‘I should think so.’
‘Don’t be like that, Noah. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were avoiding the place.’
Noah returned to the seat at Hackman’s desk.
‘I go where I’m sent, Hack.’ He picked up a glass paperweight from a stack of documents. It was shaped like a miniature iceberg, jagged and dangerously sharp in places. He set it down again.
‘Sure. You put your hand up for hellholes like Afghanistan and Iran but not Sri Lanka. You’ll like the country now. Aside from the usual post-war poverty and increasing incidence of Rapture addiction.’
‘I assume you won’t be waging a war on drugs over there?’
‘No – not when the drug they’re taking gives them a deep sense of happiness and connection to each other.’
‘You mean the kind of happiness and connection they might also get from faith in a benevolent but most likely non-existent, or at the very least sadistic, God?’
Noah was glad his father hadn’t seen him lose his faith, although perhaps if his father was alive he might still have had it. He would never know. The bitterness in his voice couldn’t be disguised by the humour in his words. Hackman didn’t notice. ‘Rapture is a cheap substitute and it won’t lead to slaughter – unlike faith.’
‘Faith never led to slaughter. Religion did,’ Noah corrected. ‘Or rather, mankind’s use of religion as a weapon of mass and minor destruction did.’
‘Jesus, you’re a pain in the arse. Faith leads to organised religion – mankind can’t help but get organised.’
‘Sure – but why are they craving a quasi-religious high? The frontal lobe damage should have taken care of that.’
‘It’s not a quasi-religious high, Noah. It’s just a high. Neeson looked into that; he loves a good scientific conundrum.’
‘And what did he come up with?’
‘That the simplest observable explanation is often the best.’
‘His own version of Occam’s Razor?’ Noah asked. ‘Neeson really wants a scientific principle named after himself.’
‘Yes.’ Hackman tried not to laugh. ‘World War Righteous and Ebola hit the East harder than it did the West. People seek solace – it’s what they do. If they want to get high, they’re welcome to it, for now.’
‘As long as they don’t get organised?’
‘Exactly.’ Hackman pushed a bundle of documents across the table. ‘Patrice printed these for you – she said it’s better for your eyes. She doesn’t care about my eyes.’
He leaned back in his chair. ‘Sri Lanka’s reconstruction was well-funded by the World Bank and the Western Alliance. We needed stability in the region.’
‘Stability?’ Noah echoed.
‘It’s more important than democracy.’
‘Thank you, professor.’ Noah opened the file and began sifting through documents, country reports.
‘More people die in new unstable democracies than tyrannical stable regimes,’ Hackman continued. ‘Everyone agreed that stability was best created by investment in the region. Sri Lanka may have started the war but they also lost it – they needed help.’
‘They had been penalised enough?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And what went wrong?’ Noah asked.
‘Nothing. You’re always so pessimistic.’
Noah pulled out photographs of the Sri Lankan president. ‘I’m guessing that somewhere between the rousing rhetoric at global development conferences in DC, the complex loan and aid agreements that followed them, and the actual implementation of funding, something got lost?’
Hackman picked up a photograph of the president leaning against a gold-plated Maserati. In the background, the rest of his impressive car collection gleamed no less brilliantly in the tropical sun.
‘He’s enjoying his reign, isn’t he?’
‘The country is stable, Noah. It was the first country to achieve complete national vaccination within three months of the Sixth Virus Eradication Policy – and it has maintained complete national immunity. They take their three-yearly boosters like clockwork. That’s all I need to know to sleep well at night.’ Hackman threw the photograph back on the pile.
‘How many undercovers do you have in play?’
‘We have three in Colombo and another three elsewhere in the country. It’s allocated by Bio on the basis of population and risk level. Sri Lanka has been low risk since the war. We had a lot more undercovers during the war.’
‘We needed a lot more UCs there before the war,’ Noah said.
‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing. If it wasn’t Sri Lanka, it would have been Pakistan or somewhere else. It was always going to happen.’
‘What was – war, religious slaughter or slaughter generally?’ Noah asked.
‘All of it. Including the beginning of the war in Sri Lanka, I suppose. Their Buddhist clergy were more militaristic than monastic. They organised pro-Buddhist demonstrations which always ended in anti-Muslim riots.
‘The Sri Lankan government let the monks frenzy up the masses like a well-trained rabid dog. Set them loose on the local Muslims and the rest is history.’
‘You can’t train a rabid dog, Hack.’
‘Exactly. Post-war, the country has been desperately contrite and very eager to please.’
‘Then why don’t we just ask them to turn over Dr Khan and his hard drives? Better yet, forget permission – how about rendition and research theft?’ Noah asked.
‘You’ll see when you get there – President Rajasuriya doesn’t play ball like that.’
‘Will you tell him I’m coming?’
‘Yes – respect for sovereign leadership, sharing of biosecurity intel and all that.’
‘Since when?’
Hackman ignored him. ‘You’re going to need all the help you can get. The undercovers are well-connected and well-placed. There’s one I trust for this job. She’s one of ours who stayed on after the war.’
‘She liked the tropical beaches and spicy food?’
‘Something like that. She can get in and out of the hospital ward. We’ll give her Neeson’s modified Ebola Strain 48.6. Most people around the targets will be immune if they’ve taken their boosters on time. The targets will be scanned shortly after contamination. The virus will be detected and you’ll be called in immediately.’
Noah wondered what kind of agent – what kind of person – could deliberately infect five people with Ebola. Bio had identified high-risk patients who were awaiting vaccination. They had no immunity. They didn’t stand a chance.
Noah kept his eyes resolutely on Hackman’s face, away from the window and the beautiful spires.
‘The one thing I still don’t understand is how you’re going to get the virus into the country? No one stores it except Bio. If I try to carry it in, the scanners at the Sri Lankan airport will pick it up immediately. I wouldn’t get through our airports without detection.’
‘But if I carry it in, I don’t get scanned the same way you do,’ Hackman said.
Noah studied Hackman’s face carefully to see if he was joking. Hackman was impassive. Noah felt his pulse quicken.
‘Of course you do – we all get meta-scanned the same way. The protocol ensures that no one, no matter how high their clearance level, can carry the virus across countries.’
‘That protocol applies to most people, not all.’ Hackman stood up. ‘It was changed to allow a handful of exceptions. Let’s leave it at that.’
Noah stood up too and knocked the table, jolting the glass iceberg from its sea of papers.
‘Let’s not leave it at that. In 2023, it wasn’t a bioterrorist or a naïve aid worker who brought Ebola into the homeland. It was the US ambassador, returning from Istanbul, where he’d been fucking his driver’s sister.’
‘I know my history, thank you. I was there.’
‘Were you? Were you there when my father died from Ebola, vomiting and shitting blood?’ he choked. He could still recall the smell of his ho
use, his father’s body.
‘Not even the president can travel without a full meta-scan.’ Noah was losing control of his voice. ‘The protocol is there to protect us!’
‘Focus on the mission. I will take care of the outbreak; small and contained, such as it will be. You take care of the clean-up and investigation. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ Noah managed to reign in the emotions on his face and look Hackman in the eye, but inside he knew he had to get out.
He couldn’t keep doing this. Hackman had got him into Bio. Noah would have to get himself out. After this mission.
Chapter 9
Sahara stood in the security room on the first floor gallery, her eyes flicking between monitors until she saw the person she was looking for.
‘There you are,’ she whispered. The security guards ignored her, as she’d paid them to do.
Hackman looked unusually casual: top button undone, tie loosened and jacket folded over his arm. He kept his eyes straight ahead, uninterested in the other passengers. They stood in long queues, papers in one hand, children sometimes in the other, nervously waiting to be herded through the scanners.
