by Chris Ryan
Matt climbed out of the car – a Fiat Punto, rented from the local Hertz office – and started walking out across the empty ground. 'This way,' said Orlena, walking quickly past Matt.
To his right, Matt could see a pair of teenage boys taking the engine from an abandoned car. He followed Orlena across the waste ground, towards the back of the last of the tower blocks. There was a row of twenty identical two-storey houses, with a flat on each level. They had been white originally, but were now stained, and covered with the patches of a hundred cheap repairs. But the windows were mostly intact, and a few flowers had been planted along the communal front garden. Compared with the rest of the estate, it looked like a palace.
Orlena stopped outside Number Twelve, ringing the bell. It didn't work. She banged twice, loudly, making the door creak beneath her fist. From inside, Matt could hear a man shouting, then the sound of a series of locks being slowly unfastened.
Three locks, counted Matt. Maybe he doesn't trust the neighbours.
Leonid Petor was eighty-five and thin, but still sprightly. His skin was stretched tight over the bones in his face, and his eyes shone brightly across the room. He glanced first at Orlena, then at Matt, his expression wary. 'Dobryy den,' he muttered.
Orlena spoke to him in Ukrainian, waited for the reply, then looked towards Matt. 'He says we can come in.'
Matt stepped into the hallway. It was neat and tidy, with a blue carpet, and a bunch of dried flowers in a vase on a side table. The hall led through to a living room, with a kitchen at the back, a small bedroom and a shower room. So far as Matt could tell, he lived alone. If there was a Mrs Petor, she had long since died.
'I speak English,' said Petor, looking up at Matt. 'I had to. I was a scientist, and English is the language of science.'
Matt followed him into the main room. One wall was taken up with a bookshelf crammed with dusty old papers and books. There was a picture of a family on the mantelpiece, shot in black and white, and at least twenty years old: Matt recognised Petor, and the woman must have been his wife and the boy his child. Next to it were a series of framed certificates, the writing all in Russian. Matt guessed they were medals or awards of some sort.
Petor was not just any scientist. Either they handed out those awards to everyone, or he was something special.
'I need some information,' said Matt, sitting down on the sofa. 'About a drug that was manufactured here, maybe a decade ago, maybe two decades.'
'Then you've come to the right address.'
Petor spoke with a heavy accent, but the words were clear and crisp. His body might be frail, but his mind was still active. From his expression, Matt guessed he was pleased to have someone to talk to. Being ignored. That's what hurts the old the most.
'That was your area of research?'
Petor sat down on a faded armchair, its arms covered in coffee stains. 'I was deputy director for the Ukraine division, Biopreparat. Do you know what that was?'
Matt shook his head.
'The chief directorate for biological preparations. It was set up by the Politburo in 1973. We had just signed arms-control treaties with the Americans, banning the development of biological weapons. But the treaties didn't say anything about genetics, or about microbiology, or about mind-altering drugs. So those were the areas we started working on.'
Matt leant forwards. 'Mind-altering drugs?' he said, repeating the words slowly.
'Yes, yes, I know what I just said, I don't need it repeated,' snapped Petor. 'I might be old, but I'm not senile.'
'Sorry. Can you tell me more about them?'
Matt could feel himself being examined. The old man's eyes were scrutinising him carefully, running across his face and looking into his eyes. 'Correct me if I'm mistaken, but you look like a soldier.'
'I'm out now, but I spent ten years in the special forces.'
Petor stood from his chair, and walked closer to Matt. He was peering into his eyes, the way a doctor might study an ailing patient. His voice was rasping. 'You didn't take the drug, did you?' he demanded.
'No, not me,' said Matt. 'But I know of some men who might have taken it.'
Petor turned round, sitting back in his chair. 'It should never have been used, it should never have been used.'
'Tell me about it,' said Matt. 'If I can find out more, maybe I can help the men who took it.'
Petor rolled his eyes upwards, as if he was searching for something hidden away: a memory locked right at the back of his mental filing cabinet. 'The work started around 1970. It was an interesting time. Hippies, the Beatles, Vietnam. We didn't have anything like that in the Soviet Union of course, but we still watched what was happening in the rest of the world, and we reacted to it. Mind– and behaviour-altering drugs were just starting to take. Pharmacopsychology, that was the term we used. There was Valium, that was the first of them, in the early sixties. Then you had LSD, and amphetamines, and marijuana, and all the rest. And so the question naturally arose: were there any military uses for those kinds of drugs?' He looked towards Orlena. 'Could you get me a glass of water? You'll find a tap in the kitchen.'
