The car swerved as Aleks turned to look at Novitskiy from the driver's seat. He didn't look happy. 'What? Is he hurt?' he said, snatching at the wheel to correct the wobble.
'He just upped and left, taking Soyuz, but not before destroying the comms system.'
Sean shook his head. He wasn't disagreeing with Novitskiy, just trying to understand what he was hearing. It made no sense. 'And he didn't come back?'
'Nope. Chris was mortified. He unwittingly helped Romanenko take Soyuz during what he thought was a routine check.' He faltered, and looked out the window. 'I can't say it was easy for me, either. He was a good friend.'
'Yes he was,' Aleks said from up front.
'The strangest thing,' Novitskiy said, turning back to Sean with a thought lighting his face, 'was when we recovered Soyuz.'
'I thought you said Romanenko didn't come back?' Sean said.
'That's the strange thing. Soyuz was empty. Romanenko was gone. Gardner had fallen into a coma trying to recover it, and Williams, he … he injured himself. Neither could stay.'
It was like there was a brick wall just behind Sean's eyes. What Novitskiy was saying was going in like it should but bouncing off without him being able to fully comprehend what had happened. He struggled to focus — trying to understand Romanenko's behaviour seemed like an impossibility. But from the mist, one thought came through clear as a bell. 'So Sally's on her own?'
Novitskiy looked out the window again. 'Yes.'
'Jesus…' Aleks said.
Aleks and Novitskiy continued talking about Sally and Romanenko, but Sean wasn't really listening. He was busy untangling the world's largest ball of mental wool. What he realised was that Bales would need to send someone else up soon. His logic was simple: Gardner had gone to plant the bomb, but had failed. He deduced this from the fact that the station was still in one piece, and as a consequence, so was Sally. That made it a straightforward connection to realise that Bales would need to replace Gardner with someone else, send them up to kick start the mission and destroy UV One. But what if he hasn't done it because he doesn’t want to kill Sally? No. That didn't fit the profile. Bales had killed Lev for standing in his way, and Sally was a much more insignificant blot than he was. Sean imagined that Bales was probably mortified at Gardner's return, coma or no coma. Maybe UV One knew what Gardner was trying to do, and stopped him? The thought made a cold shiver run down his spine.
'Did Bales say how he felt about you coming back?' Sean asked.
'Well, he wasn't to fussed about my return,' Novitskiy said. 'But he seemed pretty concerned about Gardner. I wanted him to let me go back, you know, to get Sally, but he said no. That was when I left. It made me so angry.'
If Sean was certain of his hypothesis before, he was convinced now. Novitskiy may not have known it, but by coming back to Earth he had bought Sean — and Sally — a bit more time. 'How long do you think it'll be before he can send someone else up?'
'I don't know … a few weeks at best? There's a resupply mission due soon, I expect he'll commandeer that.'
Two weeks. It wasn't long, but it was better than nothing.
Back at Grigory's — and after another delicious meal while Novitskiy filled them in with all the details of UV One — Sean discovered through a twenty-year–old scanned news clipping that Ruth Shaw's last-known address was the Indian Hills Home for the Aged, Nevada, but that was the most recent thing he could find on her. There was nothing on her relatives, her current state of wellbeing—nothing at all. Pretty much every trace of her personal life was absent from public record. Sean needed to go and see her, but first he needed to make sure she was still alive at the very least, and that meant a trip to the forest.
'Hi, my name is Donald Hopfield,' Sean said in his best Texas accent, 'I'm from the Evening Post. I'm calling about an article I'm putting together on the well-being of elderly residents in retirement homes, and I'm told your home is one of the best. I'd like to arrange an interview with some of your patrons if I may.'
It was cold out in the Russian wilderness; evening seemed to be coming in early. Sean shivered as he waited, satellite phone pressed to his ear. The response came, finally, with a hint of attitude. 'We operate on a strict friends and family only basis, no reporters. We've had issues before with the press—you understand, I'm sure.'
'Can I at least get some basic info, a few facts, a quote maybe?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'Okay, thank you.'
