The Hydra Protocol

by David Wellington

  “That might explain why the local gangsters want him dead,” Chapel said, nodding. “And why he always looks like somebody just ran over his childhood dog.”

  Angel wasn’t done, though. “In 2011, he got in trouble again, this time some pretty deep doo-doo. He anonymously posted a document online that claimed the prime minister of Romania had plagiarized his doctoral thesis back in grad school. That doesn’t sound like much, but . . . I won’t go into the details of Romanian politics, but there was already a feud going between two rival political parties, and it looked like this document might take down the prime minister and his party, whether it was true or not. There were riots in the street, and some people got hurt. It didn’t help when further charges of corruption kept popping up. The whole mess still hasn’t been worked out.”

  “Bogdan doesn’t mind stepping on powerful toes, huh?”

  “He was arrested for fomenting political unrest. They were ready to throw the book at him. I mean, send him away to prison for life and never let him touch a computer again. But then—damn. Chapel, you’re going to sense a theme here.”

  “You’re about to tell me he disappeared.”

  “Yeah,” Angel replied. “Yeah. Just . . . fell off the map. The charges were never dropped, but they were also never prosecuted. There’s no record of the case anywhere in the legal databases after a certain date, and nothing whatsoever in Bogdan’s file. He just turned into a ghost. You know, the funny thing there is—”

  “The funny thing is that was the same year Nadia got her medal,” Chapel said, guessing what she was about to say.

  “Uh. Yeah,” Angel said. “How did you know that?” Sometimes he could still surprise her.

  “She said that she’d worked with Bogdan before. Whatever secret thing she was doing that got her that medal, he must have been part of it. She got him out of trouble in exchange for his help.”

  “There’s no evidence for any of that. Nothing you could ever prove. But as a working hypothesis, it makes sense.”

  Chapel nodded to himself. “Okay. Thanks, Angel. It’s good to know who I’m working with, even if that means I’m not allowed to know who they are. Is there anything else you have for me?”

  Angel was silent for a while before answering. “There are no new messages on your voice mail, if that’s what you mean.” No messages from Julia, in other words. “Chapel, if you want to talk about—”

  “Not right now,” he said.

  IN TRANSIT: JULY 15, 20:14

  Chapel walked back to the sleeper compartments where Bogdan and Nadia were, passing by a series of windows that showed the countryside rushing past. They were in Bulgaria by now, he estimated, though it was hard to say from what he saw. The sun was an hour away from setting, and it hung like a golden ball over endless fields that stretched away in every direction. In the distance he could just see the Balkan mountains like a pale smudge on the horizon, but they could have been anything. He could have been looking at the American Midwest, or the wheat fields of the Ukraine, or any of a hundred other identical views from a hundred different countries.

  It was hard to remember just how far he was from home, though in another way, he couldn’t get it off his mind. He was out of his depth here. Nadia knew the local customs and manners, knew how to work a covert operation in this part of the world. But Chapel was just along for the ride. He wasn’t even her hired muscle—it was clear she could take care of herself. He really was just here to witness her operation.

  He hated feeling like a fifth wheel. Third wheel in this case—Nadia needed Bogdan badly enough to risk getting shot for him.

  Chapel took one last look at the fields and sighed and pushed through the automatic door to the sleeper car.

  They’d taken two compartments, one for Nadia and one for Bogdan and Chapel to share. He was not surprised to find the two of them in the shared compartment. Bogdan was sitting on the floor, rocking his head back and forth. Maybe to the music in his headphones, but it made him look like he was suffering from some kind of neurological condition. He didn’t even look up as Chapel came in. He was tapping the keys of his MP3 player over and over, as if it were a nervous tic.

  Nadia was sprawled out on one of the bunks, leafing through a magazine with a lot of splashy color photographs. It looked like a gossip rag, but it was written in a language Chapel didn’t recognize, much less read. She looked up at him with a big smile when he came inside.

  He took his bag down from the overhead rack and rummaged around inside until he found what he needed. Then he took off his jacket and studied the tear in the left sleeve. It had been ripped during their escape from the construction site and it looked like the damage was too severe to repair with just a simple sewing kit. “I liked this jacket,” he said, glancing up to meet Nadia’s eye.

  “You dress up well,” she said, giving him a sympathetic mock frown. “We can get you another one in Istanbul. We have a long layover there.”

  He nodded and stuck one finger through the hole. “Yeah. I doubt there are any international alerts out for a man with a torn jacket, but you never know.” He folded the ruined jacket up and put it on the empty bunk, then started unbuttoning his shirt. “So you’re a Siberian, huh?” he asked, mostly just for something to say. To draw attention away from what he was about to do.

  She tilted her head to one side. “Ya Sibiryak, da,” she confirmed. “And proud of it.”

  “You said back in the train station that you were Siberian. I’ll admit, you’re not what I expected a Russian agent to look like.”

  Nadia laughed. “What, I am not blond and statuesque, with big breasts and sad eyes? I get that a lot. Many people think I’m not Russian. But they forget that only a little bit of Russia is west of the Urals, and European. The vast majority of the Fatherland is in Asia, and many, many Russians look like I do.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything like—”

  She waved away his protest. “I’m not offended. I would imagine that to Americans, Siberia might as well be on the far side of the moon.”

