37 Hours

by J. F. Kirwan

  She was on her back too, a knife in her gut. Too much of her blood on the wrong side of her skin. Nadia watched as Jake tore around the room, slamming the emergency button. The door wouldn’t open. He grabbed the fire extinguisher and used it to smash the lock to smithereens.

  In a heartbeat Jake was at Lorne’s side, talking to her, shouting for a medic. Nadia stayed where she was. Lorne said some things to Jake, who tried to stem the blood flow, but all three of them knew it was over. Nadia held herself. She’d never liked Lorne. They were enemies. But this would damage Jake. He’d never admit it, but from everything he’d told her, Lorne had been the one who had hauled him back to life, made him whole again, after Kenya.

  She took a look back into the corridor. Two medics were trotting her way. ‘RUN!’ she shouted at them, then turned back. Jake was giving Lorne mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions, but she was as listless as… Jake stopped. He bent his head and whispered something into Lorne’s ear.

  Nadia didn’t want to know, and would never ask.

  The medics separated Jake from Lorne, tried to reanimate her for a while, though not too long.

  Jake came out. He looked angrier than she could ever have imagined. Surely some of it would come her way. She’d brought Sergei here. This was her fault. She’d been trained to see things like this coming. Instead, she’d slept with the enemy.

  Jake glanced at his watch. ‘The conference call is over.’

  ‘Surely they have to act now? Show them this, for God’s sake.’ She pointed back into the interrogation room.

  ‘Doesn’t count. Some kind of vendetta. I’ll work it out later.’

  Nadia glanced at her watch. Nineteen hours.

  Jake grabbed his crutches and left the room.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Simon.’

  ‘He won’t talk,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not what I have in mind.’

  She didn’t follow immediately. She went into the interrogation room. First she studied Sergei. He still had that same cavalier expression on his face. She doubted they’d ever know why he’d decided to work for Salamander. Tough times, bad choices. But her mind flicked back to the Radisson in Moscow, the bathroom, the two of them. Had it been real?

  She’d never know. Dasvidaniya, Sergei.

  Then she regarded Lorne, expecting to see that same banal smile Lorne used to give the world the finger all the time. But she didn’t. Lorne’s face was at peace, a kindness there. Nadia imagined there must have been a time in this woman’s life before the hardness had set in. This was the face she must have shown Jake every now and again, the face beneath the mask.

  It suited her.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Nadia and Jake were intercepted before they even got close to Simon. Procedure. Jake was taken to see the Executive Director, while Nadia was handcuffed and taken for interrogation again. She wasn’t surprised, but time was leaking away. Salamander was probably getting out of the country if he’d even been here at all. The searches were in the wrong locations because Simon had been running the algorithm. The presidential and ministerial elite were dining in denial while everyone else was trying to work out what these viral tweets really meant.

  Salamander was winning.

  She was put back on a polygraph. She knew the ropes, and went through it all on autopilot. But there had been a camera in Jake’s room – he’d told her about it – and it made sense since he was bait for the mole. So, early on she’d told them to look at the fucking recording, or her face, where she could feel a bruise swelling nicely, or simply Lorne’s corpse to finally get it that this was fucking serious, the real deal, and they should evacuate London.

  She used fuck quite a lot, like seasoning. Too much, maybe. But she’d had enough. Finally they left her alone, uncuffed, in the windowless interrogation room, and somehow through all the anger and frustration she fell asleep.

  Jake woke her. ‘Come with me,’ he said.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Well, there’s good news and bad news.’

  He took her to the Ops room. The latest tweet was displayed on a screen:

  London is doomed. They have lied to you. Their planes are waiting. They will fly to safety. You will become ash. 12 hours.

  Effective. Over a million hits. CNN and BBC World were calling it a bizarre hoax. But some were already spooked. The predawn M25 was a dense sea of headlights. Good for them. But only twelve hours left? What had Jake been doing?

