by Nikki Owen
Floodlights hit my face as I duck and sprint the one hundred metres by the hidden crevice of the building. My arm stings and bruises ache, but I keep moving.
Another alarm shrieks from the internal left flank and, through my periphery, I see officers dispersing, prowling in the shadows that link from the area at the back to the series of outbuildings to the left. In my pocket is the car fob from the dead officer and I intend to use it, but there are no cars immediately near here and the parking deck is sixty metres ahead. A figure scuttles somewhere beyond and I drop to my knees. My legs wobble with exhaustion and my feet prickle with pain from the shoes that rub where they are too big.
I carry out rapid reconnaissance. There is an additional building further to the right. The roof is blue and the walls are green, and on the door to the side black skulls are imprinted onto yellow beaks where a shadow creeps into the right. I count to three, crouch down and run.
Reaching the far car deck, I slap my back against the wall. It is warm, almost hot to the touch, but I remain rooted to where I am, watching everything, trying to blink the brightness away, stay steady, hidden. There are two officers there now in the spot where I was stood just five seconds ago, which means, at this angle, if I run now, they will see me.
I stay put. The shapes ahead move and I refocus and track them, waiting until my trajectory is in line with the officers’, and when a blind spot is created, I keep my nerves steady and creep along the edge of the green-walled building, reaching the entrance of the car deck in four seconds. I glance up. There are no guards on obvious watch, no surveillance cameras pointing my way, instead three silhouettes shift towards the left side of the building where I came from. I calculate their angles. They are facing outwards, which means, right now, they cannot detect me. For the moment.
I slip into the entrance of the parking deck and halt. At least one hundred cars stare back at me, my brain clocking every single one to my internal inventory. I immediately start pressing the fob, but no lights flash, no indicators tick. Feeling a shiver, I pull the sweater a little tighter and walk further in, uploading all the registration plates to my memory, counting every single make and model until I reach one car. A Volvo. Four-by-four. I look at the fob; the symbol, the make and mark match. Clicking the button, I hold my breath. The lights flash. The car is open.
Glancing around me, I fling open the door, switch on the engine and pause. Whichever way I go, there will be a gate, a guard, a gun. I sit there for two seconds thinking, pulling at the thread of cotton that dangles from the T-shirt, when I feel a corner dig into my leg from the trouser pocket: the swipe card.
Not wasting any time, I whip it out, look at it. Could this work? But there is no way. Our faces are different shapes and our builds conflict between small and large. I get out the cell and call Chris.
‘Hey, Google, you okay?’
‘I need you to access the data base to help me get out of the facility.’
‘No problem. You got an ID number?’
I look at the swipe card and read it out.
‘Doc.’ Patricia’s voice feeds in. ‘Stay safe. Balthus is here, too.’
I cling to her voice, then wait for Chris, tapping my foot. I need to go.
‘Okay, you’re done. Get to Hamburg station. I’ve texted you the locker with what you need—clothes, cash, cell—then from there you can catch a flight out. We’re gonna scramble our route.’
The thought of enduring a train ride, a flight with crowds of people—I push it for the moment to one side.
‘Maria,’ Balthus says. ‘Get to Madrid. We’re headed there now to catch a train to Lisbon and then an evening flight to London so we can do something with these files.’
A shadow floats up ahead. ‘I have to go.’
I slip the cell in my pocket and, taking extra precautions, I look round the car and, bending over to the glove compartment I slap my hand in and find what I need: a baseball cap.
I slip on the cap but then almost rip it off because it smells of the dead officer, of his smoke and metal and stale beer. Gulping hard, I count to three, recite the birthdate and place of Mozart, then, trying desperately to ignore the stench, I pull the car out and drive towards the main exit.
Up ahead, the metal, monitored gates are over 25 metres tall. In the corner where the wiring reflects like a mirror in the lights, surveillance cameras teeter on barbed wire that spikes the top edge. I drive up, pull the cap down as much as I can bear and, adrenaline shooting through me, and reach the scanner. Slow, steady, I reach out, the stolen card in my hand and, holding my breath, swipe. One second, two pass as I wait until, on three, the gates finally swing open and I drive out, careful not to go too fast and so arouse suspicion until I am far enough away to be gone.
