‘Like you said,’ he continued, ‘collateral damage. And at 200 million apiece, I know you wouldn’t want to waste them.’
The General might have smiled ever so slightly, but Denton couldn’t be sure. It was good enough. He lifted the small paper box from his lap and placed it on the desk.
‘I baked them this morning,’ he said, and opened the lid to reveal half a dozen red velvet mini-cupcakes piped with cream cheese.
The General glared at him, but reached over to inspect them. ‘Just one.’
He didn’t eat it, but placed it in his topmost desk drawer — a drawer already populated with cupcakes Denton had brought on previous visits.
‘Is there anything else?’ Denton asked.
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ the General said. ‘Your failure in this matter has earned you a temporary demotion to lieutenant colonel. Nothing personal, just politics. You know how it is.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You’ll no longer be facility coordinator at Desecheo Island, and your special access clearance has been reduced to level two.’
Denton tried to contain his rage. A demotion? He’d just given the man a fucking cupcake. ‘Who will be the coordinator then?’
‘Doctor Komarov,’ the General said. ‘She is more than qualified and remarkably efficient.’
Denton almost choked. ‘Komarov from Black Mesa? She hasn’t been sober since the Cold War.’
‘You will still be responsible for your existing operatives, of course,’ the General said. ‘One of your responsibilities is to ensure a thorough reassessment of all operatives under your command. I want to be convinced there will be no further malfunctions. And I also want to know why there was a malfunction in the first place. It seems to me that your latest programming technique isn’t as flawless as you’ve had me believe. You will also be required to meet the ambitious monthly shocktrooper quota you have just assigned yourself. With all bugs ironed out.’
Denton stood. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, why are you interested in the progress of my operatives? You’ve never shown this level of interest before.’
‘You’ve never made a mistake before.’
Chapter Six
The light burned. Sophia’s brain felt two sizes too big for her skull. She could make out muted sounds and light and dark blurs. Did she get to the river? She couldn’t even remember hitting the water. What happened to Damien and Jay?
‘Sophia.’ The accent … was it Russian? ‘Can you hear me?’
He spoke softly, sounded middle-aged. His head and shoulders came into focus. He was standing about twenty feet before her. Unarmed. She could take him down. Clear the room. Find Damien and Jay.
‘Why am I …’ Her voice cracked through dry lips. Her throat felt coated in sand. She was sitting down. She tried to move. Only her hands twitched.
‘My name is Doctor Adamicz.’ He watched her with faded blue eyes through wire-rimmed glasses.
She could see him in full clarity now. He looked old enough to be her grandfather. He was dressed in slacks, a navy blue vest over a pinstriped shirt, cuffs rolled up past his elbows and damp patches under his arms. He had a thin, aquiline nose and a puff of white hair atop his head. He looked dimly familiar.
Sophia realized how rapid her breathing was. She tried to calm herself with slower, deeper breaths. She stood, but dizziness corrupted her balance.
‘I think it best if you remain seated.’ He gestured to the chair she’d been sitting on. ‘What I am to tell you may come as shock.’
‘I’d rather stand.’
Her legs gave way beneath her, kicking up dust from the tribal rug underfoot.
She heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Two armed men stood over her. Adamicz gestured for them to retreat. She stumbled to one knee and tried to stand. The room spun around her, making her eyes ache.
She couldn’t quite place Adamicz. Was he the target? Was he an informant? She couldn’t even remember what operation she was on.
‘How did I get here?’ she said.
Adamicz smiled. ‘With great deal of money, planning and some luck. The bus sliding across bridge was not part of plan, but we adapt.’
The dull pain in her head began to recede. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The former Blue Berets you see here are responsible for your capture.’
Her vision found an anchor. Men dressed in jeans and dark T-shirts, carrying M4 carbines, flanked Adamicz. The rifles looked heavily customized with suppressors and square-shaped holographic display sights. Sophia’s gaze locked onto the balcony overhead. Four other men with M4 carbines. She checked her flanks. Just dark-stained bookshelves. She was in a library.
