Now both hands were hanging limp and useless at her sides. It was insanity to go on. But there could be no sanity in this fight. Eyes ablaze, she came at him with a wild roundhouse right kick aimed at face height, the kind of kick that could floor a horse or smash a door off its hinges. Ben trapped her ankle, wrenched her foot clockwise through a hundred degrees of twist to unbalance her, then pushed hard and launched her violently backwards, sending her into the wall behind her. The back of her head impacted against painted brickwork with a meaty crunch. She collapsed to the floor, leaving a smear of blood and hair on the wall.
For a second, Ben thought he’d killed her. He should have known better. Katya scrambled to her feet, breathing hard and making low noises from deep inside her throat. Her skull was cracked. Dark blood was welling up through her short blond hair and spilling in crooked rivulets down her forehead, pouring into her eyes and mouth.
But still she came back, with a murderous left-footed kick that would have caved in his ribs if he hadn’t dodged it. Then he threw out a sideways stamping kick of his own that connected with the side of her right knee and shattered the joint. Collateral ligaments and articular cartilage ruptured, patella displaced, the connection between femur and tibia totally disintegrated. A six-hour operation to repair, and even then she’d have been lucky to ever walk again. Her left leg buckled the wrong way under her and she went down without a sound.
‘Katya, for Christ’s sake stay down,’ Ben implored her, even though he knew it was useless to reason with her. Her eyes were rolling in a mask of blood, bared teeth stained red as she growled and struggled desperately to regain her feet. She tried to push herself up with her hands, but neither was working. She tried to lash out at Ben with her last remaining unbroken limb, to heave her body closer to him so she could bite him. She was the only person in the room with no awareness whatsoever that this fight was now over.
‘Finish it,’ Calthorpe said. ‘Break her neck.’
Ben shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Kill her.’
‘I will not. I’m done. And this is on you, Calthorpe, you piece of—’
‘Come now, Major. Surely you’re not getting soft in your old age, are you?’ Calthorpe teased, smiling.
‘You want to find out?’ Ben asked him. ‘There’s one neck in this room I’d love to break. And maybe I will.’
‘No matter.’ Calthorpe signalled to the guards. The two shaven-headed guys exchanged a brief glance. One motioned to the other, who drew a Grach automatic from inside his jacket and stepped towards the fallen, writhing and bloodied Katya.
Ben couldn’t have stopped it. He could only watch as the guard put his pistol to her head and executed her right there on the floor like putting down a rabid dog.
He looked down at her broken body. Her mouth was open in a last gnashing gape of hatred. The pupil of one eye unnaturally distended, the other shrunk to a pinpoint. The catastrophic neurological event that had taken place inside her brain was like a hand grenade going off in there.
Ben’s memory flashed on the night the two of them had sat talking until late in the Neglinka Lounge bar, not so very long ago when she’d still been Tatyana Nikolaeva and he was still looking for a little girl abducted by an errant father. He pictured Tatyana, the low lighting of the cocktail bar reflecting in her eyes as she sipped on her drink, teasing, mocking, probing to know more about him, her conversation sometimes seeming to border on flirtation.
Now here she was lying in a pool of blood at his feet, a deactivated piece of meat waiting for some anonymous clean-up crew to cart her away like so much trash for disposal.
Ben badly wanted to throw up. Moisture stung his eyes, and he blinked it away. Valentina had flung herself behind a sofa at the edge of the room and was curled up on the floor, racked with sobbing. Children were not meant to witness such things. Ben had a bad feeling she would see more before this was over. Her went over to the girl, crouched beside her and held her as she put her arms around his neck and squeezed tightly, her tears wetting his neck.
‘It’s okay,’ he whispered. ‘You’re going to be all right.’
‘ Je veux mon papa.’ I want my daddy.
‘He’s not far away. You’ll see him soon.’
‘ I want Papa!’
The guard who had shot Katya reholstered his pistol and returned to his position by the door. Calthorpe was watching Ben with a curious expression. ‘Well, Major. It appears that the age of chivalry lives on in you. You really did like her, didn’t you? Interesting. I trust you were satisfied with the practical demonstration, however?’
Ben let go of the weeping child, stood and took three fast steps towards Calthorpe. His hate for this man was boiling over so violently that he could barely speak. But there were plenty of other things that would come naturally to him. ‘You made me do that. Now it’s your turn.’
Instantly, both guards had their pistols drawn and pointing straight at Ben.
‘I really wouldn’t, if I were you,’ Calthorpe said, still smiling.
Ben looked at the drawn guns, and for a second he truly didn’t give a damn. It would be worth it, just to hear the sound of Calthorpe’s neck snapping like a rotten stick of celery. Then he thought of Valentina, and Yuri, and what would surely happen to them once he was taken out of the picture. He was their last hope, if they had any at all. He balled his fists by his sides and breathed slow and deeply to control his anger.
Calthorpe said, ‘In actual fact, you made it happen, by compelling me to persuade you by more forceful means that everything I’ve been telling you is the perfect truth. I also knew that you would do whatever was necessary to protect the child.’