  Chapel couldn’t help but grin. “Growing up, we were always taught Siberia was where they sent you if they wanted to forget you ever existed. We even use it—and I’m sorry if this sounds mean—but we use ‘siberia’ as a term to refer to, say, the worst table in a restaurant where nobody wants to sit. The table closest to the toilets.”

  Nadia shook her head in resignation. “A lot of Russians might use it the same way. Many Soviets were exiled there, and many more forced to move there for work. They consider it the end of the world. But others, those born there, love the place. I was born in Yakutia—what they call the Sakha Republic, now.”

  “You get back there much?”

  She sighed and put down her magazine. “Let me guess. Your bosses asked you to find out everything you can about me. So they can make a dossier.”

  “Just making small talk,” he told her.

  She laughed. “I take no offense, even if you lie to me. We’re in the same line of work; we know the routine. We keep our eyes open and our mouths shut.”

  Chapel glanced over at Bogdan.

  “Don’t worry about him; he can’t hear us over his music,” she said.

  Chapel wondered if that was true, but he didn’t say anything. He pulled off his shirt and then his undershirt. The barbed wire that had ruined his jacket had cut all the way through three layers of cloth and down into the silicone flesh of his artificial arm.

  “You’re hurt,” Nadia said.

  “Not really.” He couldn’t really see the damage so he reached under the clamp that held the arm on and released it. It went dead as it separated from his body. He used his right hand to lift it away from his shoulder and laid it across his lap.

  That made Bogdan’s eyes go wide behind their fringe of hair. His repetitive tapping on his MP3 player grew more frenetic, but he said nothing.

  Nadia, of course, had seen the arm come off before, back on Donny’s party yacht. She jumped dow
n from her bunk and crossed the compartment to run one hand over the silicone prosthetic. The damage was restricted to a thin tear across the bicep. There was no blood, of course, and the wire hadn’t cut all the way through the silicone, but the tear was a couple of inches long and it gaped open like a pair of lips. If he left it like that, the damage would only get worse over time, opening a little wider every time he flexed the arm. Luckily he’d brought a repair kit. “Can you help me with this?” he asked. He opened the flat case he’d taken from his luggage and took out a silicone patch. “It’s tough to open the packaging with just one hand.”

  She took the patch—it looked like a large adhesive bandage but was much stronger and more sticky—and peeled away its paper backing. With her small, nimble fingers she laid the patch across the tear and then smoothed it out. It was the same flesh color as the silicone and it was almost invisible once it was on.

  “This will hold, until we can send you home?” she asked.

  “It’ll do. It shouldn’t restrict my mobility, and it’ll keep the damage from spreading.”

  She looked up into his eyes, and he was suddenly very aware of how close she was to him. She was beautiful, he realized. Striking—the word he’d been using—didn’t really do her justice. Her eyes were huge, and very bright and clear, and as they studied him he smelled her perfume, too. Something very subtle and slightly musky.

  “I haven’t been back to Siberia in over a decade,” she said, answering the question he’d asked earlier. “I miss it, yes. If that was your next question.”

  “Maybe,” he told her.

  “It’s a whole other world, out there,” she said, looking out the train window. “Out in the taiga forests. Under the pines . . .” She shook her head. “Nothing like Moscow, or any part of Russia west of the Urals. Not nearly so crowded.”

  “Some people might say not as developed,” Chapel pointed out. He was after something, but he didn’t get it, because just then their conversation was interrupted by a curse.

  “What the shit?” Bogdan had risen from the floor and come over to the bunk where Chapel’s arm lay. He looked at it with wide eyes, holding his hair back maybe so he could see it better. He glanced over at Chapel, then reached out one long, thin finger as if he was going to poke the arm.

  “Careful,” Chapel said. “When it’s off my shoulder, I don’t control it. It might grab you if you get too close.”

  He’d meant it as a joke, but Bogdan turned to look at him with an expression of real fear. He drew his finger back. Then he nodded, once, and went to sit back down. As far away from the arm as he could get. His fingers tapped at the keys of his MP3 player so fast they seemed to blur.

  Nadia and Chapel shared a laugh. Then she turned to look at Chapel. “Okay,” she said. “Your turn.”

  “I’m sorry?” he asked.

  “I think I will turn in now. Go back to my compartment.” She gathered up her magazine and held it against her chest. “But first—you asked me a personal question. So now I get to ask you one.”

  Chapel gritted his teeth before he answered. He never liked talking about himself. Talking about himself to foreign agents was even lower on his list. But he nodded, eventually. “I guess that’s fair.”

  Nadia scratched herself behind one ear. She twisted her mouth around as if she was trying to think of the best question to ask, as if she would only ever have this one chance. Her eyes narrowed, and she said, “The first day I met you, you were talking about a woman. Someone back in New York.”

  Every muscle in Chapel’s body tensed. Giving away national secrets was one thing, but this—

  “You were going to propose.”

