by J. F. Kirwan
‘Not as well as I know Jake,’ she countered.
Lorne had that pitch-perfect, happy-go-lucky smile on her face, as if she was doing something banal like shopping for bread, as if she wasn’t concentrating. Nadia knew better. She hadn’t seen Lorne in over a year. Not since the interrogations.
Lorne didn’t miss a beat. ‘He enjoyed the recordings. I asked him to look over them. Yours and Sergei’s. It’s what we do.’
It occurred to Nadia that handcuffs could be used as a weapon, to strangle someone. Unfortunately hers were pinned to the table via a steel loop. But she didn’t have time for games.
‘We’re no use to you chained up. We met Salamander. Sergei was with him for –’
‘Exactly. So, back to my question. How well do you know him?’
This was pointless. ‘Enough to trust him with my life.’
‘Really? You knew him for what, all of thirty-six hours?’
‘Which reminds me…’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘Shit! We should be doing something, Lorne!’
‘We are. And we’re working closely with your colonel, by the way. We’re scouring London in all manner of ways, and we’re questioning two known associates of the perpetrator.’
Nadia sat back. ‘I think you mean captives. Salamander killed my father and sister.’
‘Your father used to work for him.’
‘He infiltrated Salamander’s organisation, for Christ’s sake.’ She had to take another tack. She leaned forward. ‘Did I ever lie to you? When I was back in prison?’
Lorne’s smile faded. ‘You held out a long time.’
Nadia sensed a grudging respect there. ‘I held out, as you say, about the Rose, but I never lied. I trust Sergei. It’s your call whether you do or not. But maybe he knows things he doesn’t know.’
Lorne’s eyes narrowed. ‘Meaning?’
‘On the plane, he said under G20’s nose. Maybe that’s what Salamander said. Sergei may have clues in his head, lodged there during his three days of having the crap beaten out of him.’
Lorne said nothing.
‘Either take me with you or leave me here to rot. You shouldn’t be here; you’ve more important things to do, I’m sure.’
Lorne picked up the key, walked around the table, and uncuffed Nadia. A bold move. Nadia could have attacked her, killed her, or at least tried. Lorne could have simply given her the key to unlock herself, or called in a guard. But she hadn’t. Lorne was making a point, showing her that there was something between them, even if it didn’t extend to Sergei.
Trust.
***
Nadia followed Lorne out of the room, down a corridor, then she had to make an emergency stop in the loo to throw up. Lorne went in with her.
‘What dose did you get?’
Nadia told her, and Lorne said nothing, just watched her while she rinsed the stink of vomit out of her mouth.
They took a lift down a long way, then proceeded through a series of heavy, electronically bolted doors, until they arrived in a large darkened room shaped like a flattened dome. Nadia reckoned it was designed that way to be bomb-proof. London had survived the Blitz. Its survivors, even after generations, still had a bunker mentality. She’d heard rumours of numerous fortified underground hideouts and sanctuaries. But a solid steel roof wouldn’t help much if the warhead detonated underground.
In the large room were three curved rows of high-tech desks, various sizes of computer screens, and ten men and women all wearing earpieces and microphones, some of them talking to people somewhere else, a constant hum of chatter in the air. A lot of it didn’t make sense to her, except a mosaic of thirty TV screens showing different shots of London, including Heathrow where various VIPs were disembarking for the summit. A digital readout had a central, elevated position. It read 21:42:13, counting down each second.
Lorne walked her over to an oval boardroom table, waved a couple of fingers, and a thirty-ish man entered, bald with a red polka-dot bow tie and matching red spectacles, and eyes that refused to stay still.
He clicked something in his hand and three projectors above the table illuminated. Nadia wasn’t prepared for what came next. An image of London flickered into the space over the table. It was 3-D. The detail was incredible: St Paul’s, Tower Bridge, the Shard, London City airport in the heart of the Docklands… She followed the Thames all the way back to Lambeth Bridge, where the affair with the Rose had begun, and MI6, where they were right now. There was even simulated traffic… She looked closer.
