by Nikki Owen
I arrive at a platform that sits at the far end of the hangar and wait. There are no windows for air, no pictures on the wall. Nearby sits a series of sheet reels on a table made of solid metal that, even from here, I can see clearly. Numbers. The reels contain line after line of numbers presented on white washed plates of paper, which, initially, appear as if they’re cell phone contacts. But as I scan further and decode it all, reassemble them, they reveal themselves to be not purely numbers, but geolocations of small towns and villages across central Europe.
‘Subject 375?’
My head snaps up, heart slams against my chest.
‘This is number 277’ Black Eyes says, gesturing to a man in his twenties who sits in front of a complex bank of computers and screens on the platform where we stand. ‘Subject 277 leads the situation room and is working on a program for us that is tracking a terrorist cell we believe is working out of Hamburg and London.’
The subject glances to me without catching my eye. He is short, stocky, stomach board flat, face peppered with angry red spots, hairs on his arms so dark that his pale skin looks pebbled black. And as I look at him, as my eyes input his physical description to photographic memory, it hits me. The odd feeling. The element of being present here in this vast, computerised space that bothers me, that puts me on alert. I look out beyond to the lines of young men and woman working at speed on devices and keyboards and I know what it is.
Their age. The subject numbers’ age.
Every single one of them is younger than me.
Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 06 hours and 27 minutes
We have managed to hitch a lift in a truck. It is smelly and loud. In the breaking morning that slides yellow across the midnight blue sky, we begin to see Lake Geneva stretch out ahead of us, its deep water twinkling in the early sun where warm rays bounce off gentle waves lapping the far lake shore in an early spring breeze.
The truck jostles us from side to side and I try hard to ignore it, but it’s difficult. My brain is wired. The smell of the vehicle is a mixed soup of fish and castor oil and old rope. I find myself looking at my friends, focussing on the soft yet defined contours of their now familiar faces, the routine of their very being offering me comfort, providing me with a regulatory vision that my mind can latch so all for the moment, is okay.
At approximately 07:00 hours, we arrive at our destination. Crumpled and bleary, we jump down from the truck, Patricia thanking the driver. Our feet sink into a shallow layer of snow and new grass shoots, broken flakes of ice scattered on the roads and paths making the morning appear like a frosted cupcake.
‘Hey – Doc?’
I look round to Patricia, blink in the sunlight, adjust my rucksack and assess our position. We are further west now than Lausanne, our original destination where the Goldenpass rail-line yawns outwards, and as I look north, my vision stretches far to the shore of Lake Geneva that now languishes out in front of me, yawning wide at the start of the day. I catch my breath at the sight. It is magical, cool and glistening. It dances before me, and I hear the lake rippling in a vast, endless, undulating bowl within the valley of the snow-capped mountains.
‘The hospital’s further down this part of the lake,’ Chris says now, turning outwards, pointing. ‘About five kilometres, I think.’
I follow his line and register it all. Hansel and Gretel chalets sit in multi-coloured chocolate-boxes on the hillsides beyond, each one nestled with warm pinewood and sheltered by doorway arches that sneeze outwards, jutting far into the air immediately in front. Along the lake, jetties stick out into the water, long fingers of them dusted with icing sugar snow where birds, small and plump, jitter and jump on the grass shoots, digging for worms. Nearby a small scattering of people wrapped in assorted scarves and duvet jackets, stride on, on their way to work, to friends, perhaps, to their normal, unfettered lives.
Patricia walks over. ‘Er, guys, we’d better move. There are two police officers over there.’
We keep our heads down and hurry on to a copse of trees approximately three hundred yards from our drop-off point. There, Patricia and I wait by a low steel fence as, ahead, Chris buys hot coffee and pastries from a small wooden hut with yellow and green lettering. It is hard not to say anything about the tracker as we wait. Chris’s words run through my head. Patricia asks if I am okay, her flat forehead crumpling to wrinkles, but I elect not to answer, unsure what I would say if pushed, uncertain as to what is happening or how or not she is involved. A world shaken upside down and I can’t find the exit.
Returning, shoulders hunched, Chris blows out white clouds of breath and hands over our breakfast. I take a moment to realise that, without me asking, he has remembered that I only take my coffee black. Clutching the cup tight for warmth, I sip the beverage, eat the sugary, glazed pastry and stare at the fir trees where melting snow hangs across the branches in tinsel of white and silver.
Chris wipes croissant crumbs from his chin. He takes out his phone, consults a map and switches on the black signal box to search for the best route to Weisshorn Hospital. Patricia gulps coffee, smiles to me, unbuckles her bag and, scrambling inside for something, takes out the Orwell novel and sets it on the fence post where a robin pecks then flies away. I continue to stare at the trees, trying not to ask myself why she wants to take out that novel now, what her motives are. Something about the trees calms me. Their leaves, limp and loose, strain under the weight of a winter now in retreat, spring whispering on a faint breeze that it’s on its way. It is soothing, the pattern of it all, the predictable nature of the seasons, and when my eyes scan the vista beyond, I see folds of snow sitting on white open book pages across the roofs of the chalets that lie wedged into the solid mountain slopes.
