The building on her right was old and pink, paled almost white. Its entrance was sealed off and the intercom appeared out of service. Against the rundown façade, a new drainage pipe stood out. The building on her left was in a worse state. Its walls were peeling layers of peppermint green and the windows were worn, the frames rusted. A chunk of rendering was missing from the wall, revealing bare brick. Moss grew between crevices.
The only place the operative could go was over the roof on Olesya’s left, above the missing chunk in the wall. It was possible she had swung off the street lamp that was fixed to the wall and climbed onto the roof, walked over the tiles to a balcony in the corner, almost within arm’s reach. The balcony was decorated with withering potted plants and a single drainage pipe. But there was no evidence of disturbed snow on the roof.
‘I see the operative,’ Ark said.
‘That can’t be right,’ Olesya said. ‘Where?’
Ark watched the woman make a move toward Karamysheva. She didn’t have curly hair, but it could still be his sister. She approached the officer. This had to be the operative Olesya was tracking.
‘Closing on her right now,’ Ark said. ‘Black leather jacket, shoulder-length hair.’
‘I said navy coat and long hair. What about her face?’ Olesya asked. ‘Describe her face.’
‘Can’t see, but definitely a black jacket. Are you sure it was navy?’ Ark asked.
‘Of course I’m sure.’
The woman passed Karamysheva and her arm slipped behind his neck. Her hand closed into a fist and she jabbed him with something, then walked on without breaking her stride.
Karamysheva staggered against a dark blue van.
‘She sedated him!’ Ark said under his breath.
‘Don’t engage,’ Olesya said. ‘Keep walking.’
Maybe Val straightened her hair…
The van was a high-roofed Ford with no windows. Its rear doors opened and two plain-clothed men jumped out, followed by two more. The van’s engine turned over as they lifted Karamysheva by his shoulders. The officer couldn’t fight them off, he couldn’t even use his legs. They hauled him from the pavement and into the van. It was down the street before anyone seemed to notice, and disappeared around a corner.
‘They have the officer,’ he said under his breath.
‘Keep looking,’ Olesya said.
A few curious onlookers stared blankly at the space where the van had been. The woman in the black coat was farther ahead; she made a quick left at Pudel Baar and disappeared. Ark rounded the corner after her.
‘I’m going for the black jacket,’ he said.
Olesya sounded out of breath. ‘Don’t lose her!’
The operative walked under an archway and into a T-intersection. Ark crossed the road, cutting in front of a champagne BMW coupe. The driver hit the horn, and the operative looked over her shoulder at the noise, saw Ark and broke into a run. She fled under an archway and went right.
‘Olesya!’ Ark said as he sprinted down the road. ‘Can you hear me?’
He accelerated under the archway and turned after her. This alley was extremely narrow, barely wide enough for one vehicle. One side was centuries old—a castle wall of the old town. Ahead, the operative was nowhere to be seen. He tore off across the cobblestoned road.
He wasn’t letting this operative go.
He wasn’t letting Val go.
At the next intersection he paused, scanned the streets. No sign. He dug into his pocket for his monocular. Through its magnified scope, he saw a couple holding hands on one street and absolutely nothing on the other.
He’d lost her.
For a while, he stood there. Stood there and felt nothing.
‘Ark?’ Olesya approached him from behind, catching her breath.
Anger burned from him. ‘Where were you?’ He grabbed her by the collar of her jacket. ‘I needed you!’
With one smooth motion, she brushed his arms off.
‘Why weren’t you there?’ he yelled, shoving her.
She absorbed the blow, taking two steps back. ‘I told you, I was following the operative in the navy coat.’
‘No, you were chasing ghosts,’ he said. ‘The operative who sedated the officer, she wore a black coat. I saw it with my own eyes! And now he’s gone.’
‘He doesn’t matter,’ Olesya said.
‘I know that!’ Ark said. ‘But I lost both of them. We lost both of them.’
The energy slipped from him. He propped himself up against the castle wall. ‘I tried to get her but...’ He couldn’t finish what he was saying. It meant failure and he couldn’t accept that.
