“Oh please,” he says, rubbing his hand across his eyes. “You think you know everything about me. Did his lips touch you? If so, it’s a kiss.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again,” I sigh.
“Are you in love with him?”
“What do you mean, am I in love with him?”
“A simple question.”
“The truth is . . .” What is the truth? The truth is that Rik is kind of perfect. He’s the guy whose shirt is always ironed, whose hair is just the right amount of messed-up without it looking deliberate. Hell, he even impressed Lauren, and that’s hard to do.
But when I think about love I think of Dmitry. Dmitry with two mugs of hot chocolate and a smile on his face because he has a surprise for me. I think of him appearing out of nowhere with a latex glove full of ice. Or joking that he’s two rats behind me when, in fact, he’s always so far out in front of me. I wish I could tell him this. I wonder what he’d say.
“Love isn’t a simple question,” I sigh.
Will says nothing, then, “Perhaps not. I had a girlfriend in England. I broke up with her to come to the States.”
He shakes his head slowly back and forth as though unable to recall what had persuaded him to leave a woman and go to America.
“I miss music,” he says, sometime around midnight. “This bloody train, rumble, rumble, clack, clack. It’s like a flat line of sound that never ends.”
“Can you sing?”
“I sang in choirs as a boy.”
“What’s your favorite song?”
He moans. “I can’t tell you. You’ll only say I’m being a snob.”
“I won’t say that. I mean, it’s true that you are a snob, but I won’t say it.”
He laughs. I realize that I like it when he laughs. “Allegri’s ‘Miserere,’” he admits.
“Allegri what? Sing it.”
“I can’t. It’s a choral song.”
“So?”
“So, it’s got a soaring high C that only children and sopranos can sing. It was considered so sacred that for over a hundred years the pope forbade it to be transcribed.”
“When did the pope change his holy mind?”
“He didn’t. Mozart heard it as a boy and memorized it in a single sitting. There are geniuses in fields outside of science.”
“I know that,” I say. I feel a little sad that I may never hear the “Miserere,” this sacred song with all its mystery. I tell Will this, how I wish I’d heard it and that now I may never.
“Don’t be silly,” he says. “You know that day in London we’re planning? I’ll take you to a choral concert in the evening. I’ll make sure the ‘Miserere’ is being sung.”
“You mean after lunch and the walk and seeing Turner paintings? That will be a long day.”
“It will be a lovely day. Now, don’t fret.”
“I’m not fretting.”
“Yes, you are,” he says.
And it’s true. I’ve been crying. Again. “Promise me that if you get away without me you won’t forget. You’ll find a way of rescuing me, okay?” I say.
After a beat, he says, “Of course I will.”
“And I’ll do the same for you. I swear.” I mean it, too. I won’t leave him behind.
“Oh, Kira,” he says, his voice so sweet it doesn’t even sound like him.
I drop my hand down along the side of the bunk and he reaches up and squeezes my fingers. I hold his hand and we lie like that for a long time.
Then I sleep.
When I wake, he’s still there. He’s not holding my hand anymore, but shaking me gently.
“Wake up,” he says. “We’ve stopped.” There’s urgency in his voice. Fear, too.
“What? Where?” I say.
He pulls me gently down from the bunk and we stand, huddled in the dark. Through the window I can see a lamp. Also, a train platform and what appears to be the corner of a tiny station behind it. The thought of leaving the train is suddenly worse than the thought of remaining.
“They’re coming,” Will says. “Listen.”
An involuntary sound comes from deep within me, something between a cry and a gasp. I clutch Will’s arm. He throws a blanket over my shoulders and hugs me toward him. “It’s going to be cold outside,” he says.
21
THE MEN ENTER the train compartment as I stand helplessly beside Will, holding on to him. In such a small space they seem enormous. Pale and ragged and threatening. I don’t know how Will keeps his head, but he does, stepping forward and demanding to know why we’ve been taken. He looks urgently from one man to the other. One of them takes a gun from beneath his sweatshirt.
