Exoteric

by Philip Hemplow

  There were layered mittens and socks as well, and an insulated hat. All smelled musty. The clothes had obviously been used many times before, every artificial fibre of them now impregnated with stale sweat. Arkady wrinkled his nose in distaste, but forced himself to step into the thick, padded trousers and pull the sagging fleece over his head, while Zapad explained the procedure they would be following.

  “As you know,” he was saying, “the patient is strapped to a transportation board inside the cryostat. As I mentioned before, he’s stored inverted: head down. So, his feet will be the first thing out. He’s protected by a thermal bag, like a sleeping bag, but the frame itself and everything else in there will be extremely cold. Don’t let it touch your skin! We simply attach the hoist to the frame, and use that to winch him clear. At most, I’ll need you to steady him a bit while I attach the second harness.

  “Now, when the seal is broken, the nitrogen inside will begin to evaporate. You’ll see clouds of vapour—don’t worry. That’s just water vapour in the air; it isn’t actually nitrogen. It won’t harm you. Even if any liquid does spill, it will evaporate before it touches you. Just don’t go sticking your arm in or anything! We’ll take it very slowly. Once he’s on the trolley, we move him, very gently, to the calorimeter, open the bag, make a quick visual inspection, and leave him to equilibrate with the temperature in there. Then, we have a nice, warming cup of cocoa, eh?” The doctor chuckled, and clapped his mittened hands together. “So, any questions?”

  Arkady was fighting to pull his boots on over the wadded jumpsuit, but looked up and shook his head. When you get back to Moscow, you’re retiring, announced Ana’s voice in his head, taking him by surprise. This isn’t where you belong, and you know it.

  Where do I belong, then? Arkady challenged her, and waited, but there was no answer.

  Zapad was talking to Sophia, briefing her on what to expect when her father’s remains were exposed. He would appear to be dead, the doctor was saying, dead and bloodless. It might look scary or upsetting, but she needed to remember that the man she knew was more than just a body. He was a person, and that person had yet to return. The girl nodded, looking sombre and seeming to understand.

  That was as well, thought Arkady. The last thing they needed was her becoming hysterical while they were busy in the calorimeter. He had thought about ordering one of Votyakov’s Clandestine bruisers into attendance, but his ingrained instinct for secrecy rebelled at the idea. Besides, it was hard to imagine their presence reassuring the girl—more likely, the opposite. Ever since the others had departed to fetch the donor heart, there had been a haunted look in her eyes when she didn’t realise anyone was watching. Arkady guessed she was reliving her memories of twelve years before: the bullet, the screaming, the charging bodyguards. He watched as she helped Zapad set up video cameras on tripods. Her bravado had disappeared, and he wondered whether she was beginning to regret coming to the Zubgorai.

  The cameras formed a triangle around the cryostat. Sophia was instructed to remain beyond them throughout the extraction, as if they constituted a conjurer’s protective circle. Zapad turned to one of them and recited the time, date, his name and qualifications, and the patient number assigned to Molchanov at Interval. He had already been warned not to record their location or anything about Arkady, who tugged a hat onto his head and carefully wound a scarf around the lower half of his face before moving into view of the lenses.

  “Well, I think we are ready to begin. Are you ready, Col—ah…are you ready?”

  “I’m ready,” mumbled Arkady, through the scarf.

  “Excellent. Then, with no further prevarication, let us open the cryostat!”

  He clapped his hands together with enthusiasm and turned to the giant, steel drum.

  Unlocking the cylinder involved the entry of a four-digit code followed by the manual release of a succession off small, stiff wheels that maintained its airtight seal. The thing’s height made it necessary to use the stepladder to easily reach them. Zapad worked methodically, taking his time, carefully descending to move the ladder after each release, and Arkady got the impression he was teasing himself, savouring the moment.

  Eventually, there was a small ‘phut’ as the seal was broken. Zapad span the last wheel until it was loose, and reached for the giant catch which would release the lid.

  To lift it, he had to climb to the very top of the ladder. Arkady moved forward to hold it steady for him.

  “Here we go,” groaned the doctor as he heaved on the thick, steel slab. “Let us see if Mr Molchanov is at home.”