Olesya moved closer. ‘The operative in the black jacket. Was it Val?’
He breathed slowly through his nose, calming himself. But there was so much disappointment and shame inside and he had nowhere to move it.
Our only goal was to identify the operative, and we couldn’t even do that.
‘Do you think it could be her?’ Olesya asked.
‘If she had a haircut. She was the same height, but I couldn’t really see her face,’ Ark said. ‘I couldn’t get close enough.’
‘It’s possible,’ she said.
He pressed both hands up against the wall. He shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t her. I just wanted it to be.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Tears filled his eyes and he couldn’t be bothered wiping them away. ‘I’ve lost her, haven’t I? Forever.’
‘You can’t give up,’ Olesya said.
He saw a tear roll down her cheek, but he knew it wasn’t for his sister.
‘I already have,’ he said.
Chapter Eight
Jay ran.
Over the satellite dishes and under the thick cables of Rocinha. Over a tin roof and through a broken window. His younger brother struggled to keep pace.
The building they were running for wouldn’t be empty for long. BOPE, Rio de Janeiro’s Police Special Forces, were inbound to raid it. This was no place for young boys to be exploring. Jay had a few moments to grab anything of value before the police confiscated it. Illegal cable broadcast equipment, ammunition, anything he could sell on the street.
He hurried across the second level, slowing to step around a large hole in the floor. Catching up, Jay’s brother almost tumbled through the window, startling a nearby rabbit as it scampered over the concrete. Jay did a quick sweep, finding only a bottle of soda and a fireworks cylinder. He opened the fireworks cylinder and grinned to find live ammunition.
‘BOPE!’ his brother screamed.
Gunfire cracked past the building. Jay froze. His brother had stumbled on something. Jay stepped out into the main room and saw shadows of soldiers moving past the windows. Fear riveted him where he stood. He looked back. His brother was hanging from the edge of the hole.
It was a long drop to the concrete floor below.
‘Jay!’ his brother yelled.
He wanted to run to his brother, but gunfire echoed around them and he couldn’t move. His brother’s fingertips slipped from the edge.
Jay heard him land on the concrete below.
Quito, Ecuador
Jay jolted awake.
The same goddamn dream every time, ending the same way.
He covered his sudden flinch with a hearty clearing of his throat and sat upright. Nasira was in the driver’s seat beside him, but the car was stationary. Beside him stood the fishing rod Aviary had insisted they purchase. He peered through the windshield. There was nothing in front of them except flat ground. Grass gave way to metal and concrete, slicked by rain. With his infrared vision stolen from him, he couldn’t make out much beyond the muddy haze and downpour, but he could see the capital city. Old and new towns intertwined between volcanic peaks, rolling into the horizon and through the interandean valley. Nasira had parked them on one of those volcanic peaks.
Aviary sat in the back of the car. Her dyed hair hung over her face as she pecked away at her laptop’s keyboard. Damien sat
next to her, pretending to understand what she was doing.
‘Oh, cool,’ he said.
Aviary gave him a sidelong glance, then continued.
‘Is this the place?’ Jay asked.
Aviary chewed her lip. ‘We’re here. This is … unofficially … an Intron Genetics Incorporated data center.’
Jay inspected the flat surface before them. ‘Did someone take the data center? And run away with it?’
Aviary focused on her laptop. ‘It’s inside the mountain, dummy.’
Jay sighed, loudly. ‘Who puts a data center inside a mountain?’
She counted her fingers and said, ‘Ambient temperature, low risk of natural disasters, physical security—’
‘OK, OK, I get it,’ Jay said.
‘So do we have to infiltrate another facility?’ Damien asked. ‘Because we don’t have a great track record with that.’
‘Nope,’ Aviary said. ‘I can get access from up here. Hopefully.’
‘Hopefully?’ Damien said.
‘If you want to find out where they’re hiding their research, this is the place,’ Aviary said.
‘We could just go in there and punch someone important,’ Jay said. ‘Ask them where it’s at.’
