge door, dusted his hands and took a grip on the giant metal wheel, crusted with age, that was connected by a system of gears to the bars of the deadlocks. The guard braced his feet apart, paused a beat and then grunted with effort as he put his strength behind the lock. The wheel turned with a squeak, and the deadlocks began to draw back. Another turn, a few more inches.

  Standing there with his mouth open and watching the locks slowly grind back across the door, Adam suddenly realised he hadn’t breathed for about a minute. His heart was firing like a machine gun. Pelham watched his face, and a little smile curled at the edges of his mouth.

  Adam gulped. He was about to witness something incredible, legendary. Something he’d spent years studying from afar, within the confines of his safe little world, relying solely on his own scientific knowledge and the sketchy evidence of a handful of witness accounts. The mythical Kammler machine. The lost Grail of super-esoteric science. Here he was about to lay eyes on it for the first time.

  Now he knew that Michio and Julia had stood on this spot, not so very long ago. Had they felt the way he was feeling now, quaking with terror and yet, somewhere deep inside, burning up with excitement?

  The thought screamed at him from inside his head. Can I make this thing work?

  The deadlocks had reached the end of their travel. The guard stepped away from the wheel, wiping the rust off his hands, then leaned his weight into the huge door and pushed hard. It began to open.

  Adam felt Pelham’s hand on his shoulder, and walked towards the dark doorway. The air wafting out of the shadows smelled dank, and Adam shivered with the cold that suddenly tingled up and down his body.

  Then Pelham flashed a torch, found the handle of a switch and yanked it. Lights flickered into life and Adam’s jaw dropped open.

  He’d held an ingot of solid gold created inside a nuclear reactor. Watched the child-sized Honda ASIMO robot conduct a symphony orchestra. Stood inside a particle accelerator a mile underneath the ground as electrons slammed into one another at the speed of light. Witnessed the afterglow of a gamma ray burst when a giant star collapsed in on itself and a black hole was born. But he’d never seen anything like this before.

  Under his feet, electric wires snaked like pythons towards the device in the middle of the vault. He followed them towards it.

  Standing on a concrete plinth, the bell-shaped object was as tall as he was. He walked around its smooth sides, put out his hand and touched the cold steel casing.

  Kammler’s secret creation, shrouded in mystery for sixty-five years, the greatest enigma of the twentieth century. Maybe of all time. Die Glocke, the Germans had called it.

  The Bell.

  And here it was. Incredible.

  The scientist in him was already hard at work, his eyes following the line of the joints in the strange metal casing until he’d located the bolted-on access panels in its underside. He had a pretty good idea of what was behind them.

  Can you make it work? asked the voice in his head.

  He knew the answer. Maybe I can.

  But I’m not going to.

  He turned. Pelham was standing a few feet away, watching his every move like a crouched leopard watching an antelope.

  Wait for it, you bastard. ‘I’m the last one who can help you,’ he said. ‘That’s right, Adam. You are. That’s why we’ve gone to such pains to make this as attractive to you as possible.’

  ‘Meaning that if I refuse, you’ll hurt my boy.’

  ‘I hope that won’t be necessary.’

  ‘So I agree to help you, and then what? You’ll just let us both walk away, go home? You take me for a complete idiot? You think I don’t understand what’s going to happen to Rory and me if I give you what you want? I don’t know what kind of fool would agree to a deal like that.’ Adam took a step closer to him. The guard was watching him with a frown, and the gun was pointing his way. But he didn’t care. ‘So I’m making you a new deal.’

  ‘A new deal,’ Pelham echoed blankly.

  ‘That’s right. You’re going to start listening to my terms now. Here’s how it’s going to be. You think those papers I brought with me are my Kammler notes? Wrong. They might be useful if you’re thinking of wiring up some smart house technology into this shithole. But the real stuff is right where I left it in my study back home, securely locked away in a password-controlled safe. And that’s where it’s going to stay until you let my son go.’ Pelham didn’t reply.

  ‘These are my terms. One, you let me take Rory safely home. Two, you let me see for myself exactly where this cosy little place of yours is. Three, you give me your guarantee that neither my son nor I will ever be harmed or threatened in any way again. Then, and only then, I’ll agree to come back here and help you make that thing work.’

  Pelham jutted out his chin and raised an eyebrow. Said nothing.

  Adam pointed at the machine. ‘Play fair with me and I’ll give you what you want. But cross the line, and I’ll make sure the authorities will be on th
is place like flies on Rottweiler shit. And I’ll screw up that machine so bad, you’ll have to sell it for recycling into Coke tins. Don’t think I don’t know how.’

