by Mark Dawson
He slept for another hour and was woken by the smell of cooked food and the clatter of a trolley as the crew served breakfast.
He sat up and tapped the button to put his seat back into the upright position.
‘Morning.’
Litivenko was in the seat next to him.
‘Breakfast,’ Pope said. ‘You hungry?’
Litivenko put her seat up and folded away her bedding. Pope looked over the aisle to Isabella. She was still curled up beneath her blanket. He would let her sleep.
‘Looks like it worked,’ Litivenko said.
‘That we made it out of Russia?’
‘No. Your sales pitch. I’m still not sure this is the best idea.’
The steward arrived with the trolley. They both chose frittata with chicken sausage, a poached egg, banana bread and orange juice.
Pope looked over at the doctor as the steward arranged their food for them. She had dark pouches beneath her eyes and her skin bore a faint pallor. It didn’t look as if she had slept at all.
‘Enjoy your breakfasts,’ the steward said.
Pope took the data stick out of his pocket and put it on the tray. He tapped a finger against it. ‘So what’s on here?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I know it’s data.’
‘You know what about?’
Pope shook his head. ‘Not really.’
She looked as if she would welcome the chance to talk. ‘What do you know about genetics?’ she said.
‘Nothing.’
‘What did you do before you did this? Are you a military man?’
‘Once upon a time,’ he said. ‘Soldier.’
‘I’m a scientist. But I know soldiers. War fighting is a big focus in my work. Daedalus is improving human physiology so that it is better suited for it. Technology is improving at almost exponential rates. Equipment gets more advanced all the time. The one limiting factor that stalls real improvements in efficiencies is human. The operator. The man on the ground. You say you were a soldier – let me ask you a question: if you could change one thing about your own physiology to make yourself a better fighter, what would it be? Speed? Strength?’
‘That would help.’
Litivenko encouraged him to continue. ‘What about fatigue? Hunger?’
He agreed. ‘Tired and hungry soldiers make mistakes.’
Litivenko nodded. ‘Correct. I’m an embryologist and a biogeneticist. My area of specialism is ways in which we might extend the boundaries of human performance. Cognition. Physical attributes. Taking men and women beyond the natural limits of physiology. Just think about sleep. Think of the possibilities that would be presented to a soldier who did not need to sleep.’
‘Not ever?’
‘No, of course not. But not for a few days, perhaps. Let’s say this soldier could operate at a high level for seventy-two hours without needing to rest. Think of the benefits that would entail. You could drop a platoon of enhanced soldiers behind the lines and they could operate while the enemy slept. They would be untouchable. And that’s not to say that improvements in speed and strength are being ignored. Resilience. The ability to heal wounds faster. They’re working on everything. They want to build the metabolically dominant soldier. Sleep. Hunger. Resilience. They’re all factors.’
Litivenko paused, looked around and gestured to the passenger on the other side of the aisle. He had a doughnut on a plate next to a cup of coffee. ‘You see that doughnut. I’d guess that’s about four hundred calories. A Special Forces soldier working for a twelve-hour stretch will burn six to seven thousand calories. He’d need seventeen of those doughnuts just to keep going, maybe thirty of them if we worked him all day. We can’t get those calories into him. It’s almost impossible. And you know how much a fully loaded pack already weighs.’
‘Enough,’ Pope acceded.
‘He wouldn’t be able to carry all the calories that he needs. What if I said we have re-engineered experimental subjects at the cellular level? Do you know what mitochondria are?’
‘No.’
‘They produce the energy to power cells. We’ve tweaked them so that they are more efficient. We’ve made them better at using stored energy. The soldier could consume the calories he might need before deploying. We infiltrate them a little plumper than we normally would. We can remove the need for them to eat anywhere near as much. When they exfiltrate, all that extra fat is gone. And we’ve doubled the amount of mitochondria available to each cell. We can increase stamina and endurance levels beyond normal human capacity. Our test subjects have been able to run for a hundred yards on a single breath. Walk for miles with packs that normal soldiers wouldn’t be able to lift. This isn’t science fiction. It’s happening now. It’s fact. We’re beyond monkeys and rats. The technology is stable. It’s been successfully tested in human subjects.’
‘Male and female?’
Litivenko’s eyebrows cocked; she detected the interest in Pope’s voice. ‘Yes. Why do you ask?’
‘Before Shanghai, I met someone. A woman. Look at me: I’m a bit over six foot. Fifteen stone. A soldier, like I said. I can look after myself. And this woman, half my size, she kicked my arse.’
‘What did she look like?’
Pope remembered easily. ‘Slender. Blonde. I think her name was Maia.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘That’s what I was told. Why?’
‘I had responsibility for Maia.’
‘She was injured,’ Pope said. ‘Isabella stabbed her.’
‘Maia reported back with a stab wound to the shoulder.’ Litivenko reached around over her right shoulder and traced a path down to her triceps. ‘She had a minor fracture of her leg, too.’
‘She jumped out of a third-floor window.’
‘So she said.’
‘Did you know what her orders were?’