‘Even I think that’s a stupid idea,’ Nasira said. ‘And I like punching people.’
Jay slouched in his seat. ‘Do you have a better idea?’
‘Look, chances are the location of their research center isn’t their most protected secret,’ Aviary said. ‘I’m sure they’ve got all sorts of sensitive things going on they’ll keep nicely locked up. We don’t need that; we just need an address. I’m hoping that won’t be as hard to find as their really classified stuff, like Top-Secret-Project-for-Sucking-Powers-from-Poor-Suckers.’ She met Jay’s gaze. ‘No offense.’
‘No, you’re right,’ Jay said. ‘I’m a sucker for letting this happen.’
‘Could’ve happened to anyone,’ Nasira said. ‘Even stubborn people, like you.’
He exhaled loudly. ‘Can we just get this over with?’
‘Do you want my help or not?’ Aviary asked.
‘Yeah, I do,’ he said.
‘I need to show you something first.’ Aviary reached into her ruck and removed her stolen tablet. ‘I was digging around Hal’s tablet for more about this TERMORD thing. Sounds like only two people knew about it. Hal—obviously—and Cecilia McLoughlin. She proposed the whole thing.’
‘She’s also dead,’ Nasira said.
Aviary shrugged. ‘Yeah, but she wanted to secretly inject the kill switch into operatives, along with the pseudogene activators. It’s still possible she did that.’
‘So everyone who got a jab,’ Nasira said, ‘got the kill switch?’
‘Including us,’ Damien said.
‘Yeah,’ Aviary said. ‘And the only reason Hal knows about this is because he ran a test on one of his operatives. For a whole other reason.’
‘What reason?’ Nasira asked.
‘I’m working on that,’ Aviary said. ‘But I have these emails written by Hal—they’re encrypted, but I can read some of them.’
‘Is there proof?’ Damien asked.
‘No, just these emails,’ she said.
‘That makes Hal the only person who knows about this,’ Aviary said. ‘Not even Denton seemed to know, and he was running Project GATE.’
‘Do the emails tell you how this kill switch works?’ Damien asked.
‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘All I have is an email addressed to Hal. They identified what they first thought was a harmless protein, but it’s actually an endotoxin that she smuggled in there. With the right trigger, the protein self-destructs and the endotoxin is released. Multiple organ failure within one hour, then death.’
‘But how is it triggered?’ Damien asked.
‘That’s in the proposal.’ She flicked back to it. ‘The signal is delivered by radio waves, through base stations. So that’s pretty much everywhere with cell phone coverage.’
‘Great,’ Nasira said. ‘They can find and target any operative.’
‘Hey,’ Jay said. ‘Playing devil’s adjective here—’
‘Advocate,’ Damien said.
‘Wiping out all the operatives,’ Jay said. ‘Not a bad thing?’
‘It is when it includes us.’ Aviary grabbed her phone. ‘If the Fifth Column figure out how to trigger this, you guys are—’
‘Dead,’ Nasira said.
Aviary swallowed. ‘I’ll send Sophia a message. She’s in Lithuania this week.’
Nasira reached over and lowered her phone. ‘Wait, don’t you want to read Hal’s emails first? If we go to Sophia, we need the full picture.’
Aviary nodded. ‘If you say so.’
Nasira stared through the windshield. ‘So, how close do we need to get?’
Chapter Nine
Kraków, Poland
Sophia watched the operative. Valeria knelt in the attic and peered through the scope on her UMP submachine gun, both eyes open. She was watching the market square below. According to the Fifth Column’s Assetrac system, Valeria was newly assigned to this region.
Below them, tourists and locals sprinkled across the market square. Large parasols sheltered tables of patrons sipping Polish beer with shots of grenadine or eating sausages, ham and cheese. Beyond that, the square was the size of ten blocks, all paved surface and four-story Renaissance buildings, all peach and pastel yellow and pressed snugly against each other, except for the museum in the center.
Sophia took a step closer and an attic floorboard creaked.