  With much effort, he managed to pull the lid upright, drawing ectoplasmic wisps of vapour with it. The fizz of boiling nitrogen, subtle at first, grew louder as the cryostat’s mouth yawned open. Zapad held the lid at its tipping point for a moment, then lowered it gently back against its hinge.

  “So far, so good,” said the doctor, silhouetted against a skylight. “There is a flashlight on the trolley. Could you pass it, please?”

  Arkady hurried to oblige. Vapour was spilling from the cryostat now, roiling down the sides of the thing like a graveyard mist. Zapad fumbled with the torch until he managed to turn it on, then leant forward and played the beam around the cryostat’s interior.

  “Yes…yes,” he mused. “That all looks fine. Bag is clean, reservoir is clear. No sign of leakage. Backboard is still secured, straps still tight…no signs of layering, no obvious hotspots…that’s good. That’s all fine.”

  His reedy voice reverberated inside the tank. The light of his torch, reflected by the stainless-steel interior, glowed from the cryostat’s maw, illuminating wraithlike tendrils of spooling mist, and conjuring images of witches’ cauldrons in Arkady’s mind.

  “We can proceed,” declared the doctor.

  He reached for one of the straps that depended from the waiting hoist, and reached inside the cryostat to loop it around the frame of Molchanov’s backboard. Arkady gripped the ladder more tightly, preventing it from rocking as he worked.

  “We need to lift him gradually,” called Zapad, over his shoulder. “He’ll tilt as he comes out. We’ll need to stop so I can secure the other end of the stretcher before we transfer it to the trolley. Is everything okay down there?”

  “Everything’s fine,” replied Arkady, his voice muffled by the scarf.

  “Good. You can take up the slack now. Just wind that winch handle.”

  Arkady did as he was told, cranking the clacking winch until he met resistance.

  “Okay, that’s it. Slowly now. Imagine you’re lifting a Ming vase. We can take our time.”

  Inch by painstaking inch, the body was drawn from its wintry sepulchre. Ice crystals immediately formed on the backboard’s metal frame, spreading down the length of it as it emerged. The reflective, silvered surface of Molchanov’s protective bag crept into view, the billionaire’s feet an irregular hump inside it. Arkady’s mouth was suddenly dry, and he swallowed, trying to draw more juice from his salivary glands. Still he kept turning the handle, one hand on the ladder, the winch’s uneven, staccato clicking sawing at his nerves.

  The stretcher’s frame scraped against the cryostat’s rim with a sound like a sword, slowly being drawn from its scabbard. The dead man radiated cold. Arkady could feel the chill on his face, between the hat and the top of his drawn-up scarf. As the eerie mechanical delivery continued, fresh plumes of vapour erupted from the cryostat like the exhalations of a straining mother. Zapad took hold of the stretcher as the weight of Molchanov’s lower body started to tilt it, keeping it steady, guiding it towards the light.

  As the head end finally neared the lip of the cryostat, he called to Arkady to stop turning the crank.

  “Enough! Wait! Hold on, let me tie this end of the stretcher.”

  The ladder wobbled in Arkady’s hand as the doctor leaned forward and looped another set of straps over and under the stretcher’s frame, feeding the loose end back into the winch and tightening it.

  “There. Raise him a
little more—good. His head is clear. Now, lower him—we need to lower his feet until they are level with his head. I will steady him. Lower…lower…carry on until he is level with the top of the ‘stat…okay, good! Stop! Very good! I will come down and move the cryostat out of the way. Do nothing!”

  The doctor closed the cryostat and descended the ladder, brushing past Arkady at the bottom, and hurrying to the controls of the cryostat’s trolley. He was breathless with excitement, the lenses of his spectacles thick with condensation. The trolley’s motor kicked in as he pulled on its steering yoke, moving it away from Arkady and making the floorboards creak.

  Overhead, Molchanov’s body stayed suspended in mid-air, swaying gently, almost imperceptibly, like a child rocking in its crib. The crinkled, metallic sleeping bag glinted under the lights as it pendulated. The effect was hypnotic, and Arkady couldn’t look away. Somewhere in there, he had to hope, was a tiny bundle of neurons which could be rekindled, and which held the encryption code he needed.

