The Agent (An Isabella Rose Thriller Book 3)

by Mark Dawson

  King tapped the screen. ‘What did that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘What about this?’

  He tapped again. ‘I just want you to be careful.’

  ‘Why was she warning you? What did she mean?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know.’

  ‘Something bothered you. You asked her.’

  King tapped again and Bloom could hear Maia’s voice.

  ‘You seem concerned about something. Is it something I’ve done?’

  ‘Why did you say that?’

  Maia was thoughtful for a moment. ‘She seemed distracted. Not herself. What’s happened? I didn’t see her yesterday. Is she okay?’

  King slammed his fists down on to the table. The phablet bounced and slid over the edge, falling to the floor with a crack. ‘What the fuck is going on? Stop pretending like you don’t know. Where has she gone?’

  Maia turned to Ivanosky. Bloom could see her face more clearly now that the angle between them had narrowed; there was worry amid the confusion now.

  ‘Dr Litivenko has gone missing, Maia,’ Ivanosky explained slowly, as if he were speaking to a child. ‘She left the facility two days ago, after she saw you. She went back to her apartment in the city, and then she left. She was followed by some of our security staff, but she made an effort to lose them. We don’t know where she is. I will be honest, Maia. We are very concerned.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ he replied. ‘We were hoping she might have said something to you. As Mr King says, your last conversation sounds unusual in the circumstances. You must think, Maia. We are worried about her. Anything you can tell us about what she might have said to you, or anything you might be able to surmise from the way she has been behaving – well, it would be very valuable.’

  Maia gave a small, helpless shrug. ‘I thought she was anxious, but she didn’t say why. She doesn’t talk to me about her private life. She is only interested in me.’

  ‘Are you sure, Maia?’

  ‘I wish I could help, but I cannot.’ She turned to look at King. ‘What will happen to her?’

  ‘The doctor is a traitor. She’s trying to sell information about this project, but they’re not as clever as they think they are. We’ll find them.’

  ‘And bring her back?’

  ‘Are you fucking naïve? What do you think we’ll do? We’ll send one of our monkeys to take care of them for us.’ King stood and straightened his jacket. ‘We’re done here.’

  King came out of the room. Ivanosky said that he wanted to spend more time with Maia.

  King signalled that he wanted Bloom to come with him. They made for the elevator lobby.

  ‘What did you make of that?’ King asked him.

  ‘Dead end.’

  ‘You buy what she said?’

  Bloom nodded. ‘She looked confused. If she knew anything, she hid it well.’

  ‘That’s the thing,’ King said. ‘They don’t lie very well when it’s off the cuff. Give her a cover story and enough time to rehearse it, she could tell you she was Frank Sinatra and fool a polygraph while she did it. But you put them on the spot? Uh-uh. We would’ve been able to tell. I think you’re right.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Bloom asked. ‘We can’t have Litivenko out there pimping operational data.’

  ‘Damn straight we can’t, which I say makes it just as well we have a lead. We know where they are. They went over the border into Serbia, drove north and flew out of Belgrade.’

  ‘To where?’

  King grimaced. ‘Amsterdam first, then they changed on to KLM to Shanghai. They arrived yesterday.’

  ‘And?’

  King chuckled at Bloom’s anticipation. ‘And Blaine and Curry are on a Gulfstream headed there right now. They’re due to touch down in’ – he checked his ostentatiously expensive watch – ‘two hours.’

  ‘That’s that, then? They’ll clean up – end of problem?’

  ‘It will be. We’re going to put them under surveillance. We’ve had intelligence that they’ve got a buyer for the data she took, and that they’re going to make the exchange there in the next day or two. They’re dead, one way or another, but I’d like to find out who’s been stupid enough to try to buy our stuff. I think that could be enlightening.’

  The elevator arrived and they got in.

  ‘There’s something else,’ King said. ‘You heard of Jack Coogan?’

  ‘The senator? I know his name. From Boston? Not much beyond that.’

  ‘He’s the chairman of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the Armed Forces Committee. Jim Lennox was his predecessor. Lennox was our man – bought and paid for. The committee has oversight of the kind of work Daedalus is doing. Everything here is off the books, of course, we’ve never told them we’ve gone beyond the theoretical stage, certainly not that we have assets in the field. The climate’s not there for that yet. Soon, but not yet.’

  Bloom knew what King meant. Bloom was invested in their project for ideological reasons. He wasn’t foolish enough to ascribe the same motivational purity to all of the others. Jamie King – and the other men and women from what Eisenhower rather foresightedly called the military-industrial complex – stood to benefit commercially. Put crudely, there would be a greater demand for missiles and bombs. And the ethics of any overseeing politicians would be flexible if Daedalus could produce metabolically dominant war fighters. That flexibility would be worth billions and billions of dollars.