I breathe out. The air, when the window is down, keeps me alert, and when I swallow I can taste flowers and metal and a mix of mint gum. Forcing myself to keep the sunglasses firmly in place, I set my eyes forward and focus solely on driving the car away from the Project towards the road ahead, my mind set on the documents we have found and revealing every last single source of it all to the world.
Confinement location—present day
I look at the worn image of the woman and baby, and my fingers shake. 1980 is the year that I was born. The photograph I am staring at, if the writing in the corner of the photo is correct, is of me as a baby, but I do not recognise the woman in whose arms I am being held.
Confused, I trace the pattern of the baby blanket as if it will give me a clue or provide me with some much needed order. The only noise in the room the sound of my shallow breath, I smooth the snapshot down with my palm and blow away the residue dust that sits in a film on the front. My body trembles a little from the aftershock of the drugs and a chill chatters down my limbs, bones, feet, making my hands and arms jitter.
I bring the photo close to my face in the weak light and examine the image as best I can. The woman has long, black, bushy hair that hangs in curled wire across her shoulders down to her stomach, and on her slim tanned legs rests a long, billowing skirt with a delicate crocheted flower pattern that flows at her bare feet. She is about twenty-two years old. She wears a loose cotton brown vest and underneath is the outline of her heavy, loose breasts. I squint, angle the light—she doesn’t look like Mama when she was younger, but I cannot be certain. There is an arm to her right in the photo, just out of shot, and when I narrow my eyes and my head leans in as far as it can go, I see the arm belongs to a man—black hairs, tanned skin.
Turning it in my hands, I flip the picture to the back and stop. Words. Words are etched in a pencilled scrawl on the underside of the image. Feeling a bolt of uncertainty now inside me at what I am looking at, I inspect the scrawl, rubbing the writing with my forefinger, the soft padding of my skin swirling in tiny circles on the rough paper. At first, with the light dim and the darkness almost too overpowering, it is difficult to decipher what anything says and so I shift closer to the bulb, almost upon it as I thrust the photograph upwards as, slow and steady, the words illuminate.
Isabella Bidarte.
It is a name, a Basque name. Something inside me stirs. What? A memory? A dream? I think of all the Basque names blacked out on the file in the ICE room at the Project. Is this woman one of them? Another subject number? I run the name through my brain: Bidarte. I track the meaning. Bide means way. Arte means between. Between the ways.
I place the picture on my palm. Isabella. It is from the name Isabel, a variation on Elizabeth, which means devoted to God. There are letters scratched further towards the middle, but it is lighter here as if it has been written in the softest, most buttery pencil and, when I peer at it, eyes straining, slowly, I manage to make out the words. Weisshorn Psychiatric Hospital, Geneva. Switzerland. A hospital in Switzerland. And then one more line with two key dates next to her name. Born: May 1968. Died: June 1989 (?). But it is what is next to it that makes me almost drop the image, because there on the flip side of the photograph is a grid refe
rence number.
The same grid reference number as the one I found on Dr Andersson’s cell phone.
I lean back, cortisol levels peaking as I think it through, and, for some reason, raise my fingers to my arm where the ink tattoo from Black Eyes sits. ‘I am Basque,’ I say aloud, the sound of my own voice seeming strange, odd in the lonely silence of the room. I hold up the photograph. Isabella Bidarte—a Basque name. Am I looking at a woman who was involved in the Project? Who perhaps knew Mama or Papa when I was a baby? And this hospital—is that where she met them? I think, connect the dots but keep hitting a wall, not recalling a time when Papa or Mama mentioned a trip to Switzerland.
I begin to analyse who the woman is and why she has hold of me and how it is all connected to Geneva, when there is a sound, a clatter, then silence. I freeze. Ramon.
I spin round to the wall where the cross once stood and thrusting the photograph in my trouser pocket, I get to the medical stand and haul it back up, then, pulling it hard, I wrench the main shaft free from the base.
