Salt’s voice started fading away into the background of Ben’s thoughts, and after a while Ben could hardly hear him at all as he sat there ranting and gesticulating, his eyes wide with indignation, his wizened face cracked open in a snaggle-tooth snarl.
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.
This time the house responded instantly with ‘Come Fly With Me’ from hidden speakers all around the room.
She mixed her drink, sliced a lemon, clinked ice in the glass and took a slurp. ‘Cheers, Frank.’ Then she added some more gin for good measure, left the kitchen and the lights escorted her back down the corridor.
What’s the matter with you? she thought to herself. Why couldn’t she just chill out and enjoy what was left of her vacation?
Well, maybe it’s got something to do with being left all alone in a dark, creepy house that talks to you and makes things happen by themselves, with nobody around for a mile in every direction and a storm blowing outside.
As she thought this, a gust of wind hit the building and she was sure she felt it move.
‘What is this place, Tornado Alley?’ she muttered to herself. Wondering for a moment about what she would do if there was a power cut, she quickly reassured herself that her oh-so-scientifically-minded and supremely clever brother would have a genny down in the basement if it came to it.
She slumped back down on the sofa with her drink, grabbed the remote control, aimed it at the giant wall-mounted TV and pressed a button.
The TV stayed blank. Instead, a bright flame whooshed up to fill the electronically-controlled open fireplace below it.
Sabrina cursed. Why did all the goddamn remotes have to look exactly the same? She killed the fire with another touch of a button, chucked the remote down and picked up the right one to turn on the TV. Flipped through a bunch of channels and landed on a rom-com movie she’d seen years ago but liked enough to watch again.
She settled back against the cushions, getting in the mood and smiling to herself as Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal went through their bickering, fast-talking routine.
Suddenly, lights came on in the corridor. One after another, click, click, click. And stayed on.
She frowned. ‘Adam, is that you?’
She half-expected him to walk into the room, brushing rain off his jacket and putting down his case, calling, ‘I’m ho-ome.’
But there was no reply.
Sabrina muted the TV. ‘Adam?’ she called again. Still nothing. She got up from the sofa, stepped across the room and peered out into the corridor. The lights were already fading again.
‘Is someone there?’ There was a tremulous little edge to her voice that she wished hadn’t come out. Her heart began to beat faster.
Outside, the thunder rumbled, and the rain lashed down harder on the windows and the skylights.
Sabrina was frozen to the spot, staring out into the dark corridor.
Something moved.
She tensed.
Cassini came slinking out of the darkness.
‘Oh, Cass, you almost scared the shit out of me,’ she sighed. ‘Jesus.’ She couldn’t help but chuckle with relief as she scooped the cat off the floor and walked back to the sofa, holding him in her arms. ‘Don’t you ever think about doing that to me again, pal. OK?’
She went back to the sofa, took another gulp of gin and tonic and turned the movie sound back on. Cassini draped himself across her lap, so floppy he felt boneless, and she stroked him absently. She could feel the tiny vibration of his purring resonating through her, relaxing her.
‘I would be proud to partake of your pecan pie,’ said Billy Crystal in a funny voice up on the screen. Sabrina smiled.
And the cat’s body suddenly tightened like a spring on her lap, and his needle-like claws dug through her jeans and stabbed into her skin. She let out a cry of pain. The cat was up on his paws, arched. Then he jumped off her and darted away.
Then Sabrina looked up and saw that the lights were back on in the corridor.
And that there was a man standing there.
Watching her.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sabrina shrieked and took off across the open-plan living room towards the stairs.
Too slow. The man was squat and heavy with muscle, but he was quick on his feet and in two powerful bounds he was on her. She went crashing into a side table, rolling and lashing out at him with her bare feet. A grunt as her heel connected with his eye socket; he let go of her and she scrambled to her feet and made the stairs. Her legs felt ready to buckle under her as she raced up the open treads. His footsteps pounded up behind her. Then she was on the landing and launched herself down the glass corridor.
The first door she came to was the master bedroom, and she grabbed the chrome handle with both hands and jerked it open. Staggered inside just as the man came sprinting down the corridor after her. He shoved his hand inside the door, and she slammed the edge of it hard on his fingers.
He let out a sharp cry. She yanked it open and slammed it again hard enough to sever those damn fingers – but he’d jerked his hand away and was roaring with pain outside the door as she braced her weight against it and remembered the password Adam had told her.
‘Lock!’ she shouted.
The house responded and the bedroom door instantly clunked as the mechanism engaged.
