Ben Hope 05 - The Shadow Project (19 page)

Jarrett seemed to sense the presence behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, then half-turned, smiled and nodded with a polite ?Good afternoon? in English-accented French.

Ben didn?t return the smile. ?Don Jarrett??

Jarrett turned again and looked at him. The smile faded quickly, replaced by a wary glint in his eye.

?You are Don Jarrett, aren?t you?? Ben said calmly.

?If you?re a journalist, I won?t talk to you. Not interested. So piss off.?

?I?m not a journalist,? Ben said. ?But I didn?t come to Bruges for the sightseeing.?

As he said it, he drew the Smith & Wesson out of his pocket. Normally he would have carried it already cocked and locked, Condition One, the way he?d been trained. That way, you only had to flip off the safety and it was ready for action. Efficient, but not particularly theatrical.

Instead, he did it the showy way they did it in the movies, the way that gets you killed in real life, making a big deal out of reaching across with his left hand, racking back the slide and releasing it with that bright, splashy
shlak-clang
of metal on metal that he knew would strike fear into Don Jarrett?s heart.

It did. And all the more so when Ben pointed the pistol at his head.

It wasn?t even loaded. Something the guy didn?t need to know.

Jarrett backed away fearfully. He raised his hands, palms out, eyes pleading. ?You?ve come to kill me, haven?t you??

?Expecting someone??

Jarrett eyed him uncertainly, with the look of a man facing up to something he?d been resigned to for a long time. ?I?ve had threats.?

?Seem like a popular guy. But I?m not going to kill you. Unless you make me.?

Jarrett reddened. ?What do you want??

?I asked them where I could find the biggest turd of a Holocaust denier going. They told me you were it. So here I am, and you and I are going to have a little chat.? Ben made a big show of uncocking the pistol, then put it back in his pocket.

Jarrett looked a little more relieved. The fear had drained away from his face to leave a flush of indignation in his cheeks. ?Who?s
they??
he demanded.

Ben shrugged. ?Them.?

Jarrett said, ?The same bastards who persecuted me, ruined my life and put me in jail.?

?I?d say you brought that on yourself, no??

?I?m not a Holocaust denier.?

Ben smiled coldly. ?You?re denying that, too??

?They call me a Jew hater, a fascist, a terrorist. I?m none of those things, all right? I?m a revisionist historical scholar whose only crime was to ask questions about things that everyone else was afraid to. I?ve served my time. Now why don?t you just bugger off and leave me alone??

?Uh-huh. Now I have some questions to ask you.?

?What kind of questions??

?Let?s you and I go for a boat ride.?

Ben ushered the man down the path. He was pretty certain they weren?t being followed by any of Luc Simon?s people, but he didn?t want eavesdroppers. The last thing he needed was to draw Interpol?s attention to whatever it was that his sister had got herself involved in. That was something for him, and him alone, to deal with.

As they approached the bridge, a small thin man with a straggly moustache and a money pouch on a strap around his shoulder appeared at the side of the canal, hovered near the boat mooring and eyed them expectantly.

Ben pointed down at the barge. ?How much for the tour?? he asked, and the guy told him it was twelve euros each. The boat had a little wheelhouse at the front, and behind it was seating for about a dozen passengers. Ben reached for his wallet, counted out a hundred and eighty euros and handed it to the boatman. ?Just him and me. No other passengers. There?s a little extra for you.?

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.