  Then she saw what he’d been doing. Simon was strapped to a chair, wires attached to his scalp, feeding into a rack of machines where a guy in a white coat sat hunched over a screen and studied it intensely. Simon was immobile but breathing. His head was strapped in place, and he faced the hologram. There was some kind of mechanism above each of his eyes: two tiny cameras directed at his pupils. Every ten seconds, a section of London glowed red or green, then dulled back to normal. A single bead of sweat ran down Simon’s cheek. Other wires were attached to his fingertips and palms, and several disappeared inside his shirt, presumably plastered to his chest.

  Jake ignored Simon and the technician, and poured himself a mug of steaming black coffee.

  ‘You slept?’ she asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

  He took another gulp. ‘They weren’t going to release you.’

  ‘They saw the tapes, me being attacked, me saving you?’

  He shrugged.

  Okay, never mind. Get over it. ‘What’s the bad news?’

  ‘No evacuation unless we get hard evidence.’ He held up a hand. ‘Lorne isn’t considered hard enough.’ His voice didn’t crack, didn’t have any emotion at all. Fine. It could come out later, unless they failed.

  ‘So, who got me out?’

  ‘Well, that’s the good news. They promoted me, temporarily, on account of…’ His head hung, and he closed his eyes. He put down the coffee cup hard on the top of a console, spilling a little, then pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb.

  There you are. She wanted to console him, hold him.

  ‘How’s the search going?’ she asked.

  He ushered her into a glass-fronted office – a mini conference room – where a young woman in a smoke-grey hijab sat in front of a large screen. It was divided into one long rectangle on top, and underneath it four squares. The woman was twirling a pencil around her fingers, not taking her eyes from the screen. The top half showed the hologram, in real time, sections lighting up every ten seconds, just as they were outside. The bottom half was more interesting.

  The first square showed a smaller version of the hologram, with patches of red, yellow, green and light blue. The second showed Simon’s face, which was tense, as if resisting something. The third showed his pupils, with digital readouts superimposed over each iris. The last square contained a moving graph, six lines etching themselves along a continuously sliding horizontal background. Three of the lines seemed to track each other, moving in concert, while the other three followed independent paths.

  Jake closed the door and nodded to the woman, who didn’t react at all, then he glanced over the screen to Simon and the hologram just beyond. ‘We interrogated him – severely – for five hours straight. Nothing. This is our last attempt. Arash?’

  The woman didn’t look up. ‘Busy,’ she said. No hint of a foreign accent.

  He smiled. ‘Fair enough. Arash, and Tom out there, are psychologists, sort of. We’re trying to tap into Simon’s subconscious mind, to get him to show us the location of the warhead. These, er, heat maps –’ he pointed at the coloured patches ‘– show us where he’s looking.’

  ‘And where he is not,’ Arash interjected. She pointed with the blunt end of her pencil to several areas of pale blue.

  Nadia noticed an intense red dot right where they were. ‘That’s us, isn’t it?’

  Arash glanced at that part
of the screen. ‘Yes – but that’s normal. It’s where he is, so it’s like a point of reference. Actually, it’s a useful baseline we can use to determine the real location of the warhead.’

  ‘We’re also measuring heart and breathing rate, pupil dilation, and brainwave measurement –’

  ‘Electro-encephalography, Jake, please,’ Arash said.

  ‘Okay, EEG. Point is, we light up parts of the map at random, see how he reacts, and what he looks at.’

  ‘Or does not.’ Arash leant back. ‘He has a highly disciplined mind.’

  ‘Which is why we drugged him, to make him more labile, more emotional.’

  ‘But not psychotic,’ Arash said. She seemed to like having the last word.

  Jake sighed. ‘Found anything?’

  Arash turned around and faced Jake. She had large, honest, chocolate-brown eyes. ‘Do you think I would not tell you?’ She swivelled back to the screen.

  ‘Under,’ Nadia said. ‘Sergei used that word on the plane. If we restricted the search to below ground, would that help?’

  ‘Well,’ Jake began.

  ‘Yes,’ Arash stated. Not unkind, just a simple factual response. Nadia wondered what Arash and Tom did normally, working for MI6. The Russians also sometimes employed psychologists for nefarious purposes. Unlike doctors, psychologists weren’t bound by a Hippocratic oath.

  ‘Is it working?’ Nadia asked. ‘Are you making any progress?’

