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 really 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?’
Jarrett shrugged. ‘About as well as you’d know anyone you spent half an hour over a pint with. Like I said, we chatted about Kammler, then we argued, he called me a Nazi prick and left.’
‘I think you have that effect on people, Jarrett. In fact, I’d say you got off lucky.’
The boat was approaching another bridge. There was a stone stairway leading up from water level to the street. ‘This is where I get off,’ Ben said. ‘Enjoy the rest of your tour.’
‘So you’re done with me?’ Jarrett said nervously. ‘You’re not going to shoot me now?’
‘I don’t think that would do much to change the world,’ Ben said. ‘You kill one rat, you have to kill them all. That’s someone else’s job. But I wouldn’t sleep too easy if I were you.’ He tapped the boatman on the shoulder and had him pull over to the side. Climbed the smooth stone steps and walked away.
As he was crossing the bridge he looked down to see Don Jarrett staring up at him from the back of the boat. Then it passed under the bridge and
Ben didn’t see him again.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Adam O’Connor knew the exact number of paces up and down the length and width of his poky hotel room. He knew where every spider’s web was in every corner, and he’d spent so long staring at the gaudy flower design on the faded wallpaper that he could have drawn it with his eyes shut.
After nearly two days of waiting, he was going stir crazy and beginning to feel as though he’d been trapped here all his life. His stomach was knotted with worry, so cramped it hurt to move. He’d barely touched the plates of stinking stew that room service had been bringing him. His door wasn’t locked, and a few times he’d wrenched it open and peered out into the dim corridor. Nobody was even guarding him. Once or twice he’d wanted to run, and keep running until he got to a police station. But he knew that would be the worst thing he could do. They’d kill Rory.
If Rory was even still alive. At this moment, Adam had no way of knowing how – let alone where – his son was.
He checked his watch. The afternoon was ticking by. Then it would be evening. Another night of waiting. Why were they doing this to him?
Unable to prevent the image from looming up, he visualised Rory’s face again. It was too much. Adam felt the salty tears well up and the next thing he knew he was sobbing uncontrollably, his shoulders heaving. Then his stomach heaved and flipped, and he dragged himself off the armchair and just made it to the bathroom. All that came up were a few strands of acid bile. He washed his face at the sink, splashed rust-coloured water over his cheeks and tried to calm himself.
People had always told him he looked younger than his age, but when he gazed in the stained mirror he saw a gaunt, unshaven, crazed-looking man a decade older staring back at him. His eyes were red, puffy and ringed with black, his cheeks looked hollow and the lines on his face were etched so deep they might have been carved with a knife.
That was when his resolve tightened even more and he knew his plan was the right one.
No other way.
What if you’re wrong? What if you’re misjudging the situation?
No other way, Adam. No choice. You were committed the moment you left home.
He stumbled back to the other room and slumped on the edge of the bed, feeling hollow and brittle. Time passed; he didn’t know how much. He sobbed again for a while, then dried the tears with a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose, staring numbly into the middle distance.
Far away in the dark, misty world of his thoughts, he barely heard the footsteps outside. They walked up the creaking boards of the corridor and stopped at his door. There was a pause, then the door suddenly flew open and three people walked in.
Adam looked up and saw a woman standing there. She looked about thirty. Thin fair hair scraped back from her face, a square set to her jaw and a hard, impassive look in her eyes.
He hated her immediately.
To her left was a tall, lean man. The man to her right was half the height but twice the width, muscular, with arms that strained the seams of his jacket and a neck like a bull’s. All three of them were watching him intently. The stocky guy had a black pistol in his hand. It was pointed at the floor but the way he was fingering it, he looked as though he wanted to use it soon.
Adam’s thoughts focused through the fatigue. A woman and two men had taken Rory from Teach na Loch.
The woman spoke. ‘You’re Adam O’Connor?’
Adam couldn’t place the accent. Something European, vaguely eastern. Maybe Czech.
‘I’m O’Connor,’ he said weakly. His own voice sounded strange to him, after not speaking to anybody for so long. ‘Where’s my son?’
‘You’ll see him soon enough,’ she said. ‘Keep your mouth shut and come with us. Try to talk to anyone, try to run, and he dies.’ She held up a phone. ‘I only have to press a button.’
They made him get his things together, then ushered him out of the room and down the dingy corridor, making him carry his holdall while the tall man held on to his briefcase. They passed rows of doors. No sound coming from behind any of them. No sign of life anywhere. Adam was glad to get away from this hateful place, and his heart soared at the idea that he was going to see Rory again. He was alive.
‘Keep moving,’ the stocky guy muttered, prodding him down the corridor. His accent sounded similar to the woman’s.
‘Who are you people?’ Adam said.