“What is going on?” Will says.
The man with the gun speaks to us in English. One word: “Go!”
We’re herded through the train, my bare feet struggling with the uneven floor between cars. I see now that the train isn’t set up for passengers. It’s a postal train. There is no other compartment like ours, or at least none that I see.
At last we reach an open door. The night air has a wet, mechanical smell. I pull the blanket closer around me, surprised by how chilly it is. The wildflowers we passed had been blooming in a cold sun, far colder than back home. It’s difficult to walk without shoes, and I nearly fall down the step onto the platform, stubbing my toe in the process. I limp on, shivering, as we’re urged forward, faster and faster in the weak light, the rough pavement scraping the soles of my feet. It’s the middle of the night and the small station is empty. If you could even call it a station. It’s more like a bus stop built of gray bricks. Calling for help would be useless.
“Can we at least have our shoes?” Will says. But it’s easier to control people who cannot run.
We’re shunted into the back of a small van. No seat, no windows. We sit together, feeling the vibration of the road. I catch a glimpse of the shaven head of the driver, his scalp darkened with a tattoo. The one with the gun is in the back with us. He puts his finger to his lips to tell us no talking, then gets out a cigarette.
We travel for what feels like hours. Will sits with his back against the side of the van, his face stony and unreadable. The man with the gun smokes cigarette after cigarette.
I can tell when we finally enter a city by the number of traffic lights and turns in the road. At last, the driver pulls up next to a building and opens the window, then punches some kind of code into a security system. The van moves again, but only a few feet, as though positioning itself into a parking space. I hear the engine go off, the humming of a motor outside. Then we’re being lowered into the ground.
For some reason, being taken underground freaks me out. Maybe it’s all that cigarette smoke. I begin to gasp. The man beside us, the one with the gun, gives me an angry look. I put my hand over my mouth, but I’m losing control of everything. My breathing is uneven, my vision blurry with tears.
Will looks at me, his eyes full of emotion. Watch me, he seems to be saying. Breathe in, out, in, out, like this.
I hold his gaze, linking my breathing with his as the elevator comes to a series of faltering halts. The van jiggles, then is still. The driver opens his door, then gets out and comes around to unlock the back. I slide across the floor of the van, then step out into a parking lot, the cement grimy beneath my bare feet. As quickly as we were dispatched off the train and into the van, we are now ushered up a series of metal steps to a door lit by a single bulb. Will asks for the dozenth time why we’ve been taken but is silenced by the man with the gun, who pushes him hard against the back of the neck, saying “Shut up!” in English.
We climb a set of steps, go through another door and into a wide hallway, drafty and dark, with ceiling lights that either blink on and off or fail to light altogether. Puddles on the floor, unused equipment, a humming sound from an aging ventilation system. We’re marched down one last dark hall, brought to a room, and forced inside. The door locks behind us and now, once again, we’re alone.
The ro
om is windowless and gray, about a dozen feet long and perhaps eight feet wide. It looks like it was used as a closet, with unpainted cinder block walls and light coming from a fluorescent tube on the ceiling. At the far end is a thin mattress without sheets. Beside it, a bottle of water. In the corner is a bucket, which I assume is our toilet.
“Are they mad?” says Will.
I shiver in my dress. The building’s damp walls bring a chill.
I go to the door, pressing my ear against it. Will paces and shouts through the keyhole.
After a while we give up. He says, “Sit with me.”
We drop onto the awful mattress, our backs resting on the wall, knees bent, ready to jump to our feet if we have to, ready to wait for hours if that is what is necessary. Will spreads the blanket over us and puts his arm around me, rubbing my shoulders for warmth. Instinctively, I clutch his fingers and we wait, watching the door and listening for sounds outside.
Mostly what we hear is the strip light above us. If we turn it off the room goes black. Leave it on and it hums like a pylon.