‘I hope you enjoyed the show, you sick bastard.’
‘The exercise served a purely practical interest, I assure you. Firstly, Agent Yakunina had reached the end of her useful service life and it would have been time to decommission her anyway, so you needn’t feel too bad. Secondly, it also shows me that I made a good choice in withdrawing the order to terminate you. Congratulations, Major Hope. Consider what just happened as the final stage of your audition. One that you have passed with flying colours, as anticipated by everyone on the committee. It’s been agreed that you’re just the man we need.’
Ben blinked and said nothing, taken aback.
‘Take a seat, Major. We have some more talking to do.’ Calthorpe clicked his fingers, and one of the guards opened the door. The woman in the lab coat was standing outside in the corridor as though she’d been there all along. ‘Dr Arkangelskaya, you may take the child back to her quarters now.’
The woman and the second pair of guards entered the room, stepping around the pool of blood. The guards laid a thick plastic sheet on the floor, grabbed Katya’s body by the ankles and wrists and dumped her on it, then began dragging her away as the mysterious Dr Arkangelskaya took Valentina’s arm and forced her to stand up and come with her. The terrified girl protested and cried, to no avail. Ben was powerless to help her.
Then Ben and Calthorpe were alone again, except for the guards watching from the doorway with their weapons still drawn and ready.
‘So, Major, are you ready to resume our conversation? Not that you have much choice, with guns pointing at your back.’
‘What if I don’t really feel much like talking?’ Ben said between gritted teeth, still fighting to control his boiling rage.
‘Then all you have to do is listen,’ Calthorpe answered calmly. ‘Because, as an astute fellow like you may have guessed by now, I have a proposition to make.’
Chapter 45
‘A proposition,’ Ben echoed.
‘Indeed. Why else would we be having this discussion? I would be well on my way back home to London, in time to enjoy a pleasant dinner with the lovely Mrs Calthorpe. And you, my dear fellow, would have taken up permanent residence at the bottom of a very deep hole somewhere in the Russian countryside. So I’d say my proposition works out very much in your interest. That is, if you have sense en
ough to accept.’
Calthorpe ambled over to the makeshift drinks cabinet, helped himself to a top-up of scotch and then settled comfortably on his sofa. ‘Now, let’s get down to business. I won’t ask you if you’ve ever heard of something called Operation Stairway, Major Hope, because I know you haven’t.’ He sipped his drink, letting the pause invite Ben to say something. When Ben remained seethingly silent, Calthorpe went on:
‘You certainly wouldn’t be alone there. It’s a project so deeply classified that none of the elected so-called leaders of Russia, the United States, Great Britain or anywhere else are even vaguely aware of its existence. And yet it does exist, and has for many years, thickly veiled behind many layers of what we like to call “plausible deniability”. In a nutshell, Operation Stairway is a joint international psy-ops initiative that involves players from all the major superpowers. US Army Field Manual 33-1 defines psy-ops as “Any form of communication in support of objectives, designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes or behaviour of any group in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly”. Which is their rather woolly way of describing what my particular department specialises in, the practical application of mind-control science. Post-Cold War, the purpose of Operation Stairway was to usher in a new era where, rather than spend precious resources finding ways for one nation to use the developing technology against another as in the past, we could work instead to cement our united vision of the future, creating a peaceful, stable world.’
‘You mean a New World Order,’ Ben said.
‘Now you sound like the late, lamented Grisha Solokov and his misguided ilk. What’s wrong with a new world order? What on earth could be less sinister than aspiring to bring about a new global era in which all human beings will be equal and co-exist in a spirit of harmony? In which war would be a thing of the past, and tanks and planes and bombs would be rendered obsolete forever? No more pain, no more unhappiness?’ Calthorpe beamed at this beatific vision of peace. ‘The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the goat, the lion and the calf and the yearling together; and a child shall lead them.’
‘Isaiah, Chapter eleven, verse six. Last time I heard anyone quote that, it was a bunch of naive kids in theology class. Next thing you’ll be getting out your guitar and bringing Dr Arkangelskaya in here to bang a tambourine while you sit cross-legged on cushions and sing “Kumbaya” together.’
Calthorpe’s face darkened a shade. ‘I can’t fault your bible knowledge, but I can assure you that the deep thinkers behind such grand future visions are anything but naive. Such stability can’t be achieved simply by declaring it to be so, and expecting the world to follow suit. Given the unrelentingly bloody mess that is the human history of the last umpteen thousand years, it’s clear that populations have to be artificially controlled into achieving lasting peace on earth. In other words, it is necessary to exert force to make people think and act in ways conducive to the greater good.’
‘Doesn’t sound quite so benign now you put it that way, does it?’
‘Now who’s being naive, Major? You know as well as I do that human beings can’t function without strict frameworks to govern how they lead their lives. Our species is simply too volatile, too complex, too prone to a host of psychological and behavioural dysfunctions, to be left unguided, unmonitored. In order to create any sort of lastingly peaceful, stable global civilisation, those negative psychological traits have to be ironed out.’