'Goodbye.'
Sean hung up and redialled.
'Hello, I'm looking for some information on a Ruth Shaw, currently residing in the Indian Hills Home for the Aged, Nevada. Do you have anything on record?
'One moment, please, sir.'
Hold music blared from the speaker, crackling and screeching. A minute passed, and then another, and Sean's heart sank more with each one.
'I'm sorry sir, it looks like that record has been made private by the account holder.'
Shit.
'Thanks for your help.'
Sean made a few more phone calls, all with the same result.
'No good?' Aleks asked.
'Nope. No one's telling me anything.'
'So what do we do now?'
'There's only one thing left: I have to bite the bullet and fly out to Nevada.'
Grigory laughed. 'You won't get anywhere near airport security, not with your record.'
'I know. That's why I've got to call in a favour …'
Again the phone rang, but this time Sean knew exactly who he'd be speaking to.
'Hello?'
'Hi, Sean here.'
'Sean, how are you? How's the time off going? We've got the empty ISS story coming along nicely this end — we're looking to run it in the Sunday edition.'
'Great. Look, I've managed to get some intel that verifies everything.'
'Everything? What are you talking about?'
'UV One.'
The phone hissed a faint static for several long seconds.
'Sean, I thought I told you to drop that story.'
'I know, but —'
'Let me tell you something, Sean. I believe you. I have from the beginning. But we're poking around some seriously high-level shit that we should not be getting involved with. I need you off this story immediately. I mean it, Sean.'
First, confusion filled Sean, then disappointment, but as he thought through what he had just heard, that disappointment turned into a feeling of betrayal, which became a hardened anger. 'Oh, I see how this works,' he said through gritted teeth. 'What did they do? Pay off your mortgage? Get you that holiday home you always wanted? Buy you a new car? Come on — what?' Sean was yelling by the time he'd finished his sentence, and his voice echoed around the trees.
'Sean, it's not like that. Look — they threatened to close the paper. They said that if I didn't cooperate, they'd … they'd ruin my career, everything I've worked for. I can't let that happen.'
'So you sold out?'
'No, I didn't sell —'
'You sold your impartiality and your dignity to protect yourself. That's what you did.'
A pause.
'Okay, I did, but so did all the others. We're fighting powers beyond our reckoning here; you would've done the same thing.'
Another pause. Sean couldn't think of anything constructive or pleasant to say, so he said nothing.
'Look, Sean, just because we aren't running the story, doesn't mean we can't still work on it. We can build up a case and leak it, just like we did with the Ramirez story. Clean slate, job done.'
It was a compromise. Sean's anger reduced from a bubbling apoplexy to a gentle simmer. 'Okay. But I need you on my side.'
'Of course. What can I get you? Name it and it's yours.'
'A plane out of here. No passports.'
'Where to?'
'Nevada.'
'Jesus Christ, Sean, you don't want much.'
'You said anything.'
'Okay, okay. I'll arrange that for you. Call me early
tomorrow for the details.'
'I will. Thank you.'
'And keep this under your hat.'
'I always do.'
Back at Grigory's house, Sean checked the computer in the vain hope that the search had dug something else up, but it hadn't. On the plus side, the group of three had become four, and they sat together enjoying the thick-cut roast venison sandwiches that Grigory had made.
'These are really good,' Novitskiy said, tucking into his with ravenous appetite. 'I've been eating hospital food for the last few days, and space food for forever before that, so this is a real treat.'
Grigory nodded his thanks for the compliment.
'So you're sure there's nothing else you can do?' Aleks asked, licking his fingers.
'I'm running out of time,' Sean said. 'I have to go to Nevada. I'll go it alone to avoid rousing suspicion. It's hard not to draw attention to yourself when you've got three Russians following you around — particularly when one is as big as a house.'
The others laughed, except for Grigory who didn't seem to follow that Sean was talking about him.
'I'll be leaving tomorrow,' Sean continued. 'It'll be a hard slog, but hopefully I won't be gone for long.'