Sabrina stood there panting, her hands shaking, doubled over with the pain from the stitch in her side. She looked around her. She’d never been in Adam’s bedroom before. There was a big leather bed, a bookcase filled with science and architecture books, a bureau and a sofa. Next to the sofa was her brother’s prized candy-red Fender Stratocaster guitar, leaning up against an amplifier. Nothing she could use to defend herself. If this had been the States, there’d have been a pistol or a shotgun for home defence.
Calm. Calm. Pull yourself together. She’d read that in these situations, barring a loaded .357 Magnum in the bedside table drawer, the best thing to do was stay out of the way, let the thieves take whatever the hell they wanted and not confront them. She was safe in here. The locks were sturdy. Everything was fine. Stolen TVs and silver were easily replaced.
But how had he got past the security? This place was tighter than Fort Knox. Panic welled up like a tide. Her mobile was downstairs. She was stranded up here.
She glanced at the window. Rain was lashing on the outside of the glass. Maybe if she could get out onto the balcony and run round the outside of the house, she could scramble down the fire escape and get away.
At that moment she realised the sounds of pain had gone quiet outside the door. Suddenly she heard his voice again, just the other side of the thick wood. He didn’t scream, ‘I’m going to get you, bitch.’ That would have been bad enough, but what she heard was even worse. He spoke one word, in a normal tone that scared her almost to death.
‘Cassini.’
And the lock clunked open.
The lock clunked open and she stared at the handle in horror. Watched it turn, and before she could react or think to shout ‘lock!’ the door opened. And he was in.
She backed away across the bedroom, past the sofa towards the window. He padded in towards her. She could see the fire in his eyes and the bunched muscles under his rain-speckled shirt. The fingers of his right hand were bloody. His teeth were bared in a fierce grin as he stalked across the room.
Her hand brushed something hard. Adam’s guitar, propped up next to the sofa. A big, heavy lump of solid wood, like a musical axe. She wrenched it up in both hands and swung it at his head.
The man stepped back out of the arc of the blow, and the momentum of the heavy guitar almost carried Sabrina off her feet. It smashed into the bookcase. Glass flew everywhere.
The man came at her. She recovered her balance and swung the guitar at him again with a grunt of effort, and this time it caught him hard on the shoulder. She was sure that she’d have shattered a normal man’s collar bone, but with all the muscle on his upper body the blow just glanced off and he pawed the guitar out of her hands as he rushed her like an angry bull. He lashed out and backhanded her across the face, and she shrieked and went sprawling back across the bed. He grabbed her by the hair, hit her again.
Then he
clambered on top of her, driving the air out of her with his weight, straddling her hips and pinning both her arms behind her head with one strong hand. She fought back, spat in his face, but he was heavy and powerful and there was little she could do to resist him. With his free hand he started ripping at her clothes, fumbling at the fastening of her jeans and yanking down the hem of her waistband. Started grabbing at his zipper.
No, no, no. Please. Not this.
He had her jeans down past her hips and she was screaming for him to stop when the bedroom door burst open and a woman and a tall man walked in. The woman was holding a stack of plastic CD cases.
Sabrina’s attacker twisted round to look at the two of them, and muttered angrily in a language she didn’t understand. The woman froze, taking in the scene, then stepped across to the bed. Her arm shot out and she grabbed a fistful of the stocky guy’s hair. Jerked his head back harshly, making him cry out in pain, and dragged him off Sabrina.
Sabrina rolled off the edge of the bed, pulling up her jeans and trying to cover herself up. Her hands were shaking so violently that she could barely do up the button of her jeans. Across the bedroom, the woman still had the man’s hair bunched up tight in her fist. His eyes were popping with pain. She wrenched his head back and forth a couple of times in disgust and then let him go.
Cowering by the side of the bed, Sabrina was on the point of thanking the woman for saving her from being raped. But then the woman turned to stare at her, and the cold look in her eyes made Sabrina recoil.
‘Who are you?’ Sabrina asked her.
The woman’s stare bored into her. ‘Shut up,’ she said in English. Then she turned to the men and made a sharp gesture as she headed for the door. The tall man followed.
The stocky guy knew what to do. He scooped Sabrina up in his arms and dragged her out of the bedroom, ignoring her screams. She was powerless in his grip, and could feel the suppressed fury pulsing out of him. The woman led the way down the open-tread staircase, across the glass-roofed rear atrium and through the tall glass doors onto the rear terrace overlooking the lake. Rain was slashing down onto the concrete, driven diagonally by the howling wind and hitting so hard it was bouncing. In the pale light Sabrina could see beyond the terrace and garden to the grassy slope down to the lakeside. The wind was churning up the water, and white-crested waves were rolling up the shore and breaking against the little wooden jetty where Adam kept his rowing boat.
The Shadow Project bh-5 Page 19