“Ah, of course, Nurse. Yes, that parade.”
She took half a step back. I looked down at her, but she was looking at my chest.
“Oh, I see . . . you’ve already been dressed.”
“Our platoon medic fixed me up when they found me,” I explained. I swallowed hard. Her eyes remained fixed on the compress that spanned my fractured ribs.
“But these bandages . . . they’re not”—she pointed toward them with the safety scissors—“ours.” Then she turned my right arm at the wrist, looked at my upper arm and saw. Or rather, didn’t see. “Where is your—?”
“Prosti menya,” I said. Forgive me. And I meant it.
She went to speak, but it was already too late for her. My hands were at her mouth, throat. I pushed her back onto the bed, covering her body with mine. We pressed against each other. Air escaped from her nose. The veins at her temples swelled. She struggled violently to breathe, eyes wild, pleading, every sinew straining, pushing against me. She tried and failed to reach her pistol and then grabbed ineffectually at my arms. My right hand found the lock knife in my boot top and I brought the opened blade round to the back of her neck.
“Shh,” I whispered. And then, in Russian, “It’s OK. It’s nearly over.”
Her lips rasped against my palm. I slipped the point in at the base of her skull. She relaxed. Her muscles gave way beneath me, and her arms went limp across my back. The last glimmer went from her eyes, and it was done. I kept my hand over her mouth for a moment longer to be sure and then turned her on her side and pulled the woven green blanket up to hide her face.
My not having a scorpion tattoo had to be a death sentence either for me or for her. I made a mental note to tell Ezra about that.
I ripped the arm off the shredded shirt and ducked out of the curtained cubicle. An entire forward operating base had been inserted into the hills of West Africa. The most remarkable thing about it was how unremarkable it felt. Change the uniforms and the accents and I could just as easily have been in Afghanistan as in Sierra Leone. Life in the dressing station carried on as normal. Out of sight, I could hear the ward sister at reception berating another medic.
If only Roberts could have seen it. It would blow his mind, I thought as I skirted the far edge of the room and kept my head down. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew where I needed to get to. I figured I had ten minutes before Kuznetsova’s body was discovered, fifteen at the outside.
Time was running out.
24
I kept my hand on the holstered sig and continued a slow sweep from room to room. Pocahontas was propped up in bed, leg elevated, ankle stump bandaged, face covered by an oxygen mask. He was out cold, hooked up to a morphine drip and a vital-signs monitor. Somewhere in the complex his foot would be packed in ice. I doubted anyone would be sewing it back on out here, though. His PKM leaned nonchalantly against the wall next to the headrest.
I stood still for a moment. I’d done my job: I’d taken the shot I’d had to take. It was the only possible outcome. But that wasn’t going to end this war, or any war. Musala was still overrun. And who knew how many more wildmen there were out there, laying waste to whole villages, towns? Who knew, too, how many little children there were hiding out in the forest, ignorant of their orphans’ lives to come?
It felt like I’d already stepped off the line of departure a dozen times on this operation. And then I realized I had stopped. Stopped dead. I was not running. I was not looking for an escape, because there wasn’t one.
I was thinking.
I didn’t know the why of it. But I’d seen the what with my own eyes. And that was enough. It stemmed from me. My father. I was now outside of orders. And any killing I did would be for me. I’d be sure to let King know that, one way or another. He could stuff Raven Hill down his wine-gorged gullet. One McLean in charge of his own private army had already clearly been one too many.
I was ready; and, finally, I was angry. I stepped out of the cubicle. Another rebel I’d wounded languished next door.
Right area, wrong place.
I continued along the main corridor. It terminated in a metal door covered with a plastic biohazard curtain, emblazoned with the warning:
ВЫХОДА НЕТ
This is not an exit
I checked that the corridor was clear behind me, pushed on the bar to open it and backed through a plastic shroud into a pool of red light. I saw when I turned around that I was sandwiched in between two pairs of anticontamination drapes. I pushed past the second set and allowed my eyes to adjust. Above me a red and white sign in Russian read:
Limit of cordon sanitaire. Emergency exit only. Strictly no contaminated personnel.