Valeria shifted.
‘Don’t even try it.’ Sophia leveled her pistol. ‘Weapon down.’
Valeria did as she was told.
‘Stand up slowly, hands in the air.’
Valeria complied. There was a slim rucksack on her back, likely where she stowed her UMP with its folding stock. She raised her hands, turned and eyed Sophia carefully.
Sophia spoke into her throat mike. ‘I have the operative.’
‘Copy that,’ Czarina said. ‘I’m downstairs in the café.’
‘Congratulations,’ Valeria said.
‘Thank you,’ Sophia said.
She knew exactly what sort of operation this was. And it wasn’t a bombing. Not this time.
Valeria eyed Sophia carefully. She wasn’t blinking.
Ares parapsyche. Assassination.
But for an assassination, the operative wouldn’t choose a short-range weapon. She should be using something with a reasonable barrel length. And she wouldn’t be confining herself to a small attic with minimal escape points and a limited field of view.
This position wasn’t for shooting any particular target.
It was for shooting indiscriminately.
Sophia spoke into her microphone. ‘Czarina, Ieva! Get outside now! There’s a proxy in the market square.’
‘Range?’ Czarina asked.
‘Fifty meters. A hundred, pushing it.’
‘On it,’ Czarina said.
Valeria couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but she gave Sophia a tiny smile. ‘Clever girl.’
Sophia grunted. A proxy was a programmed civilian, handled by a Fifth Column operative. Sometimes it was a suicide bomber and sometimes the proxy was a lone wolf. Sophia handled enough of each back when she was a programmed operative, both in the United States and across Central Europe.
She twitched her pistol, gesturing for Valeria to move away from the window and her UMP. Valeria retreated, her steps unsteady on the old attic floorboards. She would have a pistol on her body somewhere, but Sophia didn’t trust the operative to disarm herself. Besides, Sophia had her under control, and she needed to focus on the proxy.
This particular proxy had to be a lone wolf.
The programming would be simple, at least compared to the operative now standing with her hands up in front of her. Proxies were not trained, they were disposable. If they managed to survive until the end, they were prog
rammed to commit suicide so they weren’t around to answer inconvenient questions.
Sophia had made it just in time. Another moment and Valeria would’ve made the phone call, issued the activation command. Then the proxy would open fire. On everyone.
Sophia’s gaze fell to Valeria’s weapon of choice. The UMP fired pistol rounds, and no one would question the trajectory of the rounds because no one would have any reason to look for a second, more competent shooter on higher ground.
Now the weapon seemed like a clever choice.
Sophia spoke into her throat mike. ‘Got anything?’
Czarina replied, breathing quickly. ‘Not yet. Everyone’s wearing a jacket. Could be a hundred people here packing heat.’
Maybe, Sophia thought, but only one will be jittery and focused.
The proxy wouldn’t be an operative, so they wouldn’t know how to blend with the baseline. Czarina and Ieva should spot them in a heartbeat.
Sophia checked her phone’s Assetrac map. Still only one operative in the area: Valeria. Sophia kept her pistol trained on her and watched for shifts in emotion. The edges of color around Valeria—ivory and ice-blue—were calm.
She isn’t scared. Odd.
Sophia picked up the UMP by the pistol grip, using her left hand. She didn’t want Valeria lunging for it. ‘Remove your throat mike.’
Valeria plucked it from inside her collar and let it drop to the floorboards.
‘Is your proxy in the market square?’ Sophia asked.
‘Perhaps.’
‘What is your proxy wearing? Describe their clothes.’
Valeria swallowed. Her hostility crackled around her in orange bursts.
‘Who are we looking for?’ Sophia stepped forward to stomp on the microphone.
Valeria smiled. ‘You really believe you’re in control?’
Sophia hesitated. ‘What are you saying, I’m the proxy?’
‘No, I’m saying you’re out of your depth. Intercept!’ Valeria yelled the word.
The activation code. Through the microphone. Sophia crushed it under her shoe, but it was too late.
Helix, Episode 3 Page 4