The Shadow Project

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 deep 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 corridor curved around to the right. Some clanging iron steps, then a landing with more doors. Another sign, with more red arrows pointing in different directions. Whatever this place was, it was huge.

The men shoved Adam through one of the doors into what seemed like a storeroom. Judging by the layer of dust on the tables and shelves, the place hadn’t been used in decades.

And when he looked around, he knew exactly how long. He stopped and gaped, blinking, disbelieving, at the age-worn banner that was hanging on the wall at the far end of the room. It was faded red, with a white circle in the centre about three feet in diameter.

Inside the circle was a Nazi swastika.

He whirled round to his captors, but they just shoved him roughly across the room and through another steel door, pushed him inside and shut him in.

He was in a cell. It was clean and warm, with a radiator, a metal-framed single bed, a sink, a toilet and a wardrobe. But it was a cell.

Adam O’Connor started beating on the cold steel door and screamed for his son.