‘Like the psychiatrists with their depatterning theory,’ Ben said. ‘Take out the nasty thoughts, wipe the slate clean and put in good ones in their place. Now you’re talking about the human race as though every one of us were mentally ill.’
‘It’s not as sweeping a generalisation as most of us would like to believe,’ Calthorpe said. ‘If an alien observer were to view mass human behaviour from a distance, they could easily be forgiven for thinking the species was largely insane. We are the good guys. The last line of defence in the quest to restore and maintain the sanity of the human race.’
‘You actually believe that, don’t you?’
‘If the individual is the problem, then individuality must be suppressed. If the source of dysfunctional behaviour is the mind, then the processes of the mind need to be simplified and harnessed for the greater good. And it’s a fight we are slowly winning,’ Calthorpe went on, warming to his theme. ‘Look at the incredibly turbulent history of the twentieth century. The anti-Vietnam riots in America that nearly overturned the establishment. The madness of 1968, when it seemed as though the entire civilised world was about to disintegrate into Marxist revolution. The anarchy of the 1970s. The Red Brigade. The Baader-Meinhof gang, hellbent on subverting the fabric of Europe’s social order with their bombings and shootings. Where are they all now? When did you last hear of a white European terrorist? Nobody could argue that our western nations, for all their upheavals and unrest, are far more quelled and passive than in the past. More contented, more stable, more accepting of their lot. And who do you suppose is behind that change?’
Ben said nothing.
‘Do you ever wonder why today’s general public ask so few questions and seem so unperturbed by even the most pressing issues of our times? Nobody cares about anything any more. You can tell them the planet’s about to be destroyed, and they barely bat an eye. There’s no rioting in the streets when governments persist in unpopular wars or impose new laws that crush what’s left of their citizens’ liberty. Ordinary members of the public are no longer moved to action to take a political stand, unless of course we want them to. With few exceptions, apathy rules almost every aspect of their lives. Why? Why do so few people seem to care, for instance, about the fluoride in their drinking water or the poisonous neurotoxins such as mercury and aluminium that are routinely injected into newborn infants in the name of medical science, intended to reduce their future adult capacity to think for themselves? Why, despite unprecedented access to the vast library of information that is the internet, does the public at large remain so sheeplike and not rise up in fury at these practices, and the many hundreds of other obvious lies their rulers – their real rulers, that is – feed them daily through the media? And they are crying-out-loud obvious, because in fact they’re designed to be. The whole thing is a test, to gauge the level of non-reaction among the public and thereby measure how successful the program is.’
‘So your mission objective is to brainwash the entire planet into zombie slaves?’
‘I can’t say I’m particularly keen on your choice of words there, Major. Neither “brainwash” nor “zombie” are terms I would use. But in essence, yes, we’re working on it. The goal is to continually limit the population’s ability to regulate their own thinking, or to have any opinions and ideas that we haven’t already put into their heads. We’re not there yet, by a long shot. Operation Stairway’s founders knew that psycho-social engineering on such a mass scale was going to be an immense task, and they were right. Today’s infowar goes way beyond the reach of mere state propaganda, which is yesterday’s technology. Nowadays we call it “perception management”. And to make it successful requires far more than just bashing a load of lies into people’s minds through their television screens or internet news feeds. The runaway growth of the mobile device phenomenon was no accident. It has been one of the primary channels for directing pre-programmed electromagnetic wave signals straight into the brains of the masses. More specific targets require more specific and intensive approaches.’
‘Let me guess. That’s where your sick little implants come in.’
Calthorpe smiled. ‘And that’s also where you come in.’
Chapter 46
‘You can imagine all the ways that my peers have devised for making use of the developing behaviour modification implant technology,’ Calthorpe said. ‘Entire think tanks have been devoted to it for decades. Billions invested in coming up with ideas. Everything from contriving assassinations to controlling what comes out o
f the mouths of certain politicians. I could give you names, but you wouldn’t believe me.’
‘I think I might,’ Ben said.
‘Anyhow, none of that is my department. Let me tell you what is. If there’s one thing in the world more highly classified than Operation Stairway, it’s a corollary initiative that goes by the codename “The Ploughshares Program”. That is the project my employers have tasked me with. Ploughshares is run by a committee of very important people, though you wouldn’t have heard of them. Few people have, despite the fact that they are among the senior elite who make far bigger decisions and carry far more influence than any elected ruler in the world. The man at the top – well, let’s just call him the Chairman. In many ways the Ploughshares Program is one of the most essential initiatives of Operation Stairway, even though it’s still in the early phases of its development. It’s going to take a great deal of money and manpower to achieve its goals.’ Calthorpe chuckled. ‘Money, well, that’s the easy part. Our budget is virtually limitless. But recruiting suitable personnel – now that’s a little more challenging. I pride myself on being able to spot talent, but it’s not every day I come across the right stuff. Purely by chance, and thanks to Comrade Petrov and his little escapade with our stolen property, you just happened to appear on our radar. Hence, my proposition.’
The Moscow Cipher (Ben Hope, Book 17) Page 26