by Nicholas Lim
“Kirtananda. He’s a psychotic killer.”
“How long before he proves you were bluffing?”
“Early morning.”
“Could it be sooner?”
“Arshu is on a journey at sea. He has a satellite phone which he turns on once a day, six am our time, to maintain contact with the Centres.”
“Did Arshu really ask you to invite me here?”
“Kirt told me that’s what he said. But he lies.”
“Why would Kirtananda want to kill me?”
“I don’t know. He likes to kill. That’s what he does. He’s a killer.”
Through the window Garrett could see the tiled dome of the House of Healing. It was perhaps fifty yards away. The rising steel tube she could now see was a chimney – the resemblance to the Porton ventilation was obvious. A biosafety lab, here? She shuddered at the thought of the womb-shaped valley, the geodesic dome buried in its side like an egg waiting to be fertilised. What had been incubating here in seclusion for ten years?
“Who is Sikanda?”
“A scientist. He came here two years ago.” Skyler's answer was low and toneless.
“What sort of scientist?”
“A biogeneticist. His field was tropical diseases; malaria vaccine research.”
Garrett’s eyes traversed the window frame. She had tested the bars; they were unmoving. She had already examined the locked door; it was solid wood with exterior hinges. There were no other exits from the room.
Garrett noticed words, crude graffiti, scratched beside the window in the face of a brick. She bent closer. Adele. Mummy. Two words enclosed in a heart made of crosses.
“Who’s Adele?”
“What?”
“Who’s Adele?”
“She was Sikanda's daughter. How do you–”
“They were kept in this room, weren't they? The family.”
“Yes.”
“What was Sikanda’s real name?”
“Professor Richardson.”
“And the men called Christmas?”
“I didn’t know them well.”
“Do you know what they were supposed to do?”
“They were part of the Rebirth project. One for each continent.”
Garrett turned around.
“Christmas,” she crossed the room to face Skyler, “The man I found: he was sent out with the infection, wasn’t he? Carrying what Sikanda created.”
“I don’t know.”
“What is Rebirth?”
“It’s a green ecology project.”
“Rebirth – rebirth of what?”
“Mother Earth. That's all I know.”
“Where is this man Sikanda now? I need to find him, talk to him.”
Skyler shook his head. He carried on shaking it from side to side.
“I killed him.” The listlessness had returned to his voice. “Kirtananda ordered me. He tricked me! I was stoned. Jesus! It was a mistake!”
He covered his face with his hands. Garrett stared, horrified. What had happened to him? She looked around the walls, then through them. What was happening outside? When she spoke, her voice was harsh.
“I need to understand what this Sikanda has done.”
“Gudrun wouldn't tell me anything about his work.” Skyler's hands hooded his eyes now, shielding them from unwanted light. His words came slow, bitter with late acceptance. “She only told me what she thought I wanted to hear.”
“Gudrun,” Garrett said.
“Now you know everything. There is nothing else I can tell you.”
A distant recorded voice called out from across the valley, long repeated syllables. Skyler drew his legs up and crossed them beneath him, placed his hands palms up on his knees, and closed his eyes.
“I must sit and perform my Dues.”
Garrett reached out and shook him by the shoulders. His eyes remained closed. His lips began to move soundlessly.
Chapter 40
“I’m putting up on screen a graph from a nation-wide survey conducted at the request of my service two hours ago.”
Burnett crossed back to the table. She took the remote from White then nodded through glass walls at a technician.
Connell stood and hitched his trousers. Burnett raised her eyebrows at him. “You need to see this.”
He collapsed back into his chair with a sigh. “I’ll give you sixty seconds.”
The projector light flickered. A graph appeared on screen.
Burnett glanced at Kirkpatrick. “You are looking at data currently ‘NATO Eyes Only’ so you are all now covered by OSA.” She shook her head, “Although I predict this information will be in the public domain by the end of the day.”
Allcock leaned forward. “What are those dots?”
“Are they...” Thorpe’s voice trailed off into silence.
Burnett clicked the remote again. The image enlarged.
No-one moved.
“God Almighty.”
***
It was cool on the cliff top. A breeze was blowing in from the sea. Kirtananda faced into it. The tide was in. Occasionally the dull thud of a heavy wave passed through his feet and he sensed the enormous energy of the water’s impact.
The charges were set on the lab. He would set the timers when they left in the morning. No scientific evidence was to be left behind. Arshu-ji had been very clear. Not a problem; he had enough explosives to start a war.
The boys were finishing loading the Bedfords. Then they were done.
A hard unfamiliar object dug into his thigh. He fished a set of keys and a mobile out of a pocket. Garrett’s. Yes. Just one last job to do. He smiled.
The boy had played a smart card. Of course the way to make him pay was to make his mother pay first.
He checked the mobile was switched off. He hefted the keys. On an impulse he threw them, far and high out. They fell silently. He waited but could not hear a splash above the sound of the waves below. After a long pause he threw the mobile too.
***
Burnett clicked the remote, showing close-ups. “I’m told initial estimates put the number at around fifty.”