‘You’re holding me hostage?’ she said.
‘Actually, I hope to set you free.’
Great. What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
Back on her feet, steadier this time, she turned around. A heavy door twice her height was blocking her exit.
She wanted desperately to escape.
She wanted to listen to what he had to say.
She wanted to kill him.
She needed to regain her senses, observe her surroundings and, above all, think. If she couldn’t think, she couldn’t escape.
She sat back on the chair. ‘I need some water.’
Adamicz gestured to one of the men beside him, who disappeared from her line of sight. He returned a moment later with a dusty glass of water. He placed it ten feet before her, then retreated, rifle aimed. His behavior seemed odd. Why was he scared of her?
She stood, scooped the glass from the antique rug, but decided not to drink from it.
‘I don’t remember what happened.’
‘Memory shall return. In time,’ Adamicz said.
She tried to think of what she was doing before she was captured. It felt as though her mind was wrapped in a heavy fog.
‘Where’s my team? What have you done with them?’
‘They were recovered by Fifth Column.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘No one. But I used to work for Fifth Column.’
‘Do you really think I’d believe that?’ she said. ‘How do you know about the Fifth Column?’
He frowned. ‘I was there when they abduct you from family and begin training you. I know in great detail every operation you take part in. Your first operation as team leader was a false flag in November, three years ago. That was when your career went off with bang. Three bangs, actually. How do you say… simultaneous suicide bombings.’
She had a faint recollection of the operation. But she remembered it differently this time. The terrorists no longer existed; just civilians. A little girl offered her an arrangement of flowers, said they would make her smile. The girl even had her name, Sophia. But a very different life. A normal life. Then Jay cut the lights. Sophia’s team, one of three inter-reliant teams, had the explosives ready in the ceiling. Sophia gave them the green light. The wedding guests never saw it coming. Little Sophia never saw it coming.
Adamicz moved to a bookcase. He rolled a ladder aside to reveal a wind-up gramophone and an old wood-paneled television with a late-1970s videocassette recorder. He turned on the television and recorder, then hit the play button. He stepped back, allowing Sophia to see the dusty screen.
At first, she figured the footage was from a security camera, only it was placed in an unusual position. It could have been a pinhole camera. Disguised in a fire sprinkler or smoke alarm. Onscreen, she saw a middle-aged man lying on a bed, his business shirt undone to reveal a pallid chest. A young woman sat astride him, dark hair and ivory skin. She unraveled his tie and passed him a glass of caramel-tinted liquid. He gulped thirstily, emptied the glass, then let the woman place it on the nightstand for him. Sophia caught a glimpse of the woman’s face.
It was her.
Adamicz hit the fast-forward button. The onscreen Sophia stroked the man’s chest, let the tips of her hair drape across his skin. When Adamicz stopped fast-forwarding, the man had passed
out. Onscreen, Sophia stripped the man of his clothes. Two men and two women entered the room. She recognized the men as Damien and Jay. They flipped the man onto his side and slowly inserted a tube between his buttocks. One of the women unscrewed a bottle, removed several tablets and slid them down the tube.
Adamicz fast-forwarded again. This time it was a different camera, different room. The bathroom. The bath was filled with water and ice. Damien and Jay carried the sleeping man — now tubeless — to the bath and placed him inside. His face and body were slicked with sweat, his cheeks flushed red.
‘That’s not what happened.’ She looked at Adamicz. ‘I remember that man, and we did not do that.’
Adamicz hit the stop button. ‘The tablets placed in man’s anus raise his body temperature to dangerous level. By placing him in bath of cold water, you quickly and efficiently induce heart attack.’
Sophia’s skin felt like it was burning. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
She half expected the man standing behind Adamicz to start laughing, but his face was drawn, gaze fixed.