  King leaned back against the wall of the elevator as it surged upwards. ‘Lennox was very useful. He gave us advance warning when we needed to know things, and he nudged the agenda away from us when it was too hot. He was expensive, but it was worth every last red cent. And then, without any warning, he resigned. Didn’t tell us, just did it. He said it was because of a heart attack, but that was bullshit. He’s as healthy as a horse. I flew out and had a talk with him myself. Turns out he was blackmailed. He’d been misusing federal funds. This guy emails him, threatens to go to the press unless he resigns, so he did. Coogan was his replacement.’

  The doors opened and they walked through into an executive area.

  ‘And that’s where it gets unfortunate. Coogan has a hard-on for what Daedalus is doing, or at least he says he does. He’s lined up a hearing for next month. “Civilian and Military Genetics: The Way Forward”. It’s not going to be even-handed. The word on the Beltway is that he’s gonna bring the hammer down on everything we’ve been doing, choke off our DARPA funding, do everything he can to shut us down.’

  ‘So deny it. You said it yourself: no one knows what’s happened here.’

  ‘That’s the problem. We’ve been told Litivenko’s data is being bought for the hearing. They’re going to jump us with it. I’m not worried about Litivenko. She and her husband are dead. And we’re going to deal with Coogan, too.’

  ‘How?’

  King put his hand on Bloom’s arm. ‘It’s in hand. He won’t be a problem for much longer. But I want to know who’s moving the pieces in the background. We get rid of the senator, maybe they put someone else in his place and we go through it all again.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘It’s like my grandma used to say: you lance the boil, get rid of it before it can get worse.’

  PART FIVE:

  Tibet

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They stole another car in Nagpur and then continued east. It took them another thirty hours to cover the thousand miles to New Jalpaiguri. By the time they arrived at the railway terminus, they had a better idea of the scale of the trip they were undertaking.

  They arrived at midnight of the third day since they had fled Mumbai. Pope led the way to the luggage lockers at the garish, neon-soaked station, found locker number 324 and, once he was sure that they were not being observed, entered the code.

  He opened the door and Isabella looked inside. They had been well pro
visioned. Apart from an envelope that contained two new and very authentic-looking fake Australian passports, the locker was stuffed with additional items. There were hats and gloves and thick coats in anticipation of their drive through Tibet. Inside a leather satchel were guidebooks to Tibet and China, a cell phone with a collection of SIMs and a USB cable that had been wrapped around it, wads of banknotes, a credit card, visas and train tickets, and, finally, a slip of paper with a telephone number and instructions to call it when they arrived at their destination. There were also two tickets for the flight from Kathmandu to Lhasa, necessary since there were no open border crossings between China and India.

  Finally, there was a key with a Land Rover fob and directions to a Discovery that had been left in the short-term parking for them. The rugged four-by-four was perfect for the day’s drive that was necessary to carve a route through the high country to Kathmandu. They set off, the temperature dropping the higher they climbed.

  The clouds delivered on that promise as they arrived in Bhaktapur, dumping a foot of powder on to them as they negotiated the busy roads to Kathmandu. They deposited the Discovery in the long-term parking lot and fought their way through the snow and the crowds of passengers, taxi touts and panhandlers until they were inside the terminal building.

  They took the daily Air China one-hour hop to Lhasa and then, after dealing with the formalities of crossing the border, they took a taxi to the railway station. The driver was a gruff Chinese man who looked at them with a disapproving eye before chain-smoking his way through half a packet of Double Happiness Reds and switching on the radio, nationalistic Chinese music playing loudly. Isabella gazed out through the windows of the smoke-filled taxi. Lhasa felt antediluvian when set against the brash commercialism and teeming cities of India.

  Heavy snow had blocked the roads and they had to run to make their connection for the 11 a.m. train; the air was thin, and Isabella was surprised at how out of breath she was when they finally clambered aboard. An official arrived to exchange their tickets for plastic key cards, explaining that the tickets would be returned when they arrived in Xuzhou East. He had them each fill out a form that confirmed that there was no reason why they should not travel at high altitude and then, with a terse suggestion that they would enjoy the trip, he left them and made his way to the adjoining cabin.

  ‘Get some sleep,’ Pope said. ‘We’ve got a long trip ahead.’

  ‘You, too,’ she suggested. ‘You look done in.’

  Isabella lay on her stomach so that she could look out of the window. She watched the Tibetan yaks on the slopes of the mountains as the forty-hour journey began.

  Isabella found herself alternating between wakefulness and sleep. Whenever she awoke, she would look out of the window and inevitably witness another startling change in the scenery as the train rumbled through the Chinese countryside. The first hour of the journey had seen peasants returning to their homes with shovels and hoes over their shoulders and shaggy-haired yaks staring insolently at the train as it cut through their fields. They had passed through a passage that was breathlessly described in the guidebook as the world’s longest permafrost tunnel. She woke into stunned silence at the sight of the monumental beauty of the Tibetan plateau. She stared out at the mirror-smooth surface of Cuona Lake as it reflected the trees and mountains so perfectly that it was sometimes difficult to be sure which was up and which was down. They raced through the Qiangtang grasslands, the yellow plains changing to dark ochres, and then climbed up and raced down the Tanggula Mountains, making their way to Xining and the vast scrubby plains of Shaanxi province.