Snow, leaves, trees, paint strokes of colour – nature’s own artwork. It all blends in my brain, dancing, waltzing around in a gentle lullaby of rhythm until, gradually, one by one, it begins to merge, to connect in a way that makes me completely stop. My coffee mid-air, about to take a sip, I think fast as my gaze locks on the forest, on the roofs of the chalets where the snow hangs. My sight flips from there to the fence where Patricia stands and the novel from the woman at the train station sits as before. And as I look at it all, flitting back to the gaze of the trees, a thought begins to form.
‘Voronoi,’ I say to myself. I set down my drink.
‘Huh? Doc? V—what?’
‘Voronoi… Voronoi…’ I stride to where Patricia stands and, taking the 1984 novel, I inspect the cover.
‘Hey! Doc!’
Chris looks up. ‘You found something?’
My fingers trace the pattern on the book, the colours spread in hard, sharp angles across the surface. ‘We thought this book simply contained the code we found on the page and nothing else.’
‘Yeah.’
‘We assumed that was all that was in here.’
He is alert now. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘We were wrong to assume.’ I trace the bright cover of the book. ‘The Voronoi diagram takes a pair of points. It uses these points, which are close together, and draws a line, which is equidistant. This line runs perpendicular between the points to the line joining them, which means all points are of equal distance to the closest two origin points.’
He inspects the book. ‘You mean, this cover mirrors the Voronoi diagram? You mean the thing to do with the division of planes? The maths thing that links to leaf patterns?’
I hesitate. ‘Yes. How did you know that?’
‘Let’s just say that when I was locked up, the prison library only had a limited selection of art and maths books. But what’s the Voronoi diagram got to do with anything?’
I blink at the book, rest my fingers on it and allow them to slide along the black lines that divide in walls between each block of colour. ‘The woman at the station was from the Project. She was the girlfriend of the officer who interrogated me. Why did she give us this book?’
Patricia shrugs. ‘Doc, we already know why – to warn us that the Project were at the next station. It was on the page in code.’
The tracker. Don’t mention the tracker. ‘There must be another reason.’
‘How do you know for sure? Maybe you’re tired, Doc – it’s been a long journey and it’s cold.’
But Chris shakes his head and peers once more at the book cover. ‘They’re used in technology and science, these diagrams, the ones that look like this artwork here.’ He looks to me. ‘Are you assuming a Euclidean distance when you calculate or a Manhattan one?’
‘Manhattan.’
‘Hmmm.’ He studies the page; I feel a strong urge to shout out, thank you. ‘So you’re using the Manhattan assumption to measure the distance between points?’
‘What on earth,’ Patricia says, ‘has this got to do with anything?’
I turn to her, stalling for a moment, and I am shocked to realise my hesitation is because I’m wondering if I can trust her to tell her the truth. ‘I think… I think there may be a hidden message on the cover.’
‘Oh.’ Patricia’s coffee suspends mid-air. ‘Jesus.’
I look to Chris. ‘The formula for this is d[(a1, a2),(b1, b2)] = |a1-b1| + |a2-b2|.
Chris smiles at me, broad lines reaching out from his eyes.
I clamp my lips together, oddly nervous. ‘What?’
‘Nothing, you’re just…’
‘What?’ I cannot read his face. ‘Have I quoted the formula incorrectly?’
‘No.’ He smiles again. ‘No. You’re just right.’
I hesitate then continue. ‘If we use the formula I have recited and apply it to a city, it can provide an approximate estimate on the district and number of the street the diagram in this instance is relating to.’
‘I can’t see what… how can you pinpoint that answer?’
‘Here.’ I show him, tiptoeing my fingers across the cover. ‘The nearest pair of points is the key. They relate to two adjoining cells in the Voronoi diagram. So, when you apply the formula, calculating the equidistance, you arrive at the numbers…’ I perform the equation at rapid speed in my head. Five seconds later and I’m done. ‘376, 10014 and 3621.’
‘Whoa – that was fast. Okay, okay so I see what you mean, but you said, “if you apply it to a city”. That’ll require knowing what city it is. These could be numbers from anywhere.’
I grab his phone, turn it to me and, tapping in the coordinates, wait.
‘Doc, what are you doing?’
‘I am using the Manhattan assumption. The distance, the diagram on this cover, the one it assumes – it has been selected for a reason.’
Chris shakes his head. ‘I don’t understand.’
What I am searching for finally springs up on the cell. ‘Here. The distance point equation is the Manhattan version for a reason. Number 376 is the street name. 10014 to 3621 is the postal district of—’
‘New York,’ Chris says. He looks to me. ‘Manhattan. Holy shit. I know that place.’
We look at the address in front of us to which each of the numbers correlate.
376 Hudson Street, New York. The home of the USA Passport Office.
The secret home of the covert division of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Patricia stares at us both then takes one, noticeable step back.