I drew the SIG and crept on.
Around me a light mist oozed from ceiling vents like dry ice, the air-conditioning swirling the tiny moisture particles through the crimson-tinged air. There was a delicate hint of peppermint, too, struggling to establish its presence above the stronger, pervasive smell of antiseptic. The corridor was empty, and apart from the constant throb of the generators, it was quiet. More rooms led off it—all likewise protected with plastic drapes. It felt like a jolt of déjà vu. The red glow, the constant throbbing, the perception but not the tangible feeling of pressure—it was as if I had been transported into the bowels of a nuclear submarine gliding deep beneath the surface.
Like the cells I’d seen on the level above, the doors were furnished with safety-glass viewing ports. Behind them, men lay stretched out on solid benches that were bolted to the floor. Arms pinioned, heads strapped, feet bound—they were all held fast. It was impossible to say whether they were conscious—masks covered their mouths, patches of black fabric their eyes. Every room was mixed between Europeans and Africans: Russians and, I supposed, captured Guineans and Sierra Leoneans.
I turned away from the window I’d been peering through and let the sanitary curtain swish back across it. From down the hall a man in a white coat flew toward me, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the poured-concrete floor as he ran, arm outstretched, cursing in Russian.
“You! Yes, you! What the hell are you doing? Stay where you are. Don’t—” I cut him off with a shot between the eyes, the gentle phutt of the silenced round strangely at odds with the damage it wrought. His legs went out from under him; his broken skull hit the ground with a wet thud. I shot him again and used the pass clipped to his breast pocket to open the door I’d been looking through. I dragged him inside, out of sight of the viewing hatch. A smear of fresh blood dirtied the floor. The smell of peppermint grew stronger.
A European man was strapped down. Shaved head, covered with an EEG headset. Mid-twenties. Younger, maybe. He was tagged with a printed and bar-coded plastic wrist cuff:
Generation 2(iv). Observation Ward 1. Destination Level 3(ii).
Apart from the rise and fall of his chest and seemingly perpetual rapid eye movement, he was motionless. On closer inspection the mask concealed an intubation tube, but he was breathing of his own accord. A catheter and a colostomy bag collected his waste. A drip fed him. He was connected to a cardiograph. I did a double take: the heart rate was exceptionally, almost fatally, high.
At the foot of the bed, a clipboard heavy with computer printouts covered in handwritten notes mapped out his progress over the previous weeks, including dates of infection, when he’d become symptomatic and when he was due to be “harvested.”
Whatever harvesting entailed, it was scheduled for the following day. His blood pressure was recorded as abnormally low, core temperature a steady 102 degrees Fahrenheit. Most remarkable of all was his EEG reading: brain activity remained almost dormant except for occasional, exceptional spikes.
I put the muzzle of the short silencer between his torso and upper arm and prized a gap between them. There it was, the now-familiar tattoo. As I removed the barrel, he opened his eyes. They were crazy, frantic, rolling. He strained
against the straps, gagging on the tracheal tube. I stepped back fast but overcame my natural instinct to shoot. Instead, I stood and watched. As much as his bonds would allow, he writhed and fought, desperate to be free. The cardiogram remained constant. The EEG spiked and then remained active. Whoever or whatever he was, he was alive and kicking and fully awake—despite his vital signs indicating that he should be dead or dying.
I approached him again, but he seemed not to be able to see me. I put the muzzle perpendicular to his left kneecap and fired. His joint imploded. Bone, skin and lead were blown through the exit wound. The EEG remained constant, heart rate unchanged. He was trying to bite and retch the tube out of his throat.
Fuck.
