The Shadow Project

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Irina Dragojević stood back from the cell door as she watched her tall companion turn the key in the lock. Pelham hadn’t said much on the radio, but he hadn’t needed to. She had a very clear idea of what he wanted, because they’d already discussed the contingency plans. They were very persuasive, but the truth was she had no interest whatsoever in the outcome. The slim knife in the sheath on her belt was whetted and honed past razor-sharpness. When she thought about what she was going to do with it, and how nobody was going to stop her this time, her breath caught. The feeling was almost sexual. It dulled the throbbing ache in her arm where the bullet had creased it that day in Ireland. It made her feel whole and serene.

As she watched the cell door swing open, she heard that small, distant voice in her mind again.

Why do you do the things you do, Irina? Why?

There’d been a time, years ago, when she’d heard those voices often, and had been greatly troubled by them. But that had been before she’d come to see things clearly, to appreciate how beautifully simple it all was. The voice had no power any more. The power was all hers.

The tall man stepped inside the boy’s cell. Irina went in behind him. She stopped. Narrowed her eyes as her colleague turned to stare at her in bewilderment.

The cell was empty. Rory O’Connor was gone. Irina grabbed the radio.

Ivan’s fingers were painfully tight around Rory’s wrist as he led him quickly through the stone corridors. The man had barely said a word since he’d come bursting into his cell two minutes before, seemingly in a desperate hurry to get him out of there.

‘Where are we going?’ Rory asked.

‘Somewhere safe,’ Ivan told him. ‘Things are beginning to happen.’ He was frowning as he kept an ear open for fresh activity on the crackling radio handset in his jacket pocket. ‘Come, we must go faster.’

‘They’ve come for me? The other agents?’

Ivan nodded. Tugged on his wrist. ‘Move faster.’

‘Please, Ivan. Tell me what’s happening.’

‘Pelham sent Irina to fetch you, to hurt you again. I heard it on the radio. You are lucky. I was closer. I got there first.’

Rory shuddered and felt the colour drain from his face. He looked at Ivan and realised he’d never felt such a bond with anyone before. Except for one. ‘Where’s my dad?’ he asked.

‘Waiting for you on the outside,’ Ivan said. ‘Keep moving.’

Rory gulped air. He was going to get out of here. He was going to see his father. It would soon be over.

The radio fizzed into life. Through the spit and hiss of static, Rory listened to the exchange between the man called Pelham and the woman and his heart began to thump faster.

‘I want him found!’ Pelham yelled from the tinny speaker, and then the voices dissolved back into white noise.

‘I won’t let them find you,’ Ivan reassured him. ‘You are with me now. We are friends, no?’

‘Yes, Ivan.’

They kept walking. Ivan was glancing furtively around him all the time, keeping an even tighter grip on Rory’s wrist as he led the boy down passages he’d never seen before. ‘Quickly,’ Ivan kept saying. ‘Quickly.’ They came to a flight of steps leading downwards into murky shadows. Ivan turned on a flashlight and lit the way ahead. Down and down through a shaft that was carved out of the rock. It was echoey, and Rory could hear the steady plop of dripping water.

‘Is this where we’re meeting the other agents?’ he asked breathlessly, and heard his voice reverberate off the walls.

Ivan didn’t reply.

Then the staircase ended abruptly, terminating in an unfinished cul de sac. In the torchlight, Rory could see the pickaxe marks that scarred the rock face. The floor was littered with debris and old tools that had lain there so long, they’d rusted away to almost nothing. It was as though whoever had been digging the tunnel out of the solid rock had just stopped working one day, put down their tools and gone. He wondered what had happened. But more than that, he wondered why Ivan had brought him here. He turned and frowned up at his friend.

Ivan smiled in the beam of the flashlight. ‘We are safe down here,’ he said as he put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘It is just you and me now.’ Then he moved closer. His lips parted.

Rory stared for a second, and then he realised Ivan was trying to kiss him.