“What do we do?” I say.
“Whatever they want.”
Hours pass. There is no more joking or remembering or imagining a day in London. I curl up in a ball, my head beside Will’s knee. The mattress smells like burnt dust.
“I am so sorry about all this,” he says. “So very sorry.”
“Talk to me,” I say. “Tell me something good. Anything.”
He touches my hair. At first he says nothing, and I think how we’ve reached a place where even Will has finally given up. But then he says, “I’ll tell you about lambing, how about that?”
“What’s ‘lambing’?”
“When mother sheep have babies,” he says, as though explaining to a child. He gives a short laugh and I’m surprised. Not just by the fact he can still laugh but the power of it. The laugh ignites hope.
“Do you think anyone in America has sent help?”
“Munn is hardly going to sit there and do nothing,” he says.
“But it’s happened before—” I say. Arturo, the fifteen-year-old, still gone.
“Shh,” he whispers. “We’re talking about lambing.”
He describes how they went for Easter to his family’s house in Devon. A man who worked for his father rounded up all the pregnant ewes into pens inside the barn. He and his brother spent freezing nights among the straw bales waiting for the ewes to give birth, then bottle-feeding the weaker lambs. Orphans were brought into the kitchen, warmed by the Aga.
“What’s an Aga?” I say.
“Like a giant oven that stays on through winter. Keeps the place warm.”
I doze off, imagining warm kitchens, green hills, deep straw beds. I’m half awake when I hear footsteps. They grow heavier as I come to full attention. Then, all at once, the door flies open. The brightness of the hallway fills the room.
It’s the men from the train. One motions for Will to come. Will looks annoyed, pulling himself up from the floor in no particular hurry. I get my legs under me, ready to join him, but the one with the scalp tattoo holds out his hand to stop me. I step back, then fall uncomfortably upon the mattress.
“You can’t just take him away!” I say. Of all the things I imagined might happen, it never occurred to me that we would be separated. I suddenly realize that this is the most frightening thing they could do to me. Will is my one comfort in this grim nightmare.
But there’s nothing either of us can do. The guy in the sweatshirt prods Will forward. “Move!” he says. Will won’t be rushed. He tucks in his shirt and smooths back his hair in his usual self-possessed manner, moving with quiet dignity as the men shout at him in Russian.
He’s incredible. Meanwhile, I rock on my heels, crying and shaking. The one with the gun takes it from his belt, and I lose it completely. I reach forward, grabbing at Will’s ankle. “You can’t go!” I cry. “I can’t do this on my own—”
“Shh,” he whispers. He loosens himself gently from my grip, then kneels down so our faces are close. The men pull at him, but he won’t be budged. He says, “From the moment I met you I found you infuriatingly clever. And all these months I raged because you could do anything. Now, listen to me, because I know you. I know how tough you are and how resourceful. I saw it every day at Mellin.” He touches my cheek, almost smiling. “You’re going to be fine,” he says.
“But Will—!”
“Outsmart them. You can, you know.”
I want to tell him that in a fight between brains and guns the guns always win. That’s something my mother always said. I want to tell him that all my hope walks out the door with him. All my courage.
But he’s gone too fast, his hair shining golden in the light. He moves with a grace his military family would be proud of, his head up, his back straight. As the door locks behind them, I listen for his footsteps in the hall. I listen for his voice.
But there is nothing.
I shout myself hoarse, kick the crap out of the door. It doesn’t matter what I do.
Hours pass before I see another human being. And then, it’s the guy with the shaved head and tattoos. A giant, he takes up the whole doorway, staring down at me as though I’m a terrible inconvenience. I back up, tripping on the hem of my dress. Why’s he in the room with me? Not speaking, not moving, just staring?
“Where’s my friend?” I say.
He gestures for me to follow him out of the room and down the hall. Maybe he’s taking me to Will. We pass through a set of doors to a large stairwell walled with big plates of glass. A filmy gray light tells me it’s morning. Then I’m ushered into a kind of industrial elevator from which I can see nothing.