‘Is this real-time?’ she asked.
‘Four-second delay,’ he said. ‘Simon,’ he reached out his hand.
She ignored it. She bent down and saw the Tube tunnels underneath the capital. She could make out little trains moving. There were smaller tunnels, a criss-cross of lines. The sewers.
‘A hologram?’
Simon nodded. ‘Evidently.’ He then proceeded with his report. Various parts of the vista lit up or darkened as he gave an account of the search for the warhead. More than fifty teams were visually searching every nook, every cranny large enough to hide it. Sniffer drones like the one Bransk had used inspected skyscrapers and rooftops, hunting for a plutonium signature. A digital counter to the side of the display said fourteen per cent.
‘Will you reach one hundred per cent in less than a day?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not possible.’
‘So how do you decide where to search?’
Simon pushed his spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose. ‘We use the latest Big Data search algorithms to prioritise the search patterns, based on previous threats, nuclear yield calculations, and behavioural analysis.’
‘Of whom?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry?’ Simon looked flustered, and glanced at Lorne for confirmation that he should answer. She had her shopping-girl smile in place.
‘Whose behaviour?’ Nadia repeated.
‘Well, we, er, looked at known psychopaths and used the behavioural analysis –’
‘He’s not a psychopath.’
Again, Simon looked to Lorne for help. This time she spoke up, her voice crisp and directed at Nadia. ‘As soon as you have any actualisable information, Simon here can integrate it into the algorithm.’
‘I need to work with Sergei on this.’
‘Not yet.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Let’s just say his answers didn’t match up with yours.’
‘What? Which ones?’
‘Take her to L24, West Wing.’
Simon folded his arms. ‘But I’m in the middle…’ His voice trailed off into compliance. ‘This way,’ he said to Nadia.
They walked through more swing doors, and took the lift back up to just below ground level. After turning several corners Simon gestured to an open doorway, and she stood at the threshold.
Jake. She darted into the room with an empty hospital bed, its white sheets ruffled and pulled back, Jake sitting in an armchair next to it. She held her features in check, because he looked pretty awful, his arms and thighs a Frankenstein patchwork of flesh that didn’t yet match his skin colour.
‘That bad?’ he said.
She went up to him and kissed him full on the mouth. She then drew back.
Someone coughed.
‘Thanks, Simon,’ Jake said.
‘She doesn’t have clearance. I should –’
‘Thanks, Simon, really.’
He muttered something and left.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
She grinned. ‘Better than you.’
His smile was sad. ‘On the outside, maybe.’
The grin fell from her face, and before she could reply he pulled her to his chest, and held her there for a long time. Of course. He’d seen her interrogation. He knew about her dose.
She broke free. It was delicate, but she had to ask. ‘What’s going on with Sergei?’
Jake
looked uncomfortable. She plumbed his features for something more – jealousy, anger maybe, at least some resentment – but found none. God almighty, Jake was a keeper.
He reached over to a table and picked up a tablet, swiped it on, and pressed here and there. ‘See for yourself.’
She took it and watched, listened to Sergei’s words. Describing how he’d entered the sub. The attack, how his two men were killed. Then the interrogation with the… Wait… What? She rewound, played it again, then a third time.
‘You see the problem,’ Jake said.
She didn’t get it. Sergei had said the man he interrogated had a full head of black hair. But he was bald, with a curved scar on his cheek.
‘One of you is lying,’ Jake said. ‘Lucky for you, Lorne decided it’s him.’
‘Have you confronted him about it?’
‘Not yet. We’re still trying to work it out. It would help if we had the crew manifest. Which we should have in an hour.’
It had to be some kind of mistake. ‘Let me talk to him.’
Jake shook his head. ‘Not yet.’
‘He saved my life back there. Twice. And Salamander beat him pretty bad.’
