City of Exiles (9781101607596)

by Nevala-lee, Alec

  A quarter of an hour later, he accompanied her outside, the nylon case in one hand. It was still dark. Walking her to the Volvo in the driveway, he put the bag on the front seat, then waited as she got behind the wheel. Earlier, she had changed into work clothes and tied back her hair.

  Karvonen stood next to the car as she started the engine. Before driving off, she rolled down her window, letting in some of the cold. Even in the darkness, he could make out the gleam of her eyes. “Goodbye, then.”

  “Goodbye.” On an impulse, Karvonen leaned down, his hand stroking the back of her sleek head, and kissed her on the mouth. It was an unplanned gesture, like that of an actor in the middle of an extended improvisation, but as he sucked in the warmth of her lips, he knew that it was the right one.

  After a few seconds, he pulled back. Laila was looking at him with the same solemn expression as before. For a moment, he felt something pass between them, more charged than any of their sessions of lovemaking. Then she rolled up her window, put the car into gear, and drove off, the device still on the front seat.

  He stood in the cold, watching her lights recede, until she had disappeared around the corner. Then he pulled out his phone. Although it was past midnight in London, his handler answered at once. “Are we on schedule?”

  “Yes, we’re set to go.” Karvonen headed into the house, locking the front door behind him. “She just left for work. I’ll close things down here and check in later. Is everything ready on your end?”

  “It will be. Don’t concern yourself with it. And don’t forget to take care of the girl.”

  Karvonen halted in the foyer. At first, he wasn’t sure that he’d heard correctly. “What are you talking about?”

  “The girl knows too much,” the handler said patiently. “She can’t be allowed to live. You know this as well as I do.”

  Going into the living room, Karvonen found himself looking at a framed picture on the mantelpiece, a portrait of Laila, in her early teens, standing next to her mother. Deep down, he realized, he had always known that this order would come. “She doesn’t know anything about me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We can’t afford to take any chances.” His handler paused. “I need to know that you will do what is necessary.”

  Karvonen, standing in the center of the room, remembered his vow, sworn years ago, never to shed the blood of another Finn. Closing his eyes, he felt an unaccustomed anger, sensing that his handler had been planning this moment all along, knowing that it would serve as a final test of loyalty.

  His bag lay on the floor next to the sofa. Opening it, he removed the pistol that he had retrieved from the weapons cache. Then, going up to the mantelpiece, he turned down the photograph of Laila and her mother.

  “All right,” Karvonen said at last. “I’ll take care of it. As soon as she gets back from the airport—”

  42

  Ilya sat in his latest cell, back to the wall, listening to the muffled groans of the prison around him. His eyes were closed, which did not make much of a difference in the darkness. The cell’s furnishings, which he knew by heart, consisted of a horsehair mattress, a steel washbasin, a toilet without a flush, a single sheet, and a blanket. There was no mirror, which was perhaps for the best.

  For most of the past day, it had been fairly quiet. The guards were treating him better, or at least were not actively abusing him, which he suspected was thanks to a few choice words from his last visitor. Wolfe, he could see, was stronger than he had supposed. She was still handicapped by her belief in the system, but her faith was not as unquestioning as he had initially assumed.

  At the moment, however, he had an uneasy feeling he had forgotten to tell her something. He had shared everything he knew, or at least everything he thought she might find useful, but a nagging doubt remained that he had left out something important. And now that he had so much time to himself, it seemed sensible to try to figure out what this was.

  Ilya rose from his seated position, limbs aching, and began to pace slowly around the cell, as if tracing an invisible labyrinth. His arms and legs were sore from being wrenched backward by the harness, but he forced himself to continue. He had learned long ago that it was no good to ignore pain. Pain, in itself, was no more instructive than any other aspect of life, but it was foolish to disregard something that was so central to human experience.

  The restraints, now gone, had reminded him of the binding of Isaac. Abraham, in a test of faith, was commanded to sacrifice his only son as a burnt offering. He dutifully cut a bundle of wood and went with young Isaac to the peak of Mount Moriah. There he bound his son to the altar, and he was already brandishing the knife when an angel intervened, telling him that his faith was strong and that his descendants would outnumber the stars. The offer of a ram, its horns conveniently caught in a nearby thicket, would be more than enough of a sacrifice.

  There the narrative ended, but the story, with the questions it raised about God’s love, had continued to trouble the rabbis. Isaac, they argued, had bound himself happily to the altar, overjoyed at the prospect of obeying two commandments at once. Even more intriguing was the tradition, which Ilya had shared with Wolfe, that Isaac, under the knife, had seen the work of the chariot.

  Such faith, Ilya thought now, was far beyond his own capacity, even in his younger days. It took more courage than he possessed to choose the passive way, where illumination was given only to those about to die. He had always taken the active path, like those cabalists, obsessed with seeing God, whose pursuit of the divine had been compared to storming the gates of heaven.

  Looking around his darkened cell, with its stale stink of shit, he was freshly disgusted by the vanity of such desires. It was a foolish man indeed, he thought, who believed that he could look into the uncreated light and live.