  Arash sat back again. ‘Yes, it is working, in that the tech part is functioning correctly, but no, we are not making progress.’

  ‘How come?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Either he does not know –’

  ‘He knows,’ Jake said.

  ‘Or he is intentionally looking at the location sometimes in order to fool the statistical algorithm we are using.’

  ‘Is that possible?’ Nadia asked.

  ‘He knows a lot about this software and these techniques.’

  ‘How come?’ Nadia asked.

  Arash pulled her veil a little closer around herself, but didn’t answer.

  Jake nodded at Arash. ‘They were dating.’

  ‘Oh,’ Nadia said. She looked at Jake. ‘Then shouldn’t someone else be doing this?’

  Arash shot up suddenly, her eyes flaring. She faced Nadia. Her voice grew deeper, and her chest heaved as she pointed towards Simon. ‘Give me a sharp janbiya and I will get the information for you right now.’

  Nadia recognised the fresh look of betrayal. ‘Maybe we should let her, Jake.’

  ‘No. Let’s focus only on underground searches, see if it throws up anything.’

  Arash retook her seat, looking disappointed. She spoke into a microphone. Outside, Tom turned around briefly, then back to his racks of hardware. Nadia noticed the parts lit up were now all underground.

  After ten minutes, Arash pointed to the six lines with the sharp end of her pencil. ‘You were right,’ she said. Now, four of the lines were tracking each other across the moving graph. ‘His heart rate is up fifteen per cent – 145 beats per minute.’

  Jake touched Nadia’s shoulder. ‘I told them you’d come in handy.’

  ‘This could still take hours,’ Arash said. ‘His heart might give out before we can determine the location.’

  Jake and Nadia sat down and brainstormed ways of accelerating the process, while Arash half-listened, and then shot down every theory they came up with. Then suddenly, she swore. Arash threw her pencil on the table.

  Nadia studied the screen. The lines had diverged. The heat map view was all over the place, a mishmash of colours. It wasn’t working.

  ‘Bastard is playing us,’ Arash said.

  ‘Then let’s play back,’ Nadia said. ‘He doesn’t know we don’t know, right? How accurate is this kit? It seems we’re using it as a kind of computer to build up a picture. But can it detect a single spike? If we made him think we found the location…’

  Arash put the pencil down and folded her arms. ‘We’d only get one shot.’

  Jake stood up. ‘Then let’s try it, because this isn’t working. We have to act before he’s sure he’s outplayed us. But there needs to be a credible source.’

  Jake and Nadia said it at the same moment. ‘Sergei!’

  ‘Is dead,’ Arash said. Then she added, ‘which he doesn’t know. Very well. It’s your call, Jake. But if it fails, we will have nothing. Let me plan it. The factors have to be just right, to make him focus on the exact location.’ She looked up at Jake. ‘It’s your call Jake, but it’s my game.’

  ***

  It took ten minutes to set up the little piece of theatre. Tom had to react naturally, so they told him nothing. Jake walked up to him, exuberant, took him to one side, spoke just loud enough that Simon could hear. How Sergei had finally cracked under Nadia’s interrogation, using highly unorthodox methods the Executive Director had sanctioned, knowing it would cost him his career. Tom listened attentively to the plans concerning special teams to go ‘down there’, and then asked, as Arash had predicted, what would happen to Simon. Jake replied that they were going to take him with them, to the exact spot where the warhead was hidden.

  Nadia and Arash were glued to the screen, listening to the conversation between Jake and Tom, relayed into the observation booth.

  ‘There,’ Arash said. ‘Heart rate peaking…pupils dilating… He’s swallowing it.’

  As Nadia watched, Simon’s face became even more taut, almost a grimace. His eye track was all over the place, oscillating between the hologram and Jake. Suddenly five of the six lines on the sliding graph began to converge, moving as one.

  Nadia stood up, bent over the screen. ‘Come on, Jake. Say the words.’

  And he did. ‘…we’re going to take him down there with us, right to the warhead…’

  The sixth line jumped into place with the others. The cross hairs zapped to a fixed location on the hologram. Simon’s heart rate spiked at 172 beats per minute. Arash hit a key and the location was locked on the map. She hit another key and it lit up on the actual hologram outside, and began flashing. Simon’s gaze stayed on it. His heart rate and sweat rate climbed higher. Arash turned to Nadia, and they did a high five.