‘I know. But things here have been pretty fraught.’ He told her about the mole.
She realised she needed to drop it. She wasn’t helping Sergei’s case. And they were on the clock. She switched tacks. ‘How’s the tweeting going?’
Jake reached over and touched the tablet again. Twitter feed showed sixteen tweets. She checked the analytics. The audience and retweeting was growing, as were a host of secondary tweets trying to unravel what was really going on. The last tweet had twelve thousand hits. Not good.
‘This is my favourite,’ Jake said. He swiped a couple of times and she read it.
24 hours till the Man comes around.
‘What is it?’
‘A reference to a Johnny Cash song. A man on a pale horse decides who gets to live, who gets blamed. And hell follows behind him.’
The Horseman. War. She looked at the most recent one.
The playing field will be levelled in 21 hours. London will be levelled.
She checked its analytics again. Another five thousand hits in the past minute. ‘It’s going viral,’ she said.
He frowned. ‘We’re trying to keep it off TV and radio, but it’s only a matter of time. These tweets on the hour, every hour, keep fanning the flames.’
Fanning. Something clicked in her head. But she couldn’t quite see it. ‘Jake, call off G20. Evacuate London before it’s too late.’
‘Can’t,’ he said, his frown deepening.
‘Can’t or won’t?’
He didn’t answer. She knew it wasn’t his call, probably not even Lorne’s. It would need the Home Secretary at least, probably the Prime Minister.
‘There’s a conference call in thirty minutes,’ he said.
But she knew how these things went. People above Lorne’s pay grade would play it down, ask for more resources, try and give good news, when the reality was that they had no idea where the warhead was. There was still a chance it would be found, of course, but more by luck than judgement. And an outside chance it wasn’t here at all.
But no, Salamander had gone to a lot of trouble to steal the warhead, along with all that shadow-play in Chernobyl to get the arming codes. The threat was real. But those higher up the chain of command were distanced, dispassionate. Which made them less likely to have a knee-jerk reaction, which was a good thing, most of the time, just not today.
She returned to her earlier thought. Fanning. Fan. Blue Fan. She was Salamander’s family, his granddaughter no less. Nadia’s father had said that Blue Fan could be used as leverage.
‘We have to do something, tip his hand somehow,’ Nadia said.
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘Bransk said that Salamander was an expert Go player. Is there some way we can bring Blue Fan onto the board?’
He pondered for a while, then sat up sharply. ‘Come with me,’ he said.
With her aid, he pulled on some loose trousers and a jacket, grabbed a walking stick from behind the door. They rushed – as far as he could – all the way back to the Ops room. He went to Simon’s desk and gave him instructions. Lorne moved over to him, and bent forward to see what he was doing. She was very close to Jake. Touching his shoulder in fact. He didn’t seem to notice. Or else he didn’t mind. Forget it. Nadia moved forward as well, to see.
‘You’re sure about this?’ Simon asked.
‘Do it,’ Jake answered.
‘And can you follow it up in an hour?’
‘Yes I can. I did catch a glimpse of her, that one time.’
Simon hit ‘Send’, then sat back.
‘Now what?’ Nadia asked. Lorne wandered off.
Jake rested on the corner of a desk. He was still in pretty bad shape. But his willpower was still there. He would heal, given the time.
‘We wait. An All Points Bulletin has just gone out to Interpol, CIA, Mossad, FSB and especially local and regional police forces in Hong Kong, listing a young woman of Chinese origin known as Blue Fan as public enemy number one. The message also states that a physical description of the woman will follow in an hour. It lists MI6 as the source.’
She took him to one side, out of earshot of the others. ‘Genius,’ she said. ‘And suicide. The mole in MI6 will come for you. Salamander knows you’re the only survivor from that mission.’
Lorne joined them. She had a blue plastic pistol in her hand. She offered it to Nadia.
‘Seriously?’