Logical, mechanical, I move quick now towards the steps, ready for Ramon, and I think I am done when I spot something on the floor: the cross. There is a sound of a ring tone—Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence, and it gets nearer, louder with every second that passes. My eyes surge round the room. Ramon will be here soon and I have to be ready, because this time I am getting out. I need to get to Mama and get to Patricia and Chris and Balthus, and all I can do right now is hope they have some idea now of where I am.
My pulse juggernauts in my wrist as, with the ring tone closer, I count to three and, taking a chance, I run to the wall and grab the cross and, looking down in my hand, slip off something into my palm. It is the nail, the nail from the foot of the cross.
There is a low buzzing sound followed by a creak of the door. One second, two. With no time left, I grip my fingers around the nail, drop it into my back pocket and, rushing to the steps, with the metal stand gripped in my hands, I stand by the door and wait for my brother to enter.
Chapter 35
Madrid, Spain.
3 hours and 0 minutes to confinement
Balthus stays on the phone to me the whole time I get through the airport. I reach the Madrid terminal and try to breathe.
‘Are you okay?’ Balthus says, the cell pinned to my ear.
‘No,’ I say and carry on. I take out my passport and check my appearance in a walkway mirror between an escalator and a shop. My hair is now copper to match the passport photograph from Chris and when I blink, my eyes are green from temporary contact lenses that match the dark make-up on my skin. The sneakers are still on my feet from the train journey I took from Hamburg to Paris before my flight to Madrid, but on my body now I wear a loose khaki shirt and white vest with close fitted combats on my legs, rolled up at the ankles. A seasoned traveller look, Chris said in the note that he left for me in the Hamburg locker. I do not know what that means.
I can smell multiple scents as I walk towards the nothing to declare zone. Coffee, toast, bacon, burgers, flowers, pollen, beer, salmon. It hits me in a tsunami all at once and combines with the sounds and the crowds and the streaming lines of people, some of them brushing past me as they walk, making me wince, making me want to curl up and run away.
‘Just keep walking straight on,’ Balthus says. ‘I know airports are hard for you. We’ll get you through this.’
I want to thank him but am rendered mute by the whole assault of the journey. I hate it. I pull my baseball cap down and walk through customs where it is busy and loud. There is a small grey rucksack on my back and when people criss-cross the walkways, different sounds, smells, fluorescent lights, all blink at me all at once sweeping my mind up in chaos and fragmenting my sense of self. I think of Papa and how he used to be with me in these situations, always calm, always guiding me through.
‘Are you still there?’ I ask Balthus.
‘Yes,’ he replies, pausing. ‘Always.’
His chocolate voice, the pebbled boom of it gives me a bit of comfort and I find, as the minutes pass, that I am able to continue forward and get through the airport and the noise and the chaos and the people upon people that scurry by without obvious cause, and I make it to outside without melting down.
‘I am out,’ I say now to Balthus as I exit the terminal and step ito liquid sun that spills down from the sky and bathes the tarmac and the cars and the heads of the people that pass with a soft sheen of silent sunshine. Outside, I instantly breathe easier, the excess of the noise muted slightly, allowing me to continue at medium comfort level. The whole time I scan every inch, crevice and corridor for any signs that I am being followed.
‘You did it. Great. Catch a taxi,’ Balthus says on the cell. ‘We’ll meet you on the corner of the old post office by the market in Madrid at the agreed time.’ My heart drops—markets are good cover, but they mean more crowds and noise.
I check my watch and, slipping into a cab, feel a wash of relief as the taxi pulls away in an air conditioned bubble that mutes the sound and calms my head.
‘Thank you, Balthus,’ I find myself saying.
‘You’re welcome, Maria. You are so, so welcome.’
One hour later, I arrive at El Rastro market and very nearly do not get out of the car. People mill everywhere, great crowds of them gathering in packs on the streets and the market stalls and the bars and restaurants that run along the roads and pavements and terraces beyond. I step out of the cab, pay the driver and am hit by the multiple smells that fire at me all at once. Chorizo sizzling, chocolate churros frying, fresh lemonade, calamari, petrol, exhaust fumes, the wet feet stench of Serrano ham hanging from hooks under canvas canopies in the shade of the sun.