“Christ,” Allcock said softly
“Are we to understand they all died from this malaria?” Thorpe demanded.
“Yes.”
“Colonel,” Burnett turned to Allcock, “Given the situation, the military may become involved at some point. That scenario planning–” The officer nodded his head once, as if saluting. This was his language. If you could start to mobilise those resources, it will help Gold Commander’s job.”
Allcock stood up. “I'm on it.”
“The infection rate is being revised upward every half hour.”
“Those CDSC reporting errors have cost us dearly,” Thorpe observed.
Kirkpatrick fiddled with his tie. There was silence. Allcock left the room.
“Sir John,” Burnett said. “We'll need to brief local health trusts immediately.”
“Yes,” Hammond nodded at the screen where bodies clumped together like dead cells on a Petri dish. “I will also contact our Level Three labs.”
“I’ve done that,” White said.
“Good. They will need original biopsy material.”
“I can arrange it,” Kirkpatrick said. He was ignored.
“We must send early warning briefings to national disease control centres.” Hammond said. “The European labs and the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia may be able to help us.”
“Good idea,” Burnett nodded.
“I will also alert the WHO. We will need to consider the widest quarantine measures.”
“What about the Brighton outbreak?” Kirkpatrick asked.
“What about London?” Thorpe added. “We have Operation Sassoon. Should it be activated?”
There was a pause. Burnett turned to Connell. “I think you need to contact the Prime Minister.” He stared at her. She threw her voice, shaking him with it like a parent a sleepy child, “We are looking at a state of emergen
cy.”
Slowly he began to nod. “Yes. Yes, I agree.” He stood up. “This crisis requires a personal response from the PM. Questions will have to be interrupted.” Connell addressed the screens on his way out. “Sir John, he may want to visit a hospital in person. Is that possible?”
“Andy, forget it! Right now, the whole country could be a contaminated hot zone.”
“Okay, okay!” Connell paused at the door. “The PM will chair the next meeting of this committee. Let’s get moving people.” He jabbed a finger at White. “Whatever it takes.”
***
Garrett stood at the barred window. She could see stars of the summer constellations, Cygnus, Lyra and Aquila. The sky was beginning to lighten at one edge.
She had kept returning to the window, the thinnest point of exit, but it had proved impenetrable. The door was no better, flush and tight-fitting in its frame. She had wasted an hour and broken two fingernails on it.
She glanced at the graffiti beside the window frame. It had been scratched with a sharp point. There was nothing in the cell that could do that. The child must have used her nails.
Garrett went and sat down on the bed.
“Will you speak to me?”
“Skyler? Please? We have so little time.”
He continued to chant, as he had all night. The sheer stamina of his effort was undeniable. Garrett couldn’t understand how he withstood the boredom, the pointlessness. But of course, he thought there was a point.
“Please talk to me.”
The chanting continued. Garrett sat back on the bed, unwilling to move away. She rested against the wall. She noticed an alphabet scratched in higgledy lines in the dirty plaster. Even here, they were teaching their daughter. In such a prison. Such a hopeless place. Lower down, just above the mattress, at head height for a sleeper, she could see a few three-letter words scrawled at an angle. CAT, GAG, TAG, ACT.
Behind her thoughts she could hear Skyler continuing to mutter his syllables, the sounds he believed contained the names of his God. What a ridiculous ritual! What a ridiculous belief – a name, buried in a thousand words. The practice appeared designed to waste a mind, a human life.
Garrett frowned at the scratched words on the wall. Something nagged at her in the old way, at the simple pattern of the lettering. She guessed her mind was playing at distractions, not wishing to think about where she was, about the filthy trapped cell and Jason’s droning withdrawal. Anagrams, that was it – they were almost anagrams of each other. Not quite – they were just formed of the same four letters, A, C, G, T.
She thought of the word games she had been drilled in as a child, for exams, patterns of letters in sequence. Miniature codes in similar miniature words.
Beside her, Skyler continued to chant. She wanted to shake him by the shoulder, release him from his voluntary mental prison. She thought of Richardson. Trapped here in this same cell, equally a prisoner. Responsible for an impending plague of a horrific, almost unthinkable scale.
How he must have wished to escape! Or at least get a warning out. But he would have had no unguarded access to computers or telephones. He would not have been allowed to send letters. The only release must have been his work in the lab. Contact only with his family, guards, Bryce perhaps. And of course the organism, the new life form he had created. Garrett stared at the letter triplets on the wall. By manipulating those base pairs hoping for a cure, he had created a monster.
She continued to stare at the scratched words. A, C, G, T. Of course he had chosen those letters to play with. To a geneticist like Richardson, they were distinctive as e, π, x and y to mathematicians, or the constants of physicists. A, C, G, T. Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine and Thymine: the four nucleotide bases on the doubled helical strands of a DNA molecule.
She blinked. Manipulating those base pairs.
Trapped, with no unguarded access to get a message out.
Contact with the organism. Manipulating those base pairs.
To get a message out. Manipulating those base pairs.
To get a message out.