'We'll stay here and keep searching online for anything more,' Aleks said.
'Good. Hopefully we can find out who this Ruth Shaw is and work out what the hell's going on. Lets just pray she's not dead.'
The next day before sunrise, after a call confirming the details, Sean made his way down to a small airfield east of Troitsk, boarded the plane that awaited him and set off towards the land of the free: America. He hadn't expected a private jet, but this was ridiculous. The plane was small, really small, and it bounced along through the air in a way that seemed to defy the laws of physics.
'We're going to be crossing the Pacific, in this?' Sean had said when he first saw the plane.
'Oh no,' the pilot, an old boy called Thomas McBride had said. 'No, no, no. We'll be crossing the Atlantic.'
Crossing the Pacific meant spending a few hundred miles over the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, but crossing the Atlantic was a journey of about two thousand miles over freezing-cold ocean. It was a more dangerous choice, but it was quicker. According to Thomas, the small plane was fitted with large fuel tanks, which would make the crossing with ease. A happy side-effect, he'd said, was that as the fuel started burning off, the plane would become more stable. His confidence wasn't rubbing off onto Sean, but there was no other option so they flew on in silence, the engine and wind noise — 'She's fast, but she's noisy' — too loud to talk over. They were going to stop off at a small airfield in Chantada, Spain, to brim the tanks before the trans-Atlantic trip, but even that was a good ten hours away.
From up in the sky, the sunrise was the most beautiful thing Sean had ever seen, a strip of azure blue growing from a ball of burning red. And McBride was right: as the fuel burned off and they climbed to thinner air, the plane stopped buffeting and sailed along without so much as a shimmy. Sean's nerves settled and he began to enjoy the changing scenery below, watching dark greens grow light and then turn to dust as they ventured closer to the equator. It was a long ten hours, but the lack of conversation gave him a chance to think and reflect, so it wasn't as bad as he'd thought. In fact he rather enjoyed it, feeling a small twinge of sadness as McBride pitched the nose down to land in Chantada. The coastline had just been visible through the haze, a strip of pale blue fringing the sky.
They landed in a dusty airstrip that was more a patch of dirt than an international hub, and Sean stretched himself out while McBride filled the plane with stinking fuel. The ground rippled with midday heat, and even the sweat patches growing around Sean's armpits felt warm against his skin. He wished he'd brought his sunglasses — no duty free to buy them from here. There wasn't even a toilet to piss in.
'Probably a hundred degrees today,' McBride said. 'And as clear as you like.'
He wasn't wrong: the sky was spotless. A good omen for the journey ahead, after which he would meet Ruth Shaw and all his questions would be answered. Or she would be dead. He didn't want to think about that.
Plane ready, they took off and skipped along the Atlantic at a good pace, but with nothing to look at but rolling blue ocean, the trip was long and tiring. Before, Sean had enjoyed the solitude afforded to him by the noise, but he resented it now, forcing himself not to look down at the dashboard clock every few minutes. Or seconds. His joints were beginning to set with ache and his muscles with cramp, and he wished the hours away with desperate prayers. Six hours in, his body begged him for sleep, but it wouldn't come. He felt sick, not from the motion of flying, but from the torturous position he was pinned in. Somehow, McBride seemed to soak it all up in his stride, and so Sean tried to follow his lead and keep a brave face. Day faded to evening, and then to night, and they continued to buzz along in the pitch black, with not a single light on save for the ones illuminating the instruments. Sean was impressed by McBride's piloting abilities, and that was the last thing he remembered before falling, at last, into a fitful state between waking and sleep.
When he awoke, it was still dark, except for a flash of the deepest purple behind them. The sleep wasn't the best — a long way from it — but he didn't feel as bad as he had done. He could just make out McBride from the instrument lights: he looked tired, but focussed. McBride saw he was awake, tapped his watch and held up two fingers: two hours left. It was a blessing. Sean worked out how many blocks of ten-minute segments that was, his tired mind finding it much harder than it should have done, and he chalked them off in his head one by one. By the time the coastline appeared, it twinkled like a string of jewels through the darkness of the early morning.