Adamicz switched off the television. ‘All of your work as operative for Fifth Column, like what you see here, was not done of your own free will. Your programming involves artificially splitting your personality into dissociated alters, as is case with multiple personality disorder. This is accomplished using combination of hypnosis and infliction of extreme trauma, which in turn splinters mind into dissociated compartments.’
She licked her cracked lips; held the glass of water tightly, but did not drink. ‘Are you suggesting I’ve been hypnotized?’
‘Your mind was split in two: one half was your real personality — your archeopsyche. The other half was your programmed personality, the neopsyche, splintered into little parapsyches. Used for assassination, espionage, even suicide if required. All this while your real personality sees something quite different. You exist in real personality right now, so have no clue that your parapsyches even exist. But while in the employ of Fifth Column, you are always operating in one of your parapsyches. Everything happens through veil. Operationally, you have no idea your archeopsyche exists.’
‘But I remember everything,’ Sophia said. ‘Don’t I?’
Adamicz nodded. ‘Your memories are accessible across both psyches, but each has different interpretation. Your neopsyche is programmed to believe certain ideology so you will agree to undertake black operations that Special Forces soldier with morals and conscience might not have stomach for. Your memories are false. They mimic what you are really doing, but they are false. False but morally acceptable. The soldiers you killed in Iran were not soldiers — you know this, yes?’
Sophia smiled weakly. He was trying to screw with her. ‘And how exactly do you know this?’
‘Because I am one who programmed you.’
Her smile broke into a scowl. ‘Bullshit. The video is fake.’
Adamicz took two deliberate steps back. ‘Mix sand with cider and wool with wine.’
Sophia’s face flushed hot.
‘The man behind me,’ Adamicz said. ‘He is the soldier who was pursuing you in Iran.’
Adamicz was right. How had she not noticed this before? The former Blue Beret standing at her ten o’clock was the Citroën driver. Iranian Special Forces. She was sure she’d killed him, but here he stood.
She moved nimbly across the rug towards him. He aimed his rifle at her chest.
‘And welcome Queen Alice with ninety times nine,’ Adamicz said.
Sophia was holding the soldier’s own knife, unsheathed, just inches from his neck. She blinked. He wasn’t who she’d thought he was.
‘Mistaken identity?’ Adamicz said, and nodded, mostly in agreement with himself.
Something thin and shiny caught Sophia’s attention, on the floor beside her. The soldier’s rifle. She’d disarmed him and taken his knife. She could barely remember doing it. She pulled back. The soldier did the same, terrified.
‘I suppose you thought that was funny, setting your Pavlova dog on me,’ he said to Adamicz. His accent was Australian.
Adamicz remained focused on Sophia as he replied. ‘Pavlovian. It’s Pavlovian dog. And I no longer require your services. Thank you kindly for your time.’
The soldier didn’t go near his stripped rifle. He looked up at the other men on the balcony. ‘We’re out!’ he yelled. ‘Leave them to slice each other up.’
Sophia watched the other soldiers disappear from the balcony. She inspected the knife in her hand.
She glared at Adamicz. ‘What did you do?’
‘I switched you back to your neopsyche, activated the Ares parapsyche and gave you order to kill the former Blue Beret,’ he said in his heavily accented English.
‘Activated the what?’
‘The Ares parapsyche is responsible for assassination. If I had not stopped you when I did, the rifle would not be only thing in pieces.’
She glared at him. ‘And with five highly trained soldiers ready to cut me down, I would have ended up in pieces too.’
He nodded. ‘Lucky I stop you.’
Her hands balled into fists. ‘You’re lying! You’re trying to trick me into defecting to your side!’
Adamicz smiled. ‘Do you even know what my side is, Sophia?’
She opened her mouth to reply, but she had nothing to say.
* * *
Sophia was six years old. The strange men had put wires on her head, the ones that hurt. Her arms had gone fizzy. They placed an earphone in her left ear, but it didn’t seem to be working because all that came out was a funny noise. They injected something into her arm. It made her feel weird. Above her, a fluorescent light buzzed angrily. Two men stood at her feet, their faces smudged in the dim light.
