by John McNally
“The repaired spine will be even stronger than the original,” added Kaparis.
“And then what?” asked Sir James, who had now passed into a state of utter bemusement.
Leopold hit a key to start the homeward journey on the animation.
“We all return to the support craft and navigate back to the neck for cannula extraction. Thereafter we will return to our normal size in time for a celebration breakfast – with Dr Kaparis in full attendance!”
“A celebration …? Breakfast …?”
“Yes. We’re going in tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Speed is essential, and so is your presence,” said Kaparis. “If I may cut to the chase, you will both be rewarded. Ten million dollars is on deposit for each of you in Swiss bank accounts.”
“Never! This is madness! If you think for one moment—” started Nico, then halted as live CCTV footage of her husband and two young children came up on another screen … They seemed to be enjoying themselves, dressing up in odd costumes in some kind of grand hotel.
“I have also, as a precaution,” Kaparis explained, “invited both your immediate families to be my guests for forty-eight hours. They think you have set up a surprise Murder Mystery weekend for them. Let us hope there will be no actual murders to spoil the fun. There won’t be, of course … not if you do your duty. You will soon be free and very rich …”
“More than that …” interrupted Sir James, his voice shaking as he stared at the operation playing out again on the hologram. “We will have conquered nature itself.”
“Yes …” whispered Leopold, delighted to see the old surgeon catch the fever.
Nico kept staring at the live feed of her husband and children.
“You cannot be serious …”
“Deadly,” confirmed Kaparis. “Everybody remembers the first men on the moon. Well, this is our Apollo. You, those first heroes. The first beneath the skin. The first to make a man walk again.”
Leopold took Nico’s hands in his.
“Think what this could mean, the possibilities of this technology, of true nano-surgery!”
Sir James’s old eyes shone with wonder. Thomas Leopold grinned like the schoolboy he always would be. Nico opened her mouth to protest, but the sight of her little boys stopped her. She must save them. Any thought beyond that was unbearable.
“This isn’t just medicine, this is history!” proclaimed Sir James.
A tear rolled down Leopold’s cheek.
SEVENTEEN
FEBRUARY 21 16:52 (GMT+3). C-130 Hercules, G&T Romanian Command, National Air Defence Base, Kluge
Alive …
Grandma wept.
Delta Salazar stepped forward to grab the microphone and demand confirmation, her heart choking on the words. “She’s there?”
In the overcrowded, and now overexcited, temporary G&T HQ in the hull of the transport aircraft, full of technicians and soldiers trying to coordinate events and process incoming information, it was difficult to make sense of what she had heard.
Carla … Alive …
“She is being taken to the Great Cavern. To the Master,” said the distorted voice of the Primo over the comms.
Delta dropped into a chair in shock.
The note from the Primo which Santiago had handed to Henri Clément had been digested immediately. Henri had given an LPI16 data-burst communications device to Santiago to take straight back to the monastery.
Li Jun had been shown a picture of Santiago and the shock of recognition had broken a dam in her mind. Suddenly they knew the whole social structure of the monastery, the tutors, the Tyros, the Siguri, the Carriers. She even remembered “a cave”.
As is so often the case, thought Al, a tiny breakthrough opens the floodgates.
Soon after the LPI comms link had been opened between the Primo and Commander King, three facts had been established.
First, Carla Salazar was in the monastery and hiding at grave peril among the Tyros.
Second, Kaparis himself was in residence in a secret cavern beneath the mountain.
Third, there were “little people” at large and Carla Salazar apparently had one of her own.
“One of our own …” Al corrected.
He had never experienced such intoxicating, delicious relief. He was so elated he thought he might actually float off. Only his mother, weeping across the cabin, held him to the earth.
“He’s alive!” said Al.
“I know … I think … I think I’d been blocking it all out,” said Grandma, holding back tears. “I think I’d been preparing for the worst, and now to know he’s just a few miles away …”
“I know,” said Al.
“Well, it’s just too much. I must act, I must do something!”
“We will, Mother, I promise. Just as soon as we get more information—”
“No, I must do something,” his mother interrupted, “or I’ll lose my mind. I’ve left my knitting at home.”
“You’ve got plenty to do! Just keep working with Li Jun. There’s more she can tell us, I’m sure. Do anything you can to jog her memory, do any crazy thing you think might work.”
“He’s alive,” Grandma repeated, anchoring herself in those words.
Al squeezed her hand and turned away to find Delta right in his face. For a fraction of a second he thought she might kiss him. Instead she said, “Send me in. At nano-scale. Take me back to base. Shrink me and send me in.”
“You know I’m not reshrinking anybody till I know it’s safe. Besides, he has nano-radar and— Ow! You’re breaking my hand!”
Delta reluctantly released her grip on Al, but still tried to fry him with her eyes. “She’s my sister.”
“I know, and for her sake you’ve got to undertake your most testing mission to date.”
“What?”
“Do as little as possible. If we run headlong at this, it’s just going to get a lot of people killed. We have to find a back way in. A trap door. A trick. Meditate, free your mind. Seriously. It’s done me the power of good.”
She snarled and stomped off.