She shook her head. ‘They keep the operational details confidential. They have very effective blocks in place. We’re not told anything. My job was to study her and tend to her. That was it. The operations are planned and overseen outside of Daedalus. I don’t know any more than that.’
They both had cups of black tea on the tray tables in front of them. Pope noticed that Litivenko’s hand trembled when she raised her cup to her lips to take a sip.
‘What happens when we get to DC?’ she asked.
She was travelling on her own passport. Pope knew that was not ideal. That would very likely mean that the people looking for them would be able to locate her. And it took thirteen hours to fly to the eastern seaboard of the United States from Tokyo.
That, he suspected, would be more than time enough for the enemy to have found them.
‘We’re going to be collected and taken somewhere safe. I’ll make the arrangements for you to give your testimony. You don’t need to worry. Everything will be fine.’
Pope had promised to keep her safe and he meant to keep that promise.
PART THIRTEEN:
Washington, DC
Chapter Forty-Nine
Maia got up early and sat with a cup of coffee. She hadn’t been able to sleep, managing just an hour or two when the clamour of her thoughts eventually quietened for a moment.
She laid the printouts on the floor and sat cross-legged in front of them.
She stared into the coffee and tried to think.
It was hopeless. Her thoughts were slippery and evasive and she couldn’t get a firm grip on any of them.
She took out her phone, opened the browser and navigated to the arrivals page of the Dulles Airport website. There were only two flights due from Tokyo today: ANA Flight 2 was due at eight and United Airlines Flight 804 was scheduled to land three hours later.
Maia looked through the printed emails. It said that Aleksandra was due to land at Dulles at 11 a.m.
They were on the United flight.
It was seven in the morning.
Four hours.
She had to hurry.
Maia dres
sed and went outside.
The safe house was a detached property, small and unloved. It was in a bad state of repair. The windows to the right of the door were covered with sheets of board and the three windows on the first floor looked as if they needed replacing. A large bush had been allowed to grow out of control between the house and the larger semi-detached unit to its left, the branches reaching out and impeding access to the door. The house on the other side of the road was in excellent condition, with lime-green clapboard facings, a neatly clipped lawn and a chain-link fence.
The house was equipped with a car. It was a Chevrolet Cruze, the limited edition Trailer Cruze package with gold-accented alloys and trim. It had evidently been crashed into at some point in its history because the right-side fender was unpainted black while the rest of the body was grey. Maia crunched through the fall of snow to the car, cleared the snow from the window with her arm, opened the door, put her bag inside and slid into the driver’s seat. She turned the ignition and got nothing. She turned it again, pumping down on the brake and clutch, and was rewarded with a splutter from the engine. She repeated the procedure and the engine turned over and started.
She switched on the windshield blower and, as it defrosted the glass, she checked the map on her phone. There was a collection of stores on Fortieth Street, half a mile away. The snow had stopped, at least for the moment, but Brooks Street and Benning Road were blanketed beneath piles of it. The centre of the road had been cleared, but the cars on either side were unrecognisable, buried beneath a foot of snow that gathered in deep drifts against the walls of the houses and businesses. Some of the residents were out despite the early hour, digging out their driveways and clearing paths to their doorways.
The stores were marooned in the middle of a large parking lot, next to power lines that fizzed and popped as Maia crossed beneath them. There was a Safeway with a CVS pharmacy, a 7-Eleven and a store identified as Simply Fashion opposite it. Maia opened the door to the pharmacy first. It was warm, the heaters blowing out hot air at full blast, and she loosened her overcoat and started down the aisles with a basket in search of the things that she needed. She picked out a pair of scissors, a pack of disposable razors and a pack of L’Oréal Superior Preference hair dye and dropped them into the basket. She added a bottle of antiseptic, a pack of sterile pads and a roll of zinc oxide tape. She took the basket to the checkout to pay.
She went to the 7-Eleven and bought a bottle of cheap gin and then crossed the parking lot to the clothes store. The owner was just opening up for the day. She made a comment about the weather and Maia responded curtly, in a way that she hoped would foreclose the possibility of further conversation. It did. The owner told Maia to look around and left her to get on with it alone. Maia took a vest, a pair of jeans, a dark turtleneck and a quilted overcoat. The clothes came to just over two hundred dollars; she paid in cash and told the owner that she would like to wear the clothes now. She went into the changing room and changed, stuffing her old clothes into the bag.
She went outside again. There was a dumpster at the rear of the Safeway. She pushed the lid open and dropped her old clothes into it.
She went back to the car.
Maia returned to the house.
She went into the bathroom and stood before the cracked and dusty mirror. She removed her top, took the scissors and started to cut her hair. The long strands fell into the sink and on to the floor, leaving a jagged edge that she tidied up with more care once most of the length had been removed. She cut it back drastically, leaving herself with just a short bob that fell to the nape of her neck. She coated her hairline, ears and neck with Vaseline so that she could more easily remove the dye that would get on to her skin. The packet was marked ‘vermillion’ and promised a deep red finish. She pulled on the latex gloves that were supplied with the pack, mixed the dye and applied it to her hair, working it in with her gloved fingers. She knew that it would take time. Her hair had been dyed so many times that she could barely remember her natural colour.