  ‘Have you finished?’ Pelham asked quietly.

  ‘That’s all I have to say. Think about it.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  ‘Quiet little spot you’ve found for yourself here, Lenny,’ Ben said.

  Salt backed away. His eyes were wide and fixed on Ben as he reached his right hand back and fumbled for something on the Formica top behind him. Then his fingers closed on the wooden handle of the long barbecue fork and he snatched it up and pointed it like a weapon at Ben’s stomach.

  ‘Stay away from me or I’ll skewer you.’

  Ben looked at the fork. ‘I think you’d better put that thing down before you go and hurt yourself.’

  ‘Who sent you? Who are you working for?’

  ‘Just myself. Sorry to disappoint.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To talk, Lenny. Nothing more.’

  Salt clutched the fork tighter, standing there in a puddle of beer.

  ‘You look like you’ve pissed yourself,’ Ben said. ‘Aren’t you going to put that fork down?’

  ‘You’ll kill me.’

  ‘Lenny, if I’d wanted to kill you, you wouldn’t even have seen me.’

  Salt blanched.

  Ben reached slowly into his pocket, took out his wallet and handed him a business card. ‘This is who I am and what I do.’ He nodded to the laptop on the bed. ‘Check out the website. There’s a picture of me.’

  ‘I’m not connected here. No email, no internet.’

  ‘Scared they might trace you?’

  Salt nodded sheepishly.

  ‘You need to do a better job. It wasn’t hard to find you. And your snap-and-run routine needs work too.’

  Salt was still frozen there, clutching the fork. The last of the beer had seeped out of the can and was trickling across the vinyl floor.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Ben said. ‘I haven’t got all day.’ He stepped over, snatched the fork before Salt could react, and threw it out of the open caravan doorway. It whistled through the air and stuck juddering in a tree trunk.

  Salt kept gaping speechlessly at Ben.

  ‘Now clean that beer up, and let’s go outside and talk.’

  Salt hesitated, then tore off a length of kitchen roll from a dispenser next to the stove. He used the paper to mop up the puddle on the floor while Ben grabbed two more beer cans from the fridge and led the way outside. Salt joined him, watching him warily, and they sat opposite one another at the picnic table.

  Ben snapped open his beer. ‘I’m sorry if I scared you before, Lenny. I didn’t want to.’

  Salt grunted in reply, opened his own can with a spit of foam and took a long gulp, keeping his eyes on Ben. The business card was still clenched in his fist, and he scrutinised it carefully, first its printed front, then the blank back, staring at it as though it was the lost map to the secret US Government alien farm at Roswell.

  ‘No invisible ink,’ Ben said. ‘No holographic cryptograms.’

  Salt looked up. ‘Tactical Training Unit? What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s my business. Just a training school.’

  ‘Bullshit. It means you’re military.’

  ‘Was military,’ Ben said. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Sure. That’s what you would say, isn’t it?’ Salt sneered. ‘I don’t talk to people like you.’

  ‘I’m being completely honest with you. I’ve been out of the military for a long time now. I left there to do my own thing, and now I teach people how to do the same. I could give you the phone numbers of a dozen people who’d vouch for that.’

  ‘Teach them to do what?’ Salt asked suspiciously.

  ‘To protect vulnerable people and stop bad things happening to them,’ Ben said. ‘And if something bad’s already happened, to help them get out of it. To find people who’ve been kidnapped, or who’ve got into trouble.’

  ‘So you’re a detective?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘A cop?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ Ben said.

  Salt narrowed his eyes. ‘Are you looking for someone now?’

  Ben nodded. ‘Yes, I am. I’m looking for a young woman who might have got herself mixed up in something very dangerous. And I’m hoping you might be able to help me with information. I’ll pay you for your time.’ He dug some notes out of his wallet and held them up so that Salt could count them.

  Salt’s eyes flicked down to the money, then back up to meet Ben’s. ‘Cash up front.’

  Ben tossed the money across the table. Salt palmed it and stuffed it in his pocket. He smiled. ‘Now, what if I don’t feel like talking?’

  ‘Then I might feel like snapping your neck,’ Ben said.

  Salt swallowed. ‘What information do you want?’

  ‘I want to know about Kammler.’

  Salt gave a dark little chuckle. ‘Of course. Seems like everyone’s getting interested in Kammler all of a sudden. There’s a lot of weird shit going on, man.’

  ‘Are you saying someone else has approached you?’