He seemed not to notice what should have been intolerable pain. The room hung heavy with the smell of peppermint. As he struggled, the mask worked loose from his nose. His eyes snapped into focus instantly, locking onto mine. His muscles bulged, neck strained, but he was held fast. I put the muzzle against his sternum and fired again. The bullet opened a hole in his heart. A red jet erupted out of his chest. Morsels of flesh and bone and thick arterial blood showered the room. The cardiogram went haywire and flatlined—but his EEG didn’t flicker, and his eyes stayed locked on mine: focused, alert, alive. I put the SIG to his temple and fired a third time. The EEG died. And suddenly I was looking at the corpse of a man, and not a monster.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” I swung around, gun up, ready to fire. But my finger hesitated on the trigger steel. “There’s no need for that.” He nodded toward the pistol. “But you already know that, don’t you?” I didn’t speak. I had nothing to say. He supported his own weight on crutches, leaning against the doorway. His bandages were fresh and crisp.
“That was a perfect shot. Absolutely brilliant,” he went on. His eyes were etched with pain, but bright and lively despite it. His breath was sharp and shallow. But there was warmth and depth to his brogue.
For the second time that day, I’d drawn a bead on my father.
“I knew someone was coming for me. And God knows those clowns tried to stop you.” He jerked his head backward as he said it. The corridor outside was no doubt filled with an entire platoon of clowns of that sort. “But that’s when I knew,” he continued, tapping his chest, “knew, you understand, that it was you. No one else could have taken a shot like that.”
“No one else would have wanted to,” I said. And it was the truth. Anyone else would have killed him. “But they never wanted you killed, did they?” I said. “There are no such things as coincidences. Isn’t that what you always told me? That’s why London sent me. The one killer they knew who wouldn’t. Couldn’t.”
And then it hit me. If London knew, that meant they had to know who I was, too. Who I really was.
He looked at me quizzically.
“London,” he said, “is not a monolith.” He held out his hand. “Come.”
I lowered the barrel and my eyes. His gaze was magnetic, compulsive. I reached out and, for the first time in twenty-six years, slipped my hand into his. The skin was looser over his knuckles and the strength gone from his fingers, but they were his hands all right. They held me, his golden boy, like those of the gentle giant of my childish memory unalloyed by disappointment.
“I have a lifetime to show you, son,” he said, drawing me close, “and so little time.”
25
He sat on the bed and leaned to one side, taking pressure off the wound. Every movement looked difficult. Even though it was a clean shot and the bullet had passed straight through him, it would still have been extremely painful. His lung had collapsed, and was being treated with a simple one-way valve. It was the only way I could have taken him down convincingly that wouldn’t have killed him. I’d wanted him alive, and where I could find him: in hospital. For now London—and everyone else—had to think I wanted him dead. If there were eyes in the sky, a deliberate miss would have been painfully obvious.
Within a week he’d be almost fully recovered, though whether either of us had that long was doubtful.
“Brilliant. Quite brilliant. Where on earth did you get the idea to shoot me so . . . so perfectly?” He looked genuinely impressed.
“From you.” I looked him straight in the face. But it was hard, and my eyes were drawn back to the floor. It was too soon, too raw, to acknowledge him fully.
“Me? How’s that? I couldn’t hit a barn door with a shotgun. Said so yourself many a time. So did my sergeant major.” We were alone in the room, but outside “the clowns”—Spetsnaz guards—stood watch. I’d allowed myself to be disarmed the moment I’d lowered the SIG.
Submission, not rebellion.
The fouled observation cell had been sealed behind me and the whole corridor hastily disinfected. Both bodies had been bagged and removed quickly and without ceremony.
“Your henchmen.” I nodded to the door. “They tried to kill a friend of mine. Almost exactly the same wound. She was lucky. But you’re alive on purpose.”
“My henchmen?” The thought of the bloody damage done to Juliet stoked my anger.
“Yes, yours. Who tried to kill me, too, by the way.”