  Ilya continued to pace, the pain warming his joints. Ezekiel himself had warned against such presumption. The prophet spoke of Melkarth, the king of Tyre, who had dwelled in paradise, wise and beautiful, like the cherub whose wings covered the mercy seat. Yet he had set himself up in the house of God, and for that, he would be punished by death.

  This was the secret meaning of the cherubim, the angels who animated the wheels of the chariot. Wheels had been carved as a warning on the entrances to sacred groves, like the garden of Eden, which was guarded by an angel in the form of a burning sword. The proper punishment for trespassing in such places was to be burned alive, the flames kindled by a wheel of fire. Therefore will I bring a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth—

  Ilya halted. He sensed that an important insight was just out of reach, the answer to a question that had been haunting him. Standing there in the darkness, his eyes still closed, he thought of fire, of ashes on the earth, and of a name Wolfe had mentioned before leaving. Operation Pepel. Ashes—

  A second later, he saw the full picture at last. Opening his eyes, he swore to himself. Now that all the pieces had fallen into place, the answer was obvious, and he felt like a fool for not having seen it before.

  As he considered what to do next, however, he was brought up against the facts of his situation. Wolfe was the only person capable of acting on what he had to say. Anyone else would dismiss it outright. And he had no way of contacting her without access to a phone.

  At once, he understood what he had to do. In this cell, without light, it was difficult to tell the time, but he knew that he did not have long.

  The mattress sat in the corner, a blanket and sheet laid on top. Kneeling, he took the sheet in his hands, feeling for the edge, and tore off a long strip, using his teeth to start the tear. He did this again and again, until he had six strips in all, each about eight feet in length. Then he braided three of them tightly together, his fingers moving rapidly in the dark.

  Once he had finished braiding the first set of strips, he star
ted on the next. As he completed the second rope, he heard a door in the corridor being unbolted and opened, and then the sound of footsteps. Someone was coming.

  Ilya gathered up what was left of the bedsheet, folding it to hide the ragged edge, and tossed it onto his mattress. Taking one of the makeshift ropes, he tied it into a slipknot, leaving a loop the width of a man’s shoulders. Then he tucked both ropes behind his back and sat down.

  A moment later, the door of his cell was unlocked and swung back, casting a trapezoid of light across the floor. Standing just outside was a hefty figure with glasses, a metal tray balanced in one hand. It was the guard who had brought him to the medical ward on the day of his arrival, and who had looked down impassively from the bubble as Goat crept up with the razor.

  “Now, then,” the guard said. “You know the routine. Hands where I can see them—”

  Ilya held out his empty hands. The same drill was repeated each afternoon. The guard on duty would bring in the tray, check to make sure that Ilya had done no harm to himself or the cell, and retrieve the tray from the day before. Technically the process was supposed to involve two guards, but due to staff cuts, this aspect of the procedure was usually neglected.

  Coming inside, the guard set down the tray, which bore a tin cup of water and a plate of unidentifiable food. The tray from the day before had been placed, as instructed, to one side of the door. Picking up this tray, the guard cast an indifferent glance around the cell, then wrinkled his nose. “Stinks to high heaven in here. Don’t see how you can stand it. Cheers, then—”

  With a wink, the guard turned back toward the open door. When he was a step away from the hall outside, Ilya rose silently behind him and slipped the noose over the guard’s neck.

  The guard squawked, dropping the empty tray, which fell with a gonglike clang to the floor. Before he could make another sound, Ilya swung him hard, using the rope as a sort of hackamore, and knocked him against the wall. The guard’s forehead bounced off the bricks, and he fell stunned to the ground.

  Moving quickly, Ilya yanked off the guard’s tie, which was secured only by a clip, and used it to bind the other man’s hands behind his back. The second rope went around the guard’s legs. Then Ilya slammed the door shut and propped up his horsehair mattress, creating a crude barricade.

  Ilya heard shouts from the far end of the corridor. He went back to the guard, who was lying on the floor, facedown, and braced his foot against the man’s ample back, taking the end of the noose in his hands.

  As he did, the Judas hole slid open. Looking up, he saw a second guard’s white face staring through the slot, which was just above the mattress. “The fuck you think you’re doing?”

  “It’s quite simple,” Ilya said, still holding the end of the rope. “All I want is a phone.”

  43

  “So I’ve been looking into Project Bonfire,” Lewis began. “It started as an attempt by the Soviet Academy to develop weapons based on regulatory peptides, which are substances that can alter the mood of human subjects, causing panic and fear. Moreover, because they’re based on naturally occurring substances, they can’t be traced in the body, at least not with conventional methods.”

  “Which means that we’re looking at a perfect assassination weapon,” Cornwall said. She was seated behind her desk, the blinds of the office drawn, the door closed. “Assuming that it works.”

  “We think it does,” Wolfe said, standing by the whiteboard, which was covered with names and dates. “Judging from the support they gave this program over more than forty years, they must have thought it was promising.”

  “Promising isn’t good enough,” Cornwall replied flatly. “Not when you’re asking me to make a call like this.”