  ‘Not for a while. I’m keeping my head down low.’

  ‘What about before?’

  Silence.

  ‘The neck-snapping part still applies. I thought we had a deal.’

  ‘There was the German.’

  ‘What German?’

  ‘This crazy German girl.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Salt shrugged. ‘There isn’t that much to say. It was about eight, nine months ago, just before I left Manchester. She emailed me, same as you did. Wanted to talk to me about Kammler. Said her name was Luna, and she was based somewhere in the Black Forest. Offburg, Hoffenburg, something like that.’

  ‘Offenburg?’ Ben knew of the place. It was close to Strasbourg, near the border between France and Germany.

  Salt nodded. ‘That’s it. But I wouldn’t take that too seriously, man. I knew right away she was phoney. Told me she sold ceramics.’ He smiled knowingly. ‘Like someone who sells ceramics would be genuinely interested in this stuff. I tell you, man, the covers they come up with are pretty fucking thin sometimes.’

  Ben asked, ‘Did she arrange a rendezvous with you?’

  Salt nodded again. ‘St Peter’s Square in Manchester. She was very keen to meet. Flew over the same day. At least, that’s what she said. The woman I saw might not have been the same one. Might have been one of her team, you know?’

  ‘So you turned up for the RV.’

  ‘Oh, I turned up, all right. Old Lenny always turns up.’

  ‘But you didn’t talk to her. You did what you did with me, took her picture from a distance and then buggered off. That’s a very bad little habit, Lenny.’

  Salt flushed angrily. ‘Got to protect myself, haven’t I? Can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Have you still got the picture?’

  Salt hesitated a second, then shrugged and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder at the caravan. ‘Let me see it.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Right now, Lenny. It’s important.’

  Salt got up and went into the caravan. Ben heard him pottering about for a moment, then he re-emerged carrying a laptop and a battered screw-top tin labelled ‘coffee’. He laid the computer on the picnic table, flipped it open and powered it up. While it was whirring into life he twisted the lid off the coffee tin. Ben caught the smell of ground beans. Salt shoved his hand into the brown powder, spilling a lot of it on the table, and came out with a small object wrapped in a miniature plastic Ziploc bag. He opened it, and Ben saw that the object was a computer USB flash drive.

  Salt inserted it in one of the ports on the side of the laptop. ‘You have to look away now,’ he said, turning to Ben.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I can’t let you see me typing the password.’

  Ben sighed and looked away. Salt rattle
d the keys, and then said, ‘OK. You can look now.’

  Ben turned back towards the computer as the contents of the flash drive came up onscreen. It contained a vertical list of JPG photo files, at least thirty of them.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Them,’ Salt replied.

  ‘Them?’

  ‘My enemies.’

  Ben scanned the list up and down. Salt had labelled each one with the date and place the picture had been taken.

  ‘These are all people who’ve approached you?’

  ‘Nah, nah. They wouldn’t do that. It’d blow their cover. Most of these were just following me in the street.’

  ‘So they could be anyone.’

  Salt gave him a look. ‘No way, man. I know when I’m being followed. So I take their picture, and then they don’t come back, see, but they always send more. You’ve got to know your enemy.’

  Ben didn’t say anything.

  Salt scrolled down the list of files, stopped and tapped a finger on the screen. ‘This is her.’ He clicked, and a photo of a woman flashed up.

  Ben stared at it.

  The photo was of a woman standing on a flight of steps leading up to what looked like a library. She was on her own, and even frozen on the screen she looked tense, as though waiting for someone but not quite sure what she was going to find when they turned up. It had been a dull, cloudy day in Manchester, and she was dressed for cool weather in a dark green fleece. She had the same slight build as the woman he’d chased in Switzerland, about five-eight, with shoulder-length blond hair blowing in the wind. There was just one problem.

  Ben looked at Salt. ‘She’s got her back to the camera. You can’t see her face.’

  ‘Hold on. I got a better shot just after that.’ More clicking, and Salt exchanged the picture for another. Same place, seconds later. Now the woman was turned towards the camera.

  Ben’s heart sank again. The definition on the face wasn’t good. All he could see was a blur of features. She could have been anyone.

  ‘Can you zoom in and sharpen it up?’ Ben said.

  Salt tapped a couple of keys and the image expanded. The woman’s face disappeared offscreen, so that Ben got a close-up of the dark green fleece and the designer logo on its breast. Then Salt flicked another couple of keys and her face panned back into view. Salt used the cursor to draw a rectangle around her head, clicked down a sub-menu and the image suddenly sharpened into focus.