Sahara followed Hackman across the monitors as he headed for the priority government line. Again he presented his passport, but not his wrist or the small suitcase he carried. He shook his head at the immigration official calmly.
The man scanned Hackman’s passport and when his profile came up on the computer, he ushered him through, apologising awkwardly.
‘You cheating bastard,’ Sahara hissed under her breath. The guards looked at her and then remembered their instructions, turning their heads away.
What was in the suitcase? she wondered.
The security team that had chaperoned Hackman from London dispersed into the crowd. Another local team converged to take over his protection detail. They maintained a well-trained distance. Hackman found a table at an airport café and sat down without making eye contact with any of them.
‘Tea, sir?’ The waitress activated the news-tablet while balancing a tray with a steaming pot.
‘Why not? When in Sri Lanka . . .’ He smiled at her. Sahara remembered that smile.
‘I’ll have two teas; I’m expecting a friend.’ The sweat sat on his skin and beaded at his hairline. He undid another button and pulled his shirt away from his body. He opened the screen on the news-tablet and paged through.
Sahara wondered why he bothered; it was just a rehash of the Western Alliance news, except Bio removed any references to religion or god for the Eastern Alliance bulletins. She checked the other monitors and noted the formation of the security team one more time before leaving the room.
She crossed the concourse and sat down. Hackman didn’t look up immediately. He closed the news-tablet, pushed the tea across the table and said, ‘You’ve absorbed the local sense of timing.’
‘I’ve absorbed a lot of the local characteristics. It’s been better for my health.’ She added two spoonfuls of sugar to her tea and sipped it. Her blouse sleeve slipped back, revealing the scars and burns that decorated her arm, like carvings on a sinewy totem pole.
‘You look like a local,’ Hackman remarked, referring to her embroidered shirt, cotton trousers and slippers.
‘I’ve always looked like a local, that was why you wanted me here in the first place.’ She had pulled her hair back in a bun, but some of it curled, damp, at the nape of her neck.
‘You didn’t have to stay though, you’d earned your right to come home.’
‘Earned it? I suppose you could look at it that way.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘I prefer to stay here. Call it inertia, another local characteristic.’
‘Back at Bio they call it self-imposed exile,’ Hackman replied.
‘I don’t expect people to understand. I like it here. Life is simpler. Redacted,’ she pointed to the news-tablet, ‘like the news from the West. Repurposed to be suitably benign. It’s what I needed after . . . everything.’
She hadn’t died in World War Righteous but she often wished she had. She deserved it.
‘You were a soldier, following orders. You shouldn’t blame yourself.’ She had heard this speech before. She’d even given it herself to junior agents. She could tell he was about to launch into its opening verse.
‘You should blame yourself more,’ she cut him off. ‘What do you need? You don’t usually call when you’re in town.’
‘No, I like to leave you alone.’
‘I’ve earned it,’ she mocked.
‘Yes, you have. But I need you to do one more thing.’
‘It’s never just one more thing, let’s not pretend. What do you need?’ She looked at the suitcase on the ground.
‘There is a contaminant inside it. Classification R, Bio Hazard Grade 1. Do you think you can access a particular ward at Colombo General Hospital?’
‘I can access most places,’ she replied. There was only one contaminant with Classification R.
‘You will need to bypass the meta-scanners.’
‘I know what I need to do to get in with a contaminant – what do I need to do when I get there?’ she asked, irritated.
Who. She meant who.
‘You need to infect five targets with it.’ He slid the suitcase under the table towards her. ‘Details inside.’
‘Pre-vaccination?’ Her voice was steady.
‘Yes, pre-vaccination. Is there a problem?’ He picked up his tea and blew softly on its surface before draining the cup.
‘No, there’s no problem.’ She looked down.
‘That’s why we wanted you here in the first place.’ He stood up, threw a few notes for the waitress on the table and left, heading towards Departures. Sahara sat back and finished her tea.