I duck my head down and scurry to the meeting point by the old post office. The noise is overwhelming. Bodies stand everywhere, chattering, shouting, shopping, all wandering, it seems to me, with no clear sense of destination, stopping then walking then stopping again with no apparent set pattern that I can define, and it scrambles my mind, as it did at the airport, into chaos. The only way I can cope with it is to set a clear goal in my mind—get to a clearing free of crowds and wait.
By the time Patricia and Balthus and Chris arrive, I am standing in a corner hiding behind a cheap pair of sunglasses trying to keep as much away from anyone as I can so they will not touch me.
‘Doc!’
I prop my hand to my brow and see Patricia bound towards me followed by Chris and Balthus.
As soon as Patricia reaches me, she holds out her fingers and smiles. I reach up my hand to hers, so relieved to see her I could flop forward and never get up, but then someone brushes near me and it makes me jump.
‘Doc, are you okay?’
‘People are in my space. I know they are not being rude, but I do not like it. Why did we meet here?’
Chris comes over, a lopsided straw hat on his head and a white T-shirt that reads Nerds Rule. ‘We’re here to give us some cover.’ He grins and I see his stubble has grown. ‘Hello, Google.’
‘That is not my name. And nerds do not rule.’
‘I know. Geeks do.’ He winks.
‘Maria, oh thank God.’ Balthus rushes over, sweat trickling down his cheeks as he takes out a white handkerchief from a grey linen shirt and dabs his face. He smiles and his eye creases fan out. ‘I cannot tell you how relieved I am that you’re okay.’
I look at them all. They are safe, my friends are safe, but I don’t know how to express the feeling it gives me, of happiness, of contentment. ‘Statistically,’ I say, ‘only one of us had a chance of dying. The fact that we are all here is a leap over probability.’
Chris nods. ‘Right. Yep, just what I was thinking.’ He grins like Goofy and I ignore him.
The crowd ten metres ahead begins to swell and the noise levels rise. My shoulders, in response, scrunch up, my head ducking down at the sudden audio assault, and so, on Patricia’s suggestion, we move to a quieter area where an empty canopy sits over bare wood
en slats that once housed oranges and lemons. We stand under the canvas for shade, spritzed with a gentle citrus scent, and, as we rest, Chris takes out his laptop.
My body, as I lean against the stall, suddenly feels exhausted, my mind shattered from the chaos and noise of the train and flight and now the Sunday market. I look to Patricia and to Balthus and only at the sight of them, do I allow myself to rest a little and let my shoulders soften.
‘Ok, so,’ Chris says. ‘I managed to make it into that file.’
‘Ah yes,’ Balthus says. ‘We have everything now to hit the Project where it hurts.’
I lean forward and look now to where Chris attaches a device to the laptop then, opening it, boots it up. The screen comes to life fast.
‘Here you go,’ he chirps, fifteen seconds later. ‘The file, this one that was left, unlike the others had a name.’
Feeling oddly nervous, I move in and, brushing back a strand of hair from my wig, I peer at the screen. Instantly it is clear that the file is about her. Raven. The woman from my hazy memories.
Because there next to what must be her photograph, the one I recall from my flashback of her caramel skin, pool-brown eyes, black hijab, is her name, is finally the woman’s name that, when I tried to recall it, was blocked out in black.
‘Sadeqa,’ I say to myself, reading the name that sits at the top of the confidential document, a document compiled by me. ‘It is an Arabic name that means truthful, true.’
‘Um, you okay?’ Chris says.
‘Doc …?’
But I don’t reply, because what I am reading, what I am seeing for the first time is the answer to what I have been seeking since my trial, since the moment I recalled the vague whisper of a memory in court and then again at my villa. Her face, her pooled eyes, her black breezing veil. We worked together. It says that here, now, in black and white and no grey. We worked together on a covert operation and I went undercover.
‘She was an asset, trading information from a new terrorist cell that was surviving,’ I say, fast, reading. ‘It was growing through cyber network links, via encrypted message codes that even the NSA, the CIA or MI5 could not crack.’