The stocky guy cracked him on the back of the head with the pistol, hard enough to make him bend double and gasp with pain.
‘I told you, keep your mouth shut,’ the woman said without looking back at him. The tall man grabbed Adam’s arm and forced him onwards. They went through a doorway marked ‘PRIVAT’, down a bare, narrow staircase that smelled of damp. The winding staircase led down to a rear exit that opened into an alleyway. Adam followed the woman out into the pale sunlight. The alley was edged with piles of old beer crates, cardboard boxes and bins that stank of rotting garbage.
A black unmarked van was waiting for them. The stocky guy wrenched open the back doors while the tall one took Adam’s holdall from him and threw it in the front with the briefcase. A wave of the gun, and Adam clambered into the back. There were no windows, and it was empty apart from a mattress on the hard metal floor. The back doors slammed shut with a hollow clang, and he was in darkness.
More doors slammed, then the engine fired up and he was jerked almost off his feet as the van pulled away with a lurch.
The drive lasted a long time. Adam curled up on the mattress as the van chassis squeaked and rattled and the vibrations pulsed up through the floor. He could tell from the steady, dulling roar of the engine that they were on a fast road, maybe a motorway.
After what seemed like days, the engine note dropped to a rumble and the vibrations diminished as the van turned off onto a slower road and started swinging and swaying through bends. From the angle of the floor and the number of gear changes, he figured that they were climbing steeply up some kind of mountain road.
For a horrible moment, that made him think of Julia Goodman. Back in Dublin, what seemed like a lifetime ago, Lenny Salt had suggested that someone might have thrown her off a mountain. Adam hadn’t believed him at the time, but now everything was different. Anything seemed plausible. Was the same thing going to happen to him? Was his son already dead, and now he was going to die too?
But the van didn’t stop, and nobody pulled open the doors to haul him out and pitch him over the edge of some terrible drop. The journey continued. It was colder now, as though they’d gained a great deal of altitude. Adam found a crumpled blanket on the mattress and pulled it over him. As he lay there huddled, the van left paved roads behind and was soon lurching and bouncing interminably over rough ground.
He lost all track of time. Reality began to merge with the nightmares in his head, and he drifted in a shadowy in-between state until the slamming of doors and the sound of voices outside startled him awake and he realised they’d come to a stop. More strange sounds, like the grinding of machinery and a juddering crash like a giant portcullis closing. Then the van lurched away again. Now the sound of its engine was echoey and hollow, as though they were driving through some kind of tunnel. It went on and on, and he sensed they were moving downhill in a slow spiral, as if driving into a huge subterranean car park.
Gripped by equal measures of curiosity and dread, Adam rolled off the mattress and clambered up on his feet again. Where were they taking him?
Then, suddenly, the van stopped again. He heard the front doors open and footsteps echoing as his three captors got out. The footsteps walked around the side of the van. The lock turned with a harsh grating noise, and suddenly Adam was dazzled and covering his eyes as the back of the van was flooded with white light.
Strong hands gripped him by the arms and he was hauled out. Half-blinded, he struggled to get his bearings. Concrete under his feet. The air was stale and voices bounced off stone walls. It felt cold and dank, and something told him they were dee
p underground. There were several more people around him, talking rapidly in a language he was pretty sure wasn’t German.
His eyes began to adjust to the light of the fierce spot-lamps, and now he could see they were in a large chamber. The walls were painted battleship-grey, streaked with damp and age. There were several more vehicles parked around, a couple of trucks and a Land Rover.
The woman, the tall, lean man and the stocky one with the pistol were in conversation with a group of four more men. They all had the same serious expression. Two were armed with small automatic weapons that hung from shoulder straps. Adam couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying, but it seemed like a handover – and he was the goods.
The woman nodded, someone laughed and then one of the armed men grabbed him and led him brusquely across the chamber towards a steel door. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the woman and her two male companions walking away without a second glance at him.
Beyond the door, he found himself being marched down a stone corridor that seemed to have no end. The walls were the same pitted grey. They passed a stamped metal sign riveted to the stonework, its edges eaten away with rust. A stark red arrow pointed down the corridor by way of directions, and underneath was faded black lettering in what looked to him like German. He couldn’t understand ‘BEFEHLSRAUM’, but the word ‘KOMMANDOSTAB’ looked military.
‘Where the fuck am I being taken?’ he demanded.
No reply. His four captors marched him onwards down the dank corridor. Here and there, puddles of stagnant condensation had collected on the floor, and dusty cobwebs hung from old pipework and the exposed wires that ran along the walls between lamps in wire cages. The switches and circuit breakers were ancient Bakelite affairs, as old as the peeling paint on the stone blocks.
The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET Page 148