“Are we going to see Will? The man you took?”
No answer.
“The Englishman, where has he been taken?”
Again, nothing.
The doors open into a poorly lit laboratory with banks of worktops, some with fume hoods and sinks. The furniture is old and tattered, but you can see that it was once well-used. I see the other man from the train, standing by a wheeled cart on which there are stacks of chipped cups and saucers.
With them is another man who I recognize at once, the man with the red hair. His beard is longer since I saw him in Stockholm and he wears a lab coat instead of the navy blazer he wore at SFOF. But it’s him, all right, with the same pale skin and weary expression. He stands with his arms folded across his chest, staring at me with watery eyes.
“Finally, we are properly introduced, Kira,” he says. “I am Yegor Vasiliev.”
22
I’M TOLD TO sit in a chair, so I sit. I’m asked if I would like some tea and I say no.
Vasiliev tells one of the men to pour the tea anyway. I know this because he barks orders and almost instantly a cup is on the table before me.
“Drink,” he says.
It is very strong, black, and only lukewarm.
“There have been developments since I saw you in Sweden,” he begins, his English heavily accented just as I remember. “This ‘post-death recovery.’”
I say nothing.
“You know about this process?”
“I want to see Will,” I say. I’m desperate to see him. I keep looking around, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But it’s only Vasiliev and his men.
“Your colleague told us it is only you who can do this procedure. Much to our surprise, he cannot.”
If we’d been working on hypersonic missiles or laser weapons—both of which are being developed on the military side of Mellin’s research—I might understand why we’ve been kidnapped by a foreign power to show them a “procedure,” as Vasiliev describes it. But bringing a couple of rats back to life? That hardly sounds like something that can be weaponized.
Vasiliev pushes his glasses up on his nose. “The damaged brain has only limited ability to regenerate itself. But it is said that you can bring back a dead brain. Is that correct?”
“Who are you?”
“Correc
t?” he repeats.
“What have you done with Will?”
Vasiliev drops into the chair in front of me, looking suddenly exhausted, as though my presence is a terrible imposition. Then he looks up at me from beneath heavy eyelids and says, “Don’t be difficult.”
“I want to see my friend,” I say.
“Why?” he says, as though this makes no sense to him. “He’s just another person. You have three persons before you. Why add another?”
What? “I want Will,” I say clearly, slowly.
He bangs the table hard, startling me and sending the tea flying.
My dress is wet, the tea staining one side. At my feet is a broken cup.
“You’ve spilled your tea,” says Vasiliev.
I’m given another cup of tea. This I leave untouched.
“I won’t tell you anything until I’ve seen him,” I say.
The men who kidnapped us look at Vasiliev, then at each other.
Vasiliev crosses his arms in front of him, staring at me from across the table. He looks even more exhausted as he says, “Perhaps he’s already dead.”
The words hit me like a blow. I begin to hyperventilate. My hands are shaking. All I can think, all I can hear in my head is perhaps he’s already dead.
“We’ll check later and tell you,” says Vasiliev. “But first.” He takes a pad of paper from his clipboard and pushes it to my side of the table. “Write down this procedure that you will show us later.”
He nods at the paper.
I gesture around the empty laboratory. “I couldn’t even do it here. Everything I use is at Mellin. A Rho antagonist, rat stem cells from a tissue bank, actual rats—” I begin.
Vasiliev says, “Write down these things you need.”
“Not until I’ve seen Will—” I say, suddenly standing.
He shakes his head, his eyes half closed, as though everything about me is giving him a terrific migraine. Suddenly, his men are shouting at me in Russian. One of them forces me back into the chair. I’ve never been touched by strangers, let alone manhandled like this. I scream as I’m pushed down onto the seat. They press my head down so that I have no choice but to stare at the paper on the table in front of me.
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