“Twenty-six years and the first thing that happens is that we both nearly kill each other. You have to admit there’s a certain irony in that. The ultimate blue on blue.”
“It looks more like red on blue to me. And no, it’s not ironic. It’s fucking tragic.” I looked around me. The ward room was bare, functional. Cold. My voice was loud, indignant. In response he said, did, nothing. I carried on. “There’s no ‘nearly’ about it. You’re alive because I let you live.”
“No vengeance, then?”
“Vengeance belongs to idiots.” I pointed at him. “And forgiveness belongs to the dead.”
“Ah, they did teach you something, then. And better than they taught me—that’s for sure.” He spoke evenly, calmly, although his voice was hoarse with pain and lack of breath. “I miss her, too, Max. With my whole heart. But we don’t have time for that. Not now. The soldiers outside, they know what you are, but they don’t know who you are. If you trust me, you will live. It’s probably too late for me”—he shrugged—“and probably rightly so. But we’ll see.” He paused and cocked his head to one side and continued, as if he’d just thought of another possibility. “If you want to use the time that remains to settle old scores, then of course you may. That’s your right. But we have time for one thing only. So you choose, Max: the past, or the future?”
He paused again. I kept my mouth shut. Seconds ticked.
“OK. You came here to do a job, didn’t you? Eh? Well, trust me, my boy. Trust me, and I’ll show you how it can be done. Otherwise—” He looked to the ceiling and raised his hands, palms up. “Otherwise all this down here and out there will have been for nothing. All those lives. That would be the real catastrophe, Max. That would be unforgivable.”
He was infuriating. His manner hung somewhere between patience and condescension. He spoke in certainties born of an absolute belief in himself that bordered, as they always had, on riddles. For all those years, I had clung on to the love and warmth in his voice and the emotional truth it conveyed. But the quiet superiority of it had escaped me.
I stood there like a fool, pointing my index finger at him.
“Think, Max. Why did you let me live?” I remained silent and let him speak. “You let me live because you want to understand. Correct? And right now that means finishing what you came here to do—even though you don’t know what that is yet. Trust me, Max. I will give you the keys to the kingdom itself. The dead themselves will arise.”
“I’m not in the resurrection game,” I said. Was he mad? Was I in shock? I blinked hard and rolled my shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“Let’s go? Max, we’re completely surrounded. No,” he soothed. “There’s no fighting your way out of this one. If you can’t surrender to me,
you’ll never leave.” I was speaking either to a genius or to an idiot; that much I felt as keenly talking to him then as I had as a teenager. “The commandant knows you are an assassin sent by the British. He also knows you let me live.”
“But why would he let us talk alone like this? Why am I not already dead?”
“Because he doesn’t know you’re my son, and I’ve told him you’re a double agent. Until he arrives, I’m in command, but when he sees what mayhem you’ve unleashed, all bets will be off. Time is short.”
“I see,” I said. And I was beginning to, dimly. “And that’s possible, is it? That the person sent to kill you could actually be on Proshunin’s side?”
“Yes, it is. Very much so. London is not a monolith. Remember?”
“So you said.”
“So you said. ‘That’s why London sent me. The one killer they knew who wouldn’t.’”
The plain fact of the matter was that I couldn’t get out if he didn’t want me to. Right then and there I could no more destroy the bunker than I could bring my mother back from the dead.
“Am I?” I said, as he struggled to his feet.
“Are you what, son?”
“A double agent?”
“I don’t know, Max. I really don’t know.” He shook his head and smiled. “You see, that all depends on who sent you.”
I gave him my arm, and together we stepped from the warm light of his room to the red glow of the corridor. We were still inside the biohazard area. A dozen armed men lined the way, cradling their Kalashnikovs. He spoke to them quietly in Russian. My mother said it was faultless, his accent perfect, his manner quietly commanding. As a child I found her endless eulogy of his powers of persuasion embarrassing. Suddenly I was glad of them.
The Break Line Page 21