McBride put the plane down in a place he later told Sean was Walterboro. He refuelled, ready for the last hop to Tonopah, which was about two hundred miles from Carson City where Sean would find the Indian Hills Home for the Aged.
'I'm gonna catch a few winks before we go,' McBride said.
Sean thought he wasn't tired, but once they'd pitched a tent and climbed in, he fell right to sleep. It seemed like just a blink from his eyes falling shut to him being prodded awake again by McBride's boot.
'Time to get going,' McBride told him.
The smell of fried meat drew Sean from the tent, while the heat chased him out of it, and, bleary eyed, he accepted a plate with two of the fattest sausages he'd ever seen.
'Get those in you,' Thomas said. 'That'll give you the energy to see the day through.'
Back in the air, the plane jostled the sausages about in Sean's stomach, but he managed to hold them down. He imagined it was the sheer size and weight of the things that was stopping them making a bid for freedom, and he wished Indian Hills closer every second of the flight. It was the shortest stint of the three, but after a few hours of freedom he really had to force himself to climb back on board, where the old aches and cramps came flooding back. Although the flight was over land, the view was as uninspiring as the Atlantic. Sand in every direction, dotted with the occasional lake or town, bored Sean senseless, but every one drew him another mile or so closer to Ruth.
Thomas landed the plane at early dusk. The agreement was for Sean to call McBride when he was done, and he would meet him back here in Tonopah. McBride didn't like to hang around, and was buzzing along the strip before Sean had even reached the main road.
There was a town a few miles' walk away, where Sean caught a bus that took him along route ninety-five into Fallon. From there, he would catch another bus into Carson City along route fifty. Sean had never much liked the bus — they always made him travel sick — but he was so exhausted that he slept right through, waking just in time to make the change. The second bus wound through dusty desert marked by the occasional small town, and by midnight, Carson City appeared on the horizon as a nest of star-like pinpricks shimmering in the haze. He checked into a motel, where the cotton sheets and air conditioning were like a sedative, knocking him out co
ld. When morning came, he slept through it, and woke as afternoon was knocking on the door.
'Damn it!' he cursed aloud as he saw the time.
After a quick, cold shower, he found a phone in the hotel lobby. He scanned the business cards thumbtacked to the noticeboard next to it and called one of the taxicab firms.
'I need a taxi from the Best Value Inn to the Indian Hills Home for the Aged, please.'
'Right away, sir.'
The taxi pulled up outside not long after. The driver was pleasant enough, and Sean spent the half-hour journey listening to him talk about how his daughter was going to play cello with the state orchestra. He feigned happiness for the driver, whose name he had already forgotten, while trying to ignore the building tremor in his stomach as they approached Indian Hills. Before he knew it, the taxi stopped. Cash and pleasantries exchanged, Sean got out. It had taken him several days, and he had travelled halfway around the world, but he had made it. He was at the Indian Hills Home for the Aged, which was, fingers crossed, the residence of Ruth Shaw.
Section 4 — Vessel
Chapter 22
'Who are you?' Sally said, her throat so tight it strangled her voice.
The naked man unfurled, his stringy muscles tensing under his pale skin. Sally drifted over to him, cautious at first, then stopped, realisation hitting her so hard she clapped a hand over her mouth.
'You're — you're Mikhail Romanenko …' she said through her fingers. It wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible.
Mikhail looked at her, his eyes wide against his gaunt face. 'Where am I?' he whispered.
Sally helped him into the service module, where she found him some clothes and gave him some food. He ate fast, as though he hadn't eaten in days, and she had to slow him down for fear he would choke. She waited until he finished before she asked him any more questions, her curiosity and concern for him overwhelming any lingering traces of trepidation. He seemed harmless enough, at least for now. The tremor in his hands worried her at first, but it seemed to pass after he'd eaten. Colour also returned to his cheeks and he no longer seemed quite so fragile.
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