  The doctor was tightening the cryostat’s seals, making it airtight once more.

  “I will be with you in a moment,” he called. “No sense in wasting nitrogen. It all has to be paid for!”

  His voice rang through the empty gymnasium, high and excited, almost gleeful. Arkady envied him his enthusiasm. For his part, he could summon up nothing more than trepidation.

  Behind him, Sophia was shifting restlessly from one foot to the other. She was muttering under her breath, in English, something he couldn’t quite catch.

  “Patience!” he counselled, looking over his shoulder at her. “It is better done slowly, like all important things.”

  She managed a weak, brave smile, but still looked tense and terrified.

  Having steered the cryostat some distance away, Zapad came striding back towards them, breaking into an ungainly jog when he saw their expectant eyes on him.

  “All done,” he promised. “The cryostat is secure. Now, lower away. I will stand by to steady him.”

  Arkady resumed winding the handle, and Molchanov’s descent began to the steady, drawbridge ticking of the winch. As the stretcher passed shoulder-height, Zapad reached up and took hold of its frame, guiding it down. The silvery thermal bag made it impossible to discern anything of the body beyond the obvious lumps of head and feet. Arkady was reminded of a joint of meat, wrapped in foil and ready for the oven.

  “Stop there,” ordered Zapad.

  The stretcher had almost reached waist-height. The doctor let it go and went to get the gurney. He slid it into position beneath the body, then walked round it, nudging the brake on each wheel into position with his boot.

  “Okay. Slowly now. Keep going until the harnesses start to slacken.”

  The stretcher sank the last few inches, and the body’s weight settled slowly onto the trolley. Zapad quickly unclipped the hoist straps and unwound them from the stretcher frame, passing the loose ends to Arkady, who wound them round the crane arm to keep them out of the way.

  “Excellent!” Zapad nodded furiously as he pulled the top half of his Arctic onesie up and pushed his arms into the sleeves. “Better get suited up now. The calorimeter will be cold. Not as cold as our patient, of course, but too cold for us!”

  Arkady followed the doctor’s lead, zipping the bulky suit up to his neck. Sophia was beside herself now, hopping from one foot to the other and wringing her hands.

  “Is he all right? Dr Zapad, is he okay? Will it work?”

  “We will soon know, once we have taken a look at him. I am sure he is fine. Perhaps you could hold the door for us, while we move him to the calorimeter.”

  “The door? Yes, of course!”

  She dashed ahead of them and stood holding one of the doors wide open. Zapad retraced his steps, releasing the gurney’s brakes, then gestured for Arkady to take the other end of it.

  “No jolts, no bumps, if you please. We will go slowly—very steadily. Once we are in the room, we must lift the stretcher together, you and I, and transfer him to the operating table. It will take only moments, but must be done with the greatest of care.”

  They moved with exaggerated slowness through the doorway and into the corridor, then onwards to the clinic. Arkady was already sweating in his insulated suit, and had to fight the temptation to move more quickly. They passed the calorimeter’s observation windows, opaque with frost, then paused while Zapad operated the door, releasing a blast of withering cold and the deep-throated roar of the refrigeration units.

  With a confirmatory nod, the doctor guided them inside. Instantly, the cold bit down, worrying at them, trying to find bare flesh. Arkady’s skin pulled taut, fat shrinking onto his bones, saliva and mucous turning to ice. He steeled himself and waded forwards, pushing the gurney. The bulky, restrictive clothing, and the way the scarf stifled the sound of his breathing made him feel like a cosmonaut in hard vacuum, or a deep-sea diver venturing inside a broken hull. Suddenly overcome by claustrophobia, he let out an inadvertent snort and shook his head, wrenching the scarf down over his chin. Immediately, cold, dry air tore greedily at his throat, until he forced himself to calm down and breathe through his nose. The panic drained away, leaving him ashamed, and grateful Zapad hadn’t seemed to notice.