  “Yeah,” he said, barely moving his lips.

  “Ah. I don’t even need to ask. I can see the answer already, on your face. She said no.”

  “She said no,” Chapel confirmed.

  Instantly Nadia’s face fell. She started to make a sound, the last sound Chapel ever wanted to hear. The sad ohhh sound that people made when they felt sorry for you.

  “Don’t,” he growled. Then he shook his head and tried to push away the anger. “I’m sorry. I just—I’d rather not—”

  “Of course,” she said. She pulled back. “I’m sorry I brought this up.”

  “It’s all right,” he forced himself to say.

  She nodded and opened the door of the compartment. “You don’t want to be comforted, I understand. You still want the pain. Okay. I’ll leave you be.” She stepped out into the hallway, but she was still looking at him, searching his face. “For now, anyway,” she said, and gave him a look he had no idea how to interpret. Then she walked away, toward her own compartment.

  He reached over and closed the door. When he turned around, he found Bogdan hovering over his artificial arm, as if daring himself to touch it.

  ISTANBUL, TURKEY: JULY 16, 07:32

  The train pulled into Sirkeci Terminal an hour or so after sunrise. Bogdan was snoring in his bunk, his headphones slipped over half his face, but Chapel was already up, doing some basic calisthenics in the narrow compartment. Outside the train he saw the city piling up around them, getting denser and smokier with each passing second. He was packed and ready to go long before the wheels stopped rolling.

  Nadia came by and helped him pull Bogdan out of his bunk. The hacker looked half dead, even though he’d gotten a full night’s sleep. “Is unfair,” he moaned. “Is not right. To wake up like this, with no caffeine available.”

  “We’ll get you coffee,” Nadia promised him. “Turkey is famous for its coffee!” She gave Chapel a long look. “Come on,” she said. “End of the line!”

  Chapel gathered up his luggage and kept Bogdan moving, inch by inch, toward the exit from the train. The platform was thronged with people, some trying to get on board even as the passengers debarked. The air was thick with announcements and cries in a number of languages Chapel didn’t understand. A child came rushing up with hands outstretched as if he desperately needed help, his face streaked with tears, but one of the train’s conductors shouted at him and the boy stopped crying instantly and ran off. “Beggars!” the conductor said to Chapel in English. “Give them a coin, and they will never leave you alone. Be careful of pickpockets!”

  Chapel nodded halfhearted thanks to the man and followed Nadia as she headed into the main terminal, a big square room with white and pink walls and arabesque arches and far more people in it than comfort would allow. Nadia steered her way through the crowd so deftly it was all Chapel could do to keep up, with Bogdan in tow. Outside the terminal she led them down a broad road called, of all things, Kennedy Avenue, through a whole new throng of people that made it impossible to see anything. Elbows and shoulders buffeted Chapel constantly and people called out to him over and over, either greeting him or warning him to keep out of their way, he couldn’t say. Finally they broke through the press and came to a railing overlooking a broad stretch of water—the Bosphorus, Chapel figured, based on what he knew of the local geography.

  Morning fog covered much of the water, still, but Chapel could make out enough to be impressed. The broad ribbon of water cut the city into two halves, each rising up away from the strait on steep hills studded with towers and spires. The water was thick with boats of every imaginable description, from huge tankers and freight ships loaded down with multicolored cargo containers to towering cruise ships to square-nosed ferries to little wooden craft with triangular sails that tacked back and forth across the current.

  “Look at the yalis,” Nadia said, pointing out a line of structures down at the water’s edge, crowding both sides of the strait. They were houses of elaborately carved wood that looked as if they floated on the water, giving the impression that the whole city was just one enormous raft bobbing on the current.

  It was a beautiful view, Chapel had to admit. The constant roar and blare of traffic behind him, the human press, couldn’t spoil that. He found himself almost smiling. He’d always loved the water and watching the way it
was in constant motion, constant change.

  They found a little place where Bogdan got his coffee, while Nadia and Chapel breakfasted on sweet rolls crusted with nuts and dried fruit. It felt good to be off the train, even in the crowded little restaurant.

  “We have hours still, until our plane departs,” Nadia said, wiping currant pulp from her fingers with a tiny paper napkin. “How do you wish to spend the time?”

  “We should keep moving. I doubt anyone followed us this far,” Chapel said, “but we shouldn’t take any chances.” He looked over at Bogdan. The hacker was going to be a problem, if they needed to keep a low profile. With his very short hair Chapel himself could blend in with the locals, and Nadia’s Asian features weren’t going to draw much attention in Istanbul. But the tall, lanky Romanian was bound to draw stares. It would be best, Chapel knew, if they could just find some place to lie low, out of sight, but that would mean, say, checking into a hotel. Which would leave a paper trail. The second-best option was to find the biggest crowd possible and disappear inside it.

  “Perhaps I may suggest something. Something that has nothing to do with our business,” Nadia said. One corner of her mouth curved upward in a sly smile. She put down her napkin and turned to face the windows at the front of the café. “The Hagia Sophia is just a little bit away. It is supposed to be amazing to see.”