Over the comms link, the Primo was seeking reassurance. “Commander King, the greatest care must be taken to protect the Carrier children – they will fight, but—”
“Our raid, when it comes,” said Commander King, “will be perfect in its execution. You need not be concerned. You are already surrounded by some of the most sophisticated killers on the planet—”
Listening from his snowdrift, Henri gave a modest shrug.
“…But right now, an attack is not imminent. You will of course be warned when one is.”
The possibility of an armed raid, a gas attack, a siege, had already been discounted. They needed to know more, much more. They had Carrier help now, but as for how much time they actually had, who knew …
“So what are you going to do?” asked the Primo.
Amid all the emotion, Al felt his way forward. They needed agency inside the castle. A spy. He looked across the cabin and found the answer.
Cometh the hour, cometh the … child.
FEBRUARY 21 18:07 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki
Any minute now, thought Carla …
She had waited for an opportunity to look for Kaparis, to look for Finn, but so far, with each moment that passed, she seemed to be getting further and further from a moment alone.
After winning the final place on the Tyro team, she had been taken down through the cave system to join the other seven elite Tyros waiting like zombies for the mission to begin. The Great Cavern fitted Finn’s description exactly, right down to the extraordinary submarine they were led towards. They entered through airlock doors in the huge hold, which was full of cables that had been loaded onto racks. They were led past the REACTOR ROOM and on through another steel door, marked CREW, and into the crew compartment. One side was lined with bunks, recessed like tombs, while the other was laden with subaqua kit – air tanks,
helmets, utility belts packed with all kinds of tools and gadgets, and propulsion units like hoverboards.
The Tyros began to strip and put on fluorescent yellow wetsuits, at which point Carla began to seriously wonder what she’d got herself into. She had no choice but to copy them and soon found herself lying on her bunk in a wetsuit, saying nothing, thinking. Any minute now …
A technician was coming like an air hostess along the line of bunks to make sure they were all comfortable. Weird, thought Carla.
In the centre of the crew compartment Carla could see a spiral staircase leading up to the glass canopy and the bridge. It didn’t seem like anyone was up there. Maybe she could—
The technician gripped her arm as she reached Carla’s bunk.
“Good luck!” she said, and Carla felt something sting. She just had time to register the hypodermic pen in the technician’s hand before everything went happy white and she passed out.
The three neurologists were led out to be put through a crash course in nano-physics and the mission particulars. As they walked away, Finn saw the two reflected eyes on the Kaparis optical array swivel round to fix on him.
Kaparis said nothing, turning things over in his mind until he came to the appropriate conclusion.
“Raffles,” he said to Heywood. “I wish to dine with Raffles.”
Raffles? Raffles who? thought Finn.
He didn’t have to wait long to find out.
Heywood returned with a glass tank.
Oh great … Finn thought.
Hudson had one just like it, a vivarium for Dweezel, his pet snake.
Heywood put the reptile tank on top of the iron lung so that Kaparis could see it directly, then plugged in its heat lamp.
There was Raffles in all his glory. Six lethal, starving inches of Uromastyx lizard.
FEBRUARY 21 20:04 (GMT+3). 38,000 feet and falling, Ukrainian-Romanian airspace
SCHCHHHHHHWHWHWWWWWWWWWWWWWW …
The air was violent noise as they dropped through the darkness at 120mph.
Hudson clung on, partly through primal fear (“I’ve never jumped out of a moving plane before!”), but also because his drop buddy was Yvette Dupuis of Commando Hubert, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Let alone been strapped to. Despite the fact that she took absolutely no notice of him whatsoever, and perhaps because of this, he knew he would love her for ever.
On the altimeter round her wrist the digits spun downwards – 12,000… 11,500… 11,000…
SCHCHHHHHHWHWHWWWWWWWWWWWWWW …
Through night sights, Yvette picked out the blinking infra-red landing light.
“Trois, deux, un …”
“Oeuuoooo …”
WHACK!
The chute deployed and the harness bit. They went from 120mph to 12mph in two seconds flat and Hudson spent the remaining few metres of the drop vomiting into a paper bag.
Yvette drifted to a perfect halt beside Santiago and Henri.
Santiago regarded Hudson, the “special agent”. He seemed an unlikely saviour. But who was he to question the ways of the Primo or the Investigating Authority?
“Hut-sun?” said Santiago.
Yvette decoupled Hudson, and he wobbled forward on weakling legs, handing over his sick bag.
Santiago took the bag and examined it. Was it a gift? Was it magic sick? He pocketed it for safekeeping, then took a set of sackcloth Carrier rags and started to dress him.
“Quick, Hut-sun! Quick!”
The sun swung across the sky, fell, and the day died, as it always did for Kaparis, with grand operatic warbling.
“… O della madre mia casa gioconda
La wally ne andrà da te, da te …”
What a voice, what a woman …!
When Maria Callas hit the high notes, the test-tube Finn was trapped in – now clamped and suspended just above Kaparis’s head – threatened to burst.
“… Nè più la rivedrai!
Mai più, mai più!”
Kaparis gurgled like a baby. What a way to go!