The dye needed to be left in for thirty minutes. She took the opportunity to prepare the things that she thought she might need. She had the Beretta Pico purse gun, but that was not going to be enough. She climbed the stairs and, following the directions that she had received in her briefing, she hauled the bed out of the way, pulled up the carpet and located the loose floorboard. She prised her fingers between the boards and pulled the loose one away to reveal a small cache of arms.
There was a Beretta M9 – the 9×19mm Parabellum pistol had long been the primary sidearm of the US armed forces. It was the M9A3 update, with the seventeen-round magazine and the three-slot Picatinny rail. It looked to be reasonably new and, as she checked, she saw that the serial number had been filed off. That made it an illegal weapon, not that Maia had much concern about that. It was a powerful gun, with more than enough stopping power for her needs, but had been unpopular with female soldiers because it was large and weighed over two pounds when it was fully loaded. None of that concerned Maia. She had used the weapon before and liked it.
She reached back into the cache and pulled out a shoulder holster and then several boxes of ammunition. There was a karambit fighting knife with a curved blade; she took it and placed it on the floor next to the pistol. There was a collection of timing devices and detonators. Maia had no use for those and left them in place.
There was also a small box, around the size of a binoculars case. She took it out and opened it. It was freezing cold inside. The box was lined with heat-preserving aluminium foil and the false floor was composed of highly efficient cold gel packs. There was a needle, three barrels, a pen, a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, some swabs and a tourniquet.
Taking blood was a routine that had been drummed into her as far back as she could remember. It was a weekly habit. She was often left in the field for weeks at a time and, when that happened, she’d leave the sample in the temperature-controlled case at a designated dead drop so that it could be collected and analysed and the data added to her file. The habit was strong, and she found herself assembling the equipment without really considering that if she went through with what she had planned, it would be a pointless exercise.
She threaded the needle on to one of the barrels and tightened the tourniquet around her biceps. She palpated a vein, anchored it with her left hand and, with her right, she slid the needle inside and drew off enough blood to fill the barrel. She took the pen, wrote the date on the side of the barrel, put it into the inset and then closed and locked the box.
She took the pistol from yesterday, dropped that into the cache and replaced the board, covering it back over with the carpet and then sliding the bed back to where it had been before.
The dye was ready now. Maia went back to the bathroom, undressed, stepped into the shower and rinsed her hair until the water ran clear. She looked at her reflection. Her hair was a deep, warm red.
She took the make-up and applied it. She only wore make-up when she was on an assignment, and the effect of it always struck her as startling. She painted her lips a deep scarlet and applied mascara to her lashes.
When she was done, she looked completely different from how she had looked just an hour earlier.
There was one more thing that she needed to do. She went into the kitchen and turned on the stove. She took the karambit from its sheath and unfolded the talon blade. The knife had a handle that was carefully designed to fit the hand for both standard and reverse grips. She wrapped the handle in a dishcloth and held the tip of the talon over the burner. She held it there until the metal glowed red and then let it cool. She took the bottle of gin that she had purchased from the store and poured two inches’ worth into a clean tumbler. She dipped the blade into the alcohol to be sure. The metal hissed and fizzed.
She reached around with her left hand and quickly found the shallow bump between her C6 and C7 vertebrae. It was an easy place to site the implant: simple to access and usually covered by her hair. Now that it had been
cut, the tiny unit would be visible as a pea-sized bump.
Maia took the karambit in her right hand. She lowered her head and, guiding the tip of the blade with the index finger of her left hand, she lined it up just below the protrusion and then pressed down. The blade was sharp, and it slid easily into the skin. She adjusted the angle and pressed down a little more, feeling the blade as it dug down. She felt blood on her skin, a hot dribble down her spine. She pried it up, feeling with the fingers of her left hand as the hard little knot in her neck started to move towards the surface of the skin. She wiggled the blade, slicing around the implant, cutting out a flap that opened just as the implant rose to the surface on a bubble of blood.
She collected the tiny device between thumb and forefinger and placed it on the table in front of her. It was a tiny GPS tracker coated in bioglass. The tracker was powered by an integrated nano-generator that harvested the energy from within the body: heartbeats, blood flow and other almost imperceptible but constant movements. The generator was made from cellulose mixed with polydimethylsiloxane – the silicone found in breast implants – and carbon nanotubes. She looked at it for a long minute. It lay there like an accusation. Removing the chip was a defining moment for her. It was the first time she had deliberately and consciously done something that it was forbidden for her to do.
It was the crossing of a boundary that could not be uncrossed.
She could have laid the blade of the knife against the tracker and crushed it, but that did not serve her purpose. Prometheus would be alerted if the chip stopped transmitting. She wanted it to continue to broadcast where it was. Instead, she wrapped it in a piece of tissue paper and put it in her pocket.
The wound in her neck was not deep, but it was bleeding freely. She took the bottle of antiseptic and poured it over the wound, grimacing from the sharp sting, and then pressed a sterile pad over it. She held the pad in place with two lengths of zinc oxide tape and then dressed, carefully pulling on the turtleneck so that it covered the dressing. She put on her jeans and fitted the woollen beanie over her head.