‘You are loyal to the government,’ said a man with a very tired voice.
She could hear him only with her right ear. Her heart was beating really fast.
‘What are you doing to me?’
She couldn’t stop her body from shaking. She screamed. The wires were making it hurt again. Then it stopped. She tried to catch her breath. She trembled. She couldn’t stop it. The light was paralyzing her.
‘You are loyal to the government,’ the tired man said.
She could barely breathe. ‘Yes.’
‘And because you are loyal to the government, you will do anything in the name of freedom and liberty to serve the government.’
‘What do you mean?’
The wires made her hurt again. She tried to move her arms and legs to escape the pain, but they’d strapped her to the table.
‘You will do anything in the name of freedom and liberty.’
‘Please, stop it! I’ll do anything!’
She shut her eyes. The hurt came back. She’d never felt anything like it. She just wanted it to be over. Tears squeezed from between her scrunched eyelids.
‘You will do anything to protect the government. Do you understand?’
The table felt cold against her skin. Her arms were covered in goose bumps. ‘Yes.’
‘We don’t believe you.’
The wires hurt again. She wanted to die. Anything to make it stop.
‘Yes!’ she yelled. ‘I’ll do anything to protect the government!’
The tired man leaned over her, his nose wrinkling in disgust. ‘Tell us again.’
‘I’ll do anything!’ Breathe. ‘To protect!’ Breathe. ‘The government!’ she screamed.
She opened her eyes and tried to slow her breathing. The walls were liquefying around her.
The tired man said, ‘You are one with the government. It commands you. It pours through you. You respond unquestioningly to its will. You are a valuable and integral cog in a vast and powerful machine. A machine that keeps civilization from the brink of destruction.’
Cracks began to appear in his face.
‘We’re going to take a break, Sophia. And then we’re going to break you into tiny little pieces.’
A split ran through hi
s right eye, down his neck. He checked his watch.
‘Shall we continue in, say, fifteen minutes?’ He grinned.
She watched his left eye slide down his cheek. Was she going crazy? This had to be a dream. Everything she saw looked weird. His eye slipped onto his neck, but he didn’t seem to notice. He turned and followed the other man out of the room. The door melted behind them.
Sophia felt cold metal in her palm. She looked down. Her hand looked about ten years older. Her grip on the pistol was comforting.
Other trainees stood either side of her, holding identical pistols. They each faced a quivering naked body with a black bag over its head. The bodies looked no more than fifteen or sixteen. Same age as her.
‘The cowards you see before you are failures,’ Denton said. He was standing behind her and the other trainees. ‘They are not entitled to sympathy. They are not entitled to forgiveness. They are not entitled to charity. They, like you, knew the consequences of failure.’ He paced behind them. She could feel his gaze weighing on her. ‘And yet they still chose to fail. They ask you to take mercy on them and bring an end to their dishonor. If you do as they ask, you will graduate as qualified operatives.’
Some of the trainees were already taking aim at their targets. Sophia looked at her target. A young woman, not much different to herself. Her ribs pressed against her skin with every snatched breath.
One of the trainees beside her opened fire. A double tap to the head. Sophia heard a body crumple onto tarpaulin.
Fingers curling around the grip, Sophia raised her pistol until she had a bead on her target. The girl’s ribs were becoming more visible with each breath, as if she had somehow sensed Sophia’s intention.
‘Their failure is your success!’ Denton shouted.
Her forefinger curled behind the trigger guard. The target’s ribs were almost ready to burst from her chest.
Another trainee opened fire. And another.
Sophia pressed lightly on the trigger with the pad of her forefinger. The girl’s legs trembled. On the tarpaulin, Sophia saw a small pool of straw-colored liquid. The girl’s fear tasted bitter in the back of her throat.
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