  They maneuvered the trolley into position alongside the operating table, then, on Zapad’s count of “three,” lifted the stretcher and slid it across. Molchanov’s body remained as stiff as the board it lay on, not flexing or shifting in the bag as they moved him. Arkady had moved corpses before, too many times. They had a certain weight to them, a kind of leaden inertia, even once rigor mortis set in, as joints flexed and viscera shifted. Not Molchanov though—moving him felt more like rearranging furniture.

  “And that is the hard part out of the way, for now,” announced Zapad, raising his voice to be heard over the thundering refrigerators. “Our patient has been safely removed from his cryostat, and is ready for surgery. Shall we take a look at him?” Without waiting for an answer, he peeled back the Velcro flap covering the bag’s chunky, plastic zip, and began to draw it down.

  *

  The summer after Arkady was recruited to Zolin’s new Section at the FSB, he had taken Ana for her first holiday outside the old Soviet bloc. They had gone to Copenhagen. He had arranged a meeting at the embassy there so the bureau would pay for their flights. For three days, they had visited museums, galleries, churches, and castles. He had taken her to see Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth at the opera house, and they had held hands through the entire performance like a pair of teenagers. They had walked in the gardens, laughed at the ridiculous Little Mermaid, spent hours debating which restaurants to eat at, and ended each evening with drinks in the Jacobsen-designed bar of their hotel. It had been a good time in their life, just the two of them, free to indulge themselves, enjoying one another’s company.

  When they returned to Moscow, they discovered the compressor in their ageing Atlas freezer had broken, and the thing had thawed in their absence. In warzones, in prisons, in hospitals, Arkady had never smelled anything like the stench that assailed him when he opened that freezer door. The food had begun instantly to deliquesce, turning to raw putridity as soon as it thawed, like a cinematic vampire rotting in sunlight. He’d slammed the door and rushed to the bathroom to vomit, overcome by the stink. There had been more retching as he swept the perished food into the bin and scoured the freezer’s interior with bicarbonate. He had stayed nauseous for the rest of the day.

  The stink had persisted, despite his best efforts to clean the thing, emerging every time he tentatively reopened the door, as if the entire appliance was contaminated. In the end, he’d paid a couple of men to take it away and bought a new one.

  The smell in the calorimeter room once Molchanov’s bag was opened, while less potent, was disturbingly similar to the foetid reek from that broken freezer. Stale and sour, it triggered a hardwired, primaeval revulsion in Arkady’s brain. He stood it as long as he could, then fled the room, gagging, to join Sophia
in the outer clinic.

  She watched with alarm as he fell back against the wall and gulped air. He did his best to reassure her once the wave of nausea had passed, nodding, and forcing himself to smile.

  “It’s very, very cold in there,” he said, yanking down the top half of the thermal suit as he joined her at the monitors.

  She looked unconvinced, but said nothing.

  Zapad remained inside, seemingly unperturbed by the bad air. In fact, he seemed unperturbed by anything as he leaned over the corpse, an expression of rapt fascination on his face. The doctor’s lips were moving as he recorded his observations on the surgical suite’s mic. Arkady hit the switch for the room’s intercom system so they could listen in.

  “…remarkable. Some evidence of clotting and subdermal pooling, but no obvious indicators of major circulatory damage. Pronounced odour, owing to sublimation of volatile organic compounds. Chest wound appears clean, and much as I remember it. Patient has writing describing emergency cryogenic protocol tattooed across his torso, partially obliterated by the terminal injury. Skin tone inconsistent: extreme pallor generally, but with extensive lividity of extremities and area around wound. Pronounced darkening of the eye sockets, lips, nose, forehead, and upper cheeks, extending across the scalp. Ocular inspection not possible at this time, and will have to wait until room temperature has been achieved.”

  Arkady felt hands on his elbow. It was Sophia, looking almost as pale as her father.

  “It doesn’t look like him,” she whispered, staring at the close-up of Molchanov’s face on one of the monitors.

  Feeling awkward, Arkady patted her shoulder and made sympathetic noises.

  “You shouldn’t look at this. It can only upset you. You should wait until he has had his operation and you can go in the room to see him.”

  The girl shook her head. “No. It was my decision to do this. I gave my consent. I have to watch. No one else will look out for him.”

  “We’re all here to look out for him.”