  “I know.” Wolfe turned back to the whiteboard. Her arm was still stiff, but at least the sling was gone. She had been in this room for hours now, along with Lewis and Asthana, who was going over stacks of files at the conference table. The clock was ticking. Powell had called a few minutes ago from Helsinki, where he was boarding Chigorin’s plane for Moscow. By now, he would already be in the air.

  Wolfe was aware of the strangeness of the situation. For reasons of diplomatic discretion, Powell could not be seen advising an opposition leader, but he was also in a unique position to influence what Chigorin did next. The more intelligence they could give him, the more useful his advice would be. Given the delicacy of the circumstances, however, only the four officers here, along with a solitary member of the Home Office, had been briefed on the real state of affairs.

  She studied the whiteboard, on which she had roughed out a chronology of the documents that had been received and translated so far. “At this point, I don’t think we’re going to find a smoking gun. All we have is a preponderance of evidence pointing toward human testing.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with you,” Asthana said, looking up from her notes. “Even with what we have here, too much material has been lost or destroyed. It’s hard to know where all the pieces fit.”

  “But we know that the program spent years trying to obtain information on neuropeptides, which are the kinds of toxins we’re talking about,” Lewis said. “We also know that they focused on myelin toxin, a poison that attacks nerve fibers in the human brain. It’s all here.” He fished a photocopy from the pile on the table. “Lab animals, including rabbits, were strapped to boards, fitted with gas masks, and sprayed with the toxin in aerosol form. They developed signs of paralysis and neurological changes, including dementia. And the next step was human testing.”

  “But, you see, that’s the problem,” Asthana said. “The tests you’re talking about took place in the eighties. That’s thirty years after Operation Pepel. Some of these documents are from even earlier.”

  “True,” Lewis replied. “But what we’re looking at is the end result of a long process. After the war, Russia went searching for Nazi or Japanese scientists who had done work on poisons and truth drugs. They were developing strains of anthrax or plague that would affect the brain. At the very least, we have an uninterrupted chain of experiments going back to the early fifties. And the tests were planned and carried out by the civilian arm of Russian intelligence.”

  Looking at the timeline on the whiteboard, Wolfe was reminded of something that they had discussed only in passing. “What about the Dyatlov Pass? Could these poisons have been responsible?”

  “Well, consider the evidence.” Lewis took out his folder on the Dyatlov Pass. “If this was a poison, how would it work? The speed of onset points to some kind of aerosol, like the poison used by Project Bonfire. Evidently it went off inside the tent, so it must have been delivered by something the hikers were given or picked up along the way. And its effects were strong, at least at first.”

  Wolfe saw where he was going. “But they were only temporary. Once the hikers left the tent, there’s evidence of rational behavior. They started a fire and took clothes from their dead companions. The poison wasn’t enough to kill or drive them insane outright. It just scattered them.”

  “Which doesn’t rule out its use as an assassination tool,” Lewis said. “The researchers may have concluded that the poison was only effective in a confined space, which is consistent with an aerosol as well.”

  Cornwall broke in. “Let’s move to the main point. Could Karvonen be preparing to use this kind of weapon?”

  Lewis seemed unsettled by the intensity of the deputy director’s gaze. “I can’t rule it out. The delivery system would not be difficult to assemble. The hard part would have been acquiring the poison itself.”

  “It might have been easier than you think,” Wolfe said. “We know for a fact that poisons like this have appeared on the black market. I’ve seen the results myself. Given the background of Morley’s bodyguard—”

  Even as she spoke, Wolfe heard a low vibration rise up from the table in front of her. Glancing
down, she saw that her phone, which she had set among the files, was ringing. “Sorry,” Wolfe said, picking up the phone and bringing it to her ear. “I’ll get rid of whoever this is—”

  For the first confused second, she heard nothing but stifled voices. “Who is this?”

  When the man on the other end finally answered, it was the last response she could have expected: “It’s Ilya Severin.”

  “Ilya?” Wolfe looked at the others, who had resumed their work, but now were turning to stare. She moved into the corner, lowering her voice. “Where are you calling from? What’s going on?”

  “A long story,” Ilya replied. “I don’t have much time. But there’s something you need to hear. About the Dyatlov Pass—”

  Faintly, on the other end, she heard another string of shouts. “What about it?”

  Ilya began to speak more quickly. “Something about it always seemed strange, even beyond what we discussed. The choice of victims. They were a random group of subjects in a remote location, yes? Difficult to control or observe. Which makes me think that the test was arranged at the last minute. That the scientists were forced to make do with what they had.”

  “It’s possible,” Wolfe said, although she didn’t see why this insight had seemed so urgent. “I’ll keep that in mind—”

  “You aren’t listening,” Ilya said, impatience appearing in his voice for the first time. “Why would they be in such a hurry to arrange a test on that particular day? It must have been because they had a deadline. An operation that could not be postponed. You see? They conducted the test because something important was coming. A special action. An assassination. In Turkey.”

  “Operation Pepel,” Wolfe said, seeing his point at last. She glanced at the whiteboard, on which the name of the operation had been written with a question mark. “But if it was an assassination, who was the target?”