Skyler continued to drone. The letter triplets danced in front of her eyes. Suddenly she knew. Richardson had tried to help. He had sent them a warning. They just hadn’t seen it.
Chapter 41
The operations room of JTAC was a basement of Thames House on Millbank. Raised clusters of screens flickered with information dense as a City trading floor. Plain clothes operators sat at workstations chatting through headsets. Server stacks panelled one long wall. Burnett had declined Allcock's offer of Pindar, the hardened MoD command room beneath Whitehall. Better defended, it had arguably less communications facilities – and to have accepted would have passed operational control of her resources to the army.
White watched Hanratty scurry between senior officers, notepad in hand. He looked purposeful and confident. The young man had done some growing up today. White watched the infection summary on the large wall screen. Numbers ticked upwards. Perhaps they all had.
His own brief had narrowed. Burnett had asked him to investigate new foreign intelligence. The data was varied and the geography very dispersed, from Bombay, Cancun and Brisbane, to Cape Town... White glanced at a digital wall clock. 3:53. Burnett had asked for hourly reports.
***
The barred window let in first shadowless light. Was it four? Five? The tower had just sent its call out across the valley. Garrett knelt beside the bed.
“Skyler?”
She laid her head on his crossed ankles.
“Whatever you’ve done, I still love you.”
His lips continued to move, pronouncing sequential variations on nine syllables. Garrett sat down next to him. The thought of what he might have done sickened and angered her. If he would only talk to her, tell what had happened, perhaps she would be able to understand. Perhaps they could start to understand together. But he wouldn’t.
Garrett pushed herself back towards the wall with her good hand. She wanted to look at the letter codes again. As she moved a sharp point dug into her thigh through the rough mattress. She frowned and rubbed at the scratch. She explored for the cause. Beneath her hand, under the canvas cover, her fingers felt the outline of a long, thin object.
She picked at a seam until she could rip fabric. Her questing fingers found a fork, snapped in two. One tine was broken.
She went back to the window and scratched a line next to the heart. The broken tine suggested heavier use. With more purpose now, she examined in minute detail around the window edges. She experimented more with the fork. Below the window, the mortar joints broke like sand. Someone had been at work here. Within minutes she discovered five loose bricks, across two of the window bars. Freeing one more brick would release a third bar, just enough of a gap. She hacked at hard, unloosened cement. A few grains chipped off. It was not impossible.
Behind her the chanting had stopped.
“What are you doing?”
Kirtananda cut the connection. Arshu had been quite clear.
The lying bastard.
He checked his Glock. The boys were set. Kirtananda skirted the House of Healing. The charges were set under the lab. The outhouse loomed ahead.
It was the bodies that were the problem. He had considered bagging and taking them, but if anything went wrong, if they were stopped and searched… Then a beautiful idea had occurred to him.
Static from his shortwave hissed. “Boss?”
“Well?”
“I’m done here. Fuck it’s muddy. The water’s spreading out through the trees and coming round a bit.”
“That’s fine. Long as it holds for an hour or so.”
“Should be fine.”
“Okay. Go clean up.”
Kirtananda’s hand slipped on Tyson’s collar. The heavy redbone, ninety pounds of muscle, bone and teeth, jumped against the leash. “Wait up boy.”
“We can’t get past.”
Skyler slipped down behind a tree. They had broken out of the cell without
difficulty. The last window bar had come free quickly with their combined efforts. Once out, they had made straight for the woods along the shore, trusting to surprise and speed.
“Zakiya’s on the rock. Harith is watching this exit. And Rayan’s on the cliff path. I can see them. They’ve sight of the whole beach. And there’ll be someone up top, Dharma or Kirt.” Skyler opened his empty hands. “They’re all armed.”
Garrett nodded. “Is there another way out?”
“Inland. Once out of the valley it’s open ground for miles. And Kirt will have it covered.”
Skyler shook his head. They stood at the edge of the forest by the beach, panting, heads almost touching. Their voices were at a bare whisper. Leaving the cell they had seen Kirtananda approach. They’d run for the beach; but shortwave was faster.
“So we’ve got to get out by the shore.” Garrett said. “There’s some tree cover under the cliff.”
“After crossing a hundred yards of open sand?”
“I need to reach the car, check Cherry.”
“It’s suicide. They’re all armed.”
Garrett rested her weight against the tree. The cut in her left arm was pulsing.
“There’s one more thing,” Skyler said.
“Yes?”
“I know where there’s a gun.”
Garrett stared at her son.
Kirtananda stood beside the broken window. This woman was beginning to piss him off. Who did she think she was, special fucking forces? Well she wasn’t going to get lucky a third time. Five against two. Unarmed. Home ground.
He returned to the kennels. The dogs hunted best in packs.
The men were set. All exits covered. Shootin’ fish in a barrel.
They ran like shadows. A part of Garrett sang with a strange glee. They were together. It had taken this madness, but they were together. She caught up with him on the rise. A shire horse stood asleep beside a hedgerow in the field below.
“I’m holding you up,” Garrett said.