  Arash spoke into an intercom. ‘You did it, Jake, we have the location.’

  Jake turned away from Tom and gazed back towards the booth. ‘Sure? One hundred per cent?’ He said it loud this time, so Simon could hear clearly.

  Arash nodded back to Jake, beaming, and Jake walked right up to the hologram, studying the location. Nadia watched Simon’s charts go wild again, the lines scratching in all different directions. ‘He’s realised we played him,’ she said. It didn’t look like a happy chart.

  And then the voice connection with Jake and Tom went dead. Arash looked towards them, through the glass. Nadia followed her gaze. Jake reached for something in his pocket. He lifted it out with his fingers, and made a move as if scratching his chin, but she was sure he was holding something. He turned back and caught Nadia’s eye. His face was set in stone, and she suddenly realised what he was holding, what he intended to do. Arash was busy again with the screens, and didn’t see the two words Jake mouthed. For Lorne. Nadia bit her lip, but nodded, just a fraction, making herself complicit in the crime.

  The intercom became live again. Nadia glanced at the screens. Simon had stabilised, his heart rate had dropped down to 120, and his eyes – well, you didn’t need to be a psychologist to recognise a defeated man.

  Jake raked off the mouth guard Simon had been wearing, and released the forehead strap. Tom was busy with his rack of equipment, but most of it was still running. Nadia watched Jake as he spoke to Simon, so quiet she couldn’t catch the words. Jake was shifting on his feet. Part of her wanted him to do it, but she realised a larger part didn’t. She’d crossed that line – killing in cold blood – a long time ago. He hadn’t. It was good to have someone on the other side of that boundary. For years Katya had been, well, not
exactly a moral compass, but someone who reminded her what she was fighting for. But Katya was gone. And if Jake crossed that moral border…

  Arash walked out of the room before Nadia could stop her, and went straight towards Jake and Simon. Jake looked up at her, then stood back. The moment had slipped by. Arash began helping Tom with the equipment. Jake’s eyes met Nadia’s. He looked relieved. Dodged a bullet, or at least Simon had. She turned her gaze towards the monitors. The six lines on the graph were flat-lining, one by one.

  Suddenly, Jake was shouting. ‘Arash! No!’

  Nadia looked up. Arash was right in front of Simon, lips trembling, eyes full of hatred, holding a slim blade that dripped blood. Nadia glanced down at the screen, the two remaining lines going haywire, his heart rate erratic, as blood squirted out of his right carotid artery. She couldn’t see his face; the cameras had already been switched off.

  Jake acted quickly. He released one of Simon’s harnesses, took the blade from Arash’s grip, then shouted over the intercom. ‘Get a medic down here. The suspect just attacked one of our staff. I’ve neutralised the threat but the suspect is bleeding out.’

  Noble. Certainly not in the Russian spy playbook. She watched Jake quickly brief Tom and Arash moments before a security detail arrived, followed by two medics who took half a second to recognise this was a corpse-in-progress. On the screen, the two remaining brainwaves continued for a full thirty seconds after the heart stopped. She wondered what Simon was thinking.

  Arash had killed her lover, a double agent. Lorne would have wanted it that way.

  Jake came into the booth. ‘I have to go see the Exec Director, set things in motion.’ He was focused, and stared straight at her.

  ‘Go,’ she said.

  He closed the door a moment and spoke softly, nodding to Arash, who was the current focus of the medics. ‘I didn’t want Simon to take her career down with him. Tom will play along.’

  ‘I understand.’ She wasn’t sure it would have been her choice of action. ‘I’ll be here.’

  He studied her a moment, then left.

  He was still safely on the other side of that threshold. He’d thought about murdering Simon, yet he hadn’t done it, and there was a gulf between thinking and doing when it came to killing. But saving Arash, taking the blame for what she’d done… For the first time she wondered if he was too far on the other side, and if, one day, he’d see her for the killer she had become, and hate her for it. But then she dismissed it, because they were still on the clock to find and defuse the warhead.