‘Don’t get too excited. It’s a tranq dart gun. One shot. For the mole. To stop him or her swallowing a cyanide pill. Both of you go back to Jake’s room – here is too restricted; the mole might not have access.’
Nadia took it. She noticed the holographic display was up and running.
The searched area was still only fifteen per cent.
Chapter Twenty
Jake and Nadia talked while they waited to see if the mole would take the bait. Jake mostly about Yukio and Dominic, she mostly about her father and Katya. It wasn’t really helping either of them. The past was still too close to the present.
‘Hey,’ Jake said. ‘What shall we do after all this is over?’
She gave him an incredulous look. Then, okay, why the hell not. ‘Seychelles. Never been there. You?’
‘Nope. Some good diving there for sure.’
She recalled their last dive. ‘Beaches, Jake. World-class beaches.’
‘Yeah, maybe you’re right. Beaches and spa treatment.’
‘Now we’re talking.’
They each held their smiles in place as long as they could.
‘How long till you’re brand new again?’ she asked.
‘A month and I’ll be serviceable.’ He studied the floor, then looked right back at her. ‘I can actually walk without the stick; I’m just a bit wobbly.’
‘Do you have family here, Jake? I mean in London?’
‘No, thank God. Not that I’d be allowed to tell them. Friends though.’ He studied the floor. ‘Christ, this had better work.’
They heard hurried footsteps. She hid behind the cupboard, and clasped the pistol, finger on the trigger, all the while watching Jake.
As someone entered the room, Jake seemed to relax. ‘Simon,’ he said.
‘You’d better come,’ Simon said urgently, almost out of breath. ‘Something you both need to see right away. Where’s Nadia?’
She should have heard it in Simon’s voice. The tension and slightly raised tone she mistook for his exuberance over a break, a lead. But she didn’t. And so she lowered the pistol as Jake’s eyes swung towards her, indicating to Simon exactly where she was, and as she stepped forward, she barely had time to even register the punch coming.
***
Lorne sat opposite Sergei in the bland, beige interrogation room, bulletproof mirrored g
lass behind her. She had no weapon. Standard protocol. She didn’t need one, for two reasons. One was that he was handcuffed to the table.
‘We need to talk about the submarine.’
He didn’t blink. ‘What about it?’
He seemed casual. She could also do casual. ‘Your story doesn’t tally with Nadia’s.’
‘Which part?’
Cavalier, even. She eyed him. He must know that if there was any discrepancy, he was in trouble. Even the colonel’s influence wouldn’t help him. A spy was one thing, a terrorist another.
‘The interrogation. But let’s go back a step. Tell me again how you entered the sub.’
‘Self-boring neurotoxin cylinder. Nadia uploaded the virus that crashed the ship’s systems. We used the external hatch.’
‘We?’
‘Yes, me and two others.’
‘What were their names?’
His eyes narrowed, even as he smiled. ‘This would be the eighth time.’
She smiled back. ‘Humour me.’
‘Boris Teltovich and Dmitri Kevanovich.’
‘You’d known them a long time?’
He held her gaze, and the smile. ‘Not really. My usual crew had been aboard the sub when it was over-run.’
‘Careless of you, wouldn’t you say?’
He shrugged. ‘Fair point.’
‘What happened to Boris and Dmitri?’
‘They were shot as we entered. Boris first. Dmitri got off a couple of rounds before he got his.’
‘Yet you survived.’
‘I was lucky.’
‘You entered the sub last.’
His smile vanished. ‘For once.’
Lorne leant back, placed her fingernails on the metal table. She needed to unravel the disparity between their two versions of what happened: Nadia’s and Sergei’s. Nadia believed Sergei’s head had been messed up from the torture at the hands of Salamander. Jake believed Sergei was lying. So did Lorne. The question was why. The crew manifest still hadn’t arrived. But she was running out of time. The conference to decide the true threat level, and whether to cancel the G20 and evacuate London, was in ten minutes.