Chapter 18
Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 06 hours and 05 minutes
‘The CIA,’ Patricia mutters almost incoherently. ‘It links to the fecking CIA?’ She starts pacing, her finger nails digging into the coffee cup so it almost buckles. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
Chris watches her. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah. What? Oh, yeah…’
He whistles. ‘Because this is big, man. I mean, shit, why would that woman from the station tell us this? What does it mean? Do you… do you know?’ Then he stops.
‘What?’ I say.
‘The guy, the other one at Madrid airport who was following us with the MI5 dude. The one I couldn’t place – what if he was CIA.’
‘That is an assumption, not a certainty.’
‘But a possibility, right?’
‘Probable,’ I say. ‘It is probable. Probability is the chance that something will happen – how certain it is that some event will occur. It is measured often in percentage terms. What percentage of probability would you say that the man you saw would be from the CIA?’
‘Huh? Oh, um, I dunno. Seventy, maybe eighty per cent.’
‘Seventy, maybe eighty per cent. Based on what assumptions?’
‘That he looked similar to the MI5 guy, you know, he was focussed, kind of. I don’t know, based on that this whole thing is a mess and for all we know, every crazy country could be involved.’
‘I do not believe every crazy country is involved. And countries cannot be crazy.’
‘No, but yes, but, wait, no…’ He exhales. ‘I don’t know, it just seems odd, you know, when I saw him. Off. A hunch.’
‘A hunch.’ I try to interpret how this would work. Hunch.
‘Yeah. Don’t you get those?’
‘No.’ His face drops. What does that mean? Sadness? Sometimes I really wish I knew what people were thinking. ‘I am sorry that I don’t get a hunch.’
He smiles. ‘It’s okay. I’m kind of glad you don’t.’
I feel happy at his words, yet my reaction confuses me, so I study the diagram, tracking the hidden code that now sits in my hand. ‘There is one more link.’
‘What? Where?’
I reach into my pocket and pull out something I have not looked at since we left the tavern. The photograph of my biological mother with me in her arms as a baby. I pause, a tightness burning in my chest. I turn over the image. The address, the geolocation coordinates on the back. I run the figures through my brain, connect and calculate and, each time I do, I arrive at the same, inevitable conclusion.
‘The numbers correlate,’ I say.
‘Hey? Let’s see.’
I show him. ‘There is a pattern connecting the two.’
Chris squints, reading, muttering the connections under the lisp of his breath. I catch myself thinking that I want to find somewhere warm, lie down next to him, back flat on the floor, and not move, only our five fingertips touching.
‘What if she knows something?’ he says after a few seconds. ‘What if the woman who gave us the book knows something about your mother, and the CIA is a connection? The two locations have similarities in their patterns, so it’s highly possible. Maybe Isabella, maybe she’s been forced to, I don’t know, work for them – for the CIA – or something and the Project have found out and are using that information. If the Project’s blackmailing the Home Secretary, they could be doing the same to someone within the CIA for some reason.’
‘You mean this is where what people think of each other matters and can be used to as extortion? As with the Home Secretary?’
‘Yeah, sort of, but this all means the CIA are involved in the whole thing. The question is why? How? I mean, Jesus, if the CIA are involved then the Project goes way beyond the UK. This thing, the whole cover-up of it, who’s really involved, could be huge, could be global.’
I look at Chris, look at Patricia and the creases on her brow, look at the way her teeth are pulling at her top lip, her eyes in the air, and I think. Places, people, feelings, movements, how they all connect, how each of us is inextricably linked by an invisible thread, a thread that spans age and race and creed and colour. I look at my hands, spread out my fingers just as Patricia does to me, watch each one spider outwards in the cold air, skin turning slightly pink in the morning chill, amazed at my own limbs, bones, nails, at what they can do, at how – when they are combined with the power of my brain, with its rewired uniqueness – they can carry out tasks and actions that I never thought possible. And yet here I am. No matter what I do, no matter how high my IQ, I am still part of the Project, still linked
by an indecipherable, invisible thread.
‘We have to go to find Isabella,’ I say after a moment. ‘Now. She could be in danger.’
Chris nods. ‘If the CIA is involved, who knows how far this goes.’ He shakes his head. ‘What do they do in the Project, the CIA? D’you think they run it, too?’
‘Um, guys?’ Patricia says. ‘The police are coming back, just up ahead.’
Chris looks to me. ‘The woman, the one you killed on the train. The police could have our pictures. They could be looking for us.’
We scan the distance. Two officers, a man and woman dressed head to toe in thick blue jackets, are wandering by the path at the shore of the lake where a large white hotel glistens in the morning sun.
‘The Swiss polizei carry guns,’ I say.
Chris secures his bag and draws up the map to the hospital on his phone. ‘Then, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s best we were going.’
Grabbing our belongings, we dart under a low-hanging tree that dangles diamonds of ice in the early sun, and follow a dirt path half hidden under a light carpet of snow leading to a forest beyond. Patricia lags behind then jogs to catch up with us but as she tries, in the rush, to ram the Orwell book into her bag, her feet trip on the root of a tree covered by a paper-thin layer of snow. She stumbles and the novel flies far from her hand, thudding to the ground in a ripped open heap among the twigs and ice and mud.