Heywood finished preparing his favourite meal. Le caviar Beluga dans une mousse de champignons – a dozen tiny spheres of the finest caviar wobbling atop a foam of matsutake mushrooms – and carried it over on the tip of a long lab spoon.
“Waft, Heywood! Waft!”
It had been his delight to wave every treat he was consuming past Infinity Drake in order to torture him – and past Raffles, poised in his vivarium on top of the iron lung, in order to drive him to a frenzy of hunger. Raffles followed the spoon with mad swivel eyes, thwapping his whip-like tongue against the glass as it passed. The foulest creature ever to stalk the deserts of Niger, he had somehow evaded security in their Saharan base and crawled into the heart of the complex, where he’d been trapped. Kaparis had admired the lizard’s pluck and the elegant dismemberment of his prey, and so instead of being killed he’d been kept on as staff and got brought out to amuse the Master as and when required.
And he was most definitely required now.
The culinary treat completed its journey as it was fed through the optical array and deposited on Kaparis’s fat grey tongue.
“It looks like spit with black bits in it!” shouted Finn. “I hope it improves your breath!”
“To think you shall never know the heavenly pleasure of higher things,” Kaparis replied. “Never drink the finest wines, never experience the music of Wagner, never complete the mile’s run. Oh, the sunsets you will never see. No one will ever be kissed by you, or know your heart’s song. You will be like Peter Pan. Except no one will be told your story – or even remember you by the time I’ve finished with your family and friends. You will exist in my memory alone.”
Finn shuddered at the thought. He had no plan, and by the look of Raffles he had nothing left to lose. But he still held onto one slight hope, and it lay just beyond the lizard’s cage. But how to get there?
A hipster technician appeared on the screens above. One of Kaparis’s eyes twisted on the optical array and glared at him.
“Yeah, hi,” drawled the technician. “The accelerator is – like – ready to rumba?”
These relaxed young friends of Leopold’s were all – like – very competent, but extremely irritating to have to listen to. Idiots, with rising inflection.
“What?” Kaparis spat back.
“The technical staff wish you to know we’re approaching completion,” Heywood translated.
Kaparis took in the Great Cavern overview on another screen. The last component of the accelerator was being pushed into position around the submarine. Five years of research, design, plotting, criminality, massive investment, and diabolical action were coming to fruition.
He took it all in. The electrostatic hum of the particle accelerators as they began to power up. The tented operating theatre. The technical data now cascading down his screens … Infinity Drake trapped in his test-tube.
It was all undeniably fantastic. And so was he. He deserved this.
This was Kaparis’s time.
Finn watched his lips twist like struggling slugs.
“Double power to the core!” Kaparis ordered. “Begin the countdown.”
“Sir, we should be making our way down to the operating theatre,” counselled Heywood.
“Yes, yes, just one last thing …” said Kaparis.
Finn felt Kaparis’s eyes roll round the optical array and zoom in on him.
“Dinner time!”
FEBRUARY 21 21:55 (GMT+3). Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki. T minus 20:00
Far above, Hudson felt just like he did every time he had to do a reading in assembly. His throat was tight and dry. His heart thumping. Should he pretend to faint? No, pull yourself together, Hudson, he told himself. This was not reading aloud a few paragraphs on Sir Ernest Shackleton, this was a save-the-world situation.
He had been whisked across the valley, smuggled into the extraordinary castle and taken straight to the Primo, who had traced his features while
some malnourished, fearful children looked on.
“They sent you?” the Primo had said eventually.
“I’m the only kid they’ve got,” Hudson had replied.
Whatever their misgivings, the die was cast. They had to put their hopes in him.
“We’ve got to get you into the Great Cavern,” the Primo said.
An hour later, Hudson found himself crawling through the narrow roof space above the Abbot’s High Chapel, making his way through the fabric of the ancient buildings in the wake of Santiago, little Olga, and half a dozen other Carriers.
The creeping and crawling ended beneath the great false dome, where a climbing frame of structural metalwork and powerful hydraulics was suspended above a thousand-foot open shaft.
It was onto this climbing frame above the abyss that Hudson was now urged.
“Come, Hut-sun!” Santiago whispered and led the way.
Hudson took a deep breath and began to climb to the bottom edge. Sound echoed up from far below. They could make out structures, even see activity, but they were too far away to make any sense of it.
Which is why the other Carriers had brought the rope.
And why one end of it was tied round his waist.
“Uno, duo, tres?” asked Santiago, secured to a rope of his own.
Hudson gulped. The Carriers looked at him, little bony faces expectant in the gloom, somehow in awe of him.
“Crumbs,” said Hudson, and he stepped off the frame, letting himself dangle on the rope, the Carriers taking his weight via a pulley.
Get a grip, Hudson, he told himself again, as he held the rope as tight as he could.
Santiago ordered the Carriers, “Vite!”
And down they went, into the darkness above the Great Cavern.
“Bravo, Hut-sun!” cheered Santiago.
If Yvette could see me now, thought Hudson.
FEBRUARY 21 21:55 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki. T minus 19:55
The lid of the vivarium opened and Raffles stirred, flicking out his evil pink tongue, suspicious.