  The train was utilitarian in comparison to the landscape through which it hurried. It was clean and decorated in neutral colours. There was nothing glamorous about the accommodation. They had two bunks in their cabin, and each was equipped with a small LCD screen of the same dimensions as might be found on an aircraft seat back, although only state TV programmes were shown. There was a single electricity point and, with a nod to the altitude, oxygen ports that accommodated small capillary hoses that could be run beneath the nose as with patients in hospital. There was storage room under the bed, as well as a compartment near the upper bunk that essentially made use of the space above where the outside corridor was.

  She looked out as they passed a row of tents that accommodated the workers who maintained the line. She closed the curtains and lay back on her bunk. Pope was asleep on the bunk beneath her, occasionally snoring until he turned over and breathed more easily again. They had spoken about the conversation that he had had in the telephone box outside Nandagon Peth, and he had given her the faxed photograph that he had been sent at the gas station near Mojhri. Her childhood had instilled in her a natural wariness and her mother had reinforced this during the year that they had spent together, yet she was prepared to go with Pope if he felt it was the right thing to do. He had put his life at great risk to recover her from Syria, and that had bought him her trust. She wouldn’t follow him blindly, but, as he said, there was no reason for contact to have been made if there wasn’t more to be learned, at least.

  Isabella had considered this as they had continued the long drive through Nepal, and she thought about it again now.

  It would have been a simple enough thing for the person who had found them to have turned over their location to the people who were searching for them. And that hadn’t happened. That meant something.

  They clearly had information about Pope’s family. The photograph was the best lead that Pope had received since they had been taken from him.

  The best lead? She corrected herself. More than that. It was their only lead.

  They had nothing else to go on. Pope had struck out with his efforts in Mumbai. They needed to be doing something, to be moving in a direction that might bring progress.

  The conversation and the photograph were not much, but they were more than they’d had before.

  The leather satchel that they had taken from the locker at New Jalpaiguri was at the foot of her bed. She opened it and looked inside. It contained everything that they would need to complete the journey to Shanghai. The fake Australian passports, describing them as Mr Harry Boon and his daughter, Miss Juliet Boon, had been accepted without issue at the immigration kiosk. The same was true for the two visas for onward travel into China and the tickets for this train journey.

  Whoever their benefactors were, they were efficient and professional.

  The cabin was cold, so she pulled the blanket up to her chin and closed her eyes.

  She awoke from another two-hour doze and found that they were in a station. A sign indicated that they were at Xi’an. She slid her legs over the edge of the bed and dropped down to the floor of the compartment.

  Pope was still asleep.

  She opened the door and went to the vestibule at the end of the carriage. The door to the platform was open, and she stepped down. It was cold, her breath steaming before her face. It was one in the morning, but the platform thronged with passengers, rough-faced Tibetans getting off and Chinese people getting on. The broad concrete platforms were well stocked with newspaper kiosks and mobile trolleys whose owners proffered fried chicken. One of them saw her staring out at him and, hawking up a ball of phlegm, spat it in her direction.

  The train staff were going about their business, refuelling the engine and fitting hoses to the carriages so that the latrines could be emptied.

  A whistle sounded and the passengers stretching their legs on the platform started to embark once again.

  She went back to their cabin.

  Pope was awake. He was sitting on the edge of the bed. He had taken off his shirt and Isabella could see the firm lines of the muscles in his chest and the bulge of his arms.

  She pointed at his arm. ‘Can I take a look?’

  He nodded and slid around so that she could address the wound more easily. She removed the dressing. His triceps was healing. The doctor at the hospital in Kankavli had told her what to look for: redness
or swelling around the wound; a fever; drainage that did not stop with direct pressure; wound tissue that appeared yellow, white or black in colour. There was none of that. The new flesh looked healthy and the contusion was fading, the bruise passing from purple to yellow and then disappearing completely.

  ‘It looks better,’ she said.

  She dropped the dirty pad into the compartment’s waste bin and fixed on a fresh one.

  He stood and flexed his arm. ‘You get some sleep?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He looked much better. She was pleased. Pope had looked frayed by the time that they had finally made it on to the train, but, with the benefit of a few hours’ sleep, he looked more rested than he had for days.

  ‘Do you know where we are?’ he asked.

  ‘Xi’an.’

  He turned to the timetable at the back of the brochure that they had been given. ‘Ten hours to Shanghai,’ he said. ‘You want something to eat?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  The dining car was next to their carriage and it was open despite the early hour. The menu was limited to bottled water, soda, beer, snacks, beef jerky and sweets. But Isabella saw an attendant bringing out a plate of pan-fried pork and, when the waiter attended to them, she ordered one for herself. Pope ordered noodles that came in cardboard containers that were the size of large salad bowls. The waiter scribbled down their order and disappeared.

  The train pulled out of the station and picked up speed, passing through the darkened city.

  ‘The man you spoke to,’ Isabella said. ‘You trust him?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t trust anyone. Not after what happened in Syria.’