*
Colombo General Hospital was crumbling. It was once a proud and prestigious teaching hospital, gleaming white on Perera Mawatha Road, surrounded by lush gardens and a tall wrought-iron fence that made it look more like a summer palace than a hospital.
But now it sat quietly covered in dust. It had served its people well during World War R and the pogrom in Colombo that precipitated it. Twenty years ago its white stucco had been splattered in blood when armed mobs invaded its wards, pulled people from their sick beds with their IVs trailing, and beheaded them on the front lawn. Colombo General was a building that wanted to forget.
Sahara parked in the side alley and waited. At ten o’clock the janitors filled the last of the massive bins and locked them to prevent people from rifling through for drugs. Not that hospitals stocked Rapture but they did have the chemicals used to synthesise the powerful mood-lifter.
Three men wheeled the bins around the building to the side alley where the garbage van would collect them in the morning. At eleven o’clock there was a changeover of staff from the evening shift to the night shift. Nothing else happened until five o’clock the next day.
She turned off her handheld. She had memorised the floor plan. The maternity ward was on the sixth floor. She kicked off her shoes and put them in her small backpack. She couldn’t walk through any of the doors on the ground floor carrying a contaminant. The meta-scanners would detect the substance immediately. She needed to enter the building either from the roof, the sewer or a window. She had seen secret agents crawling through sewers in movies. They seemed laughably immune to the nauseating fumes that emanated from the last sewer she’d been in. The fifth-floor window was the best option.
She was relieved it was only five floors up. In her youth she could have free-climbed much higher but she was forty-five years old and her age and injuries were catching up.
She checked her equipment one last time. Gun and silencer, ankle weapon, night vision goggles, rope, hooks, gloves, knife for a fast kill and a garrotte for a soundless one. She pulled her gloves on and opened Hackman’s suitcase, using the passcode that had been assigned to her two decades ago.
The suitcase was small but heavy. Its insides were a micro-refrigerator with its own portabl
e power source. Two hours left on the battery, then the suitcase would return to room temperature. In Colombo, at this time of the year, that was thirty-eight degrees.
She loaded the weapon. There was only one syringe and a twenty-five millilitre vial with the contaminant. Obviously hygiene wasn’t a priority for Hackman. Sahara put the needle back in its sheath and then placed the syringe into the small insulated box that fitted into her chest pocket.
With her night vision goggles, she surveyed the alley once more and left the vehicle, her bare feet hitting the ground quietly. The bin smelled foul, even through reinforced steel. Its location beneath a tall sash window was what she had been scoping all week. She climbed onto the bin, pleased that her assessment had been right.
She stretched her arms and legs again and walked back to the edge of the bin. It was a short run up, but it was all she needed.
She ran and then sprang up. Her gloved hands grasped the ledge and she swung her torso right, her foot reaching for and locking into a small but sufficient groove in the wall.
She didn’t stop to stabilise herself, instead pushing hard from the groove and launching higher into the window frame. Her left hand hit and collapsed uselessly against the window pane but her right hand caught the narrow horizontal gap where the upper pane of glass met the lower pane. She held on with one hand; the force from her jump left the rest of her body dangling by four fingers as her feet searched for the ledge beneath her. She found it and curled into the window frame, resting for a moment.
And then she was up again. At the top, right-hand side of the window was the base of a rusted chimney. The west wing of the first floor had once housed a small waste disposal furnace. All of the furnaces had been relocated to the basement years ago, but this pipe remained.
She placed one foot onto the metal clip that bolted the disused pipe firmly to the brickwork. She tested it, shifting a portion of her weight once, twice, three times, from the ledge to the girder. It held.
And then she was on the pipe, hand over hand, toes finding each clip or using the grooves in the bricks, to propel herself up. She slipped once, dangling by her fingertips from the last clip, her hands in agony as they carried her body weight.
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