'You wanted to make soldiers braver?' asked Matt.
Petor took the glass of water from Orlena, holding it steadily in his hand. 'Well, of course. You've been a soldier, you know what the battlefield is like. Men are afraid. When they are trained, battle-hardened, it doesn't matter so much. They get used to it, they learn how to control and master their fear. But when they are boys of eighteen or nineteen, with six months' training, and they are thrown in battle, what happens?'
'They flap,' said Matt. 'Panic, lose it. Happens all the time, even to good men.'
'Exactly,' answered Petor, taking a sip of the water. 'So what if you could find a drug that would suppress fear, maybe just for a few hours? For an army, that would be quite an achievement. It would make you invincible.'
'You got one?'
'XP22,' said Petor flatly. 'That was its name. We concentrated on a hormone called corticotrophin. It's well known that at times of stress, your body releases large quantities of corticotrophin into the bloodstream. What it does exactly, nobody is quite sure. But our theory was that if we could find some way of controlling the production of corticotrophin then you would feel much less stressed, even in the most tense conditions possible. We created a blocker, a chemical that shuts down the production of the hormone. Then we twisted it a bit. We added some high-powered amphetamines, basically a variant on Quaaludes. That gives you a short, intense high, and allows you to think with amazing clarity. Your reaction times are all speeded up. So you had men who felt no stress, no fear, and they could fight like supermen.' Petor looked across at Orlena, a mischievous smile on his face. 'Of course, it also meant the drug couldn't be given to women, because of the well-documented impact of Quaaludes on their sexual appetite. Still, the Red Army never really put women in front-line positions, so that was not much of an issue.'
'And it was used?' asked Matt.
'Of course,' answered Petor. 'We were developing the drug all through the seventies and early eighties. Then it was first used properly in Afghanistan. That was a nasty war, you know. Lots of young conscripts with not much training got shot at by fanatics. You had to be brave in that struggle. So we gave them XP22.'
Matt sighed. Didn't matter which army you belonged to, he reflected. Whether they were Ruperts or Sergeis, they still treated the men like cattle.
'Did it work?'
A smile broke out on Petor's thin, wrinkled lips. 'Naturally,' he replied. 'The science was good. Get a man to swallow one pill, and you would see some extraordinary feats of endurance and courage. Of course, the casualties were high, because the men became reckless. They would start storming a position single-handed, with no covering fire. But casualties were expected. Bravery they wanted, and XP22 delivered it. At one point, there were so many heroes around the place, they had to step up the production of Order of Lenin medals to honour them all.'
'But something went wrong?'
said Matt, leaning forward again.
Petor cast his eyes down. Matt could tell he took some pleasure in recalling the triumphs of his past: the disappointments were not so firmly lodged in his mind. 'Side effects,' he replied slowly. 'It's like any drug. You get the benefits right away. You get the side effects later on.'
Matt glanced across at Orlena. She was leaning forward too, following every word of Petor's precisely. 'The soldiers went crazy, right?' he said.
Petor nodded. 'Nobody noticed at first,' he replied. 'They took the drug, it lasted about twelve hours, then they went back to normal. Or so we thought. About four years later, we started getting reports of strange incidents around the country. Men were going crazy, murdering their wives or children, or their colleagues at work. It took a while before anyone realised, but they were all ex-soldiers. Then it was narrowed down. They were all soldiers who had taken XP22.'
Matt ground his fists together. I knew it.
'It was a kind of temporary madness,' continued Petor. 'Stress was usually the trigger. Something would happen in their lives, and suddenly they became madmen, unable to control themselves.'
'And a man called Eduardo Lacrierre, did he buy up the drug?'
Petor's expression turned serious. 'Look up his history sometime,' he replied. 'Twenty years ago he was just a small-time French businessman, an import–export merchant. He'd done some business in the Soviet Union, so he knew his way around the system. Then after the regime collapsed, he started buying up all the medical research he could get his hands on. He was paying peanuts, of course, but hard-currency peanuts, and people had nothing to live on, so they took what they were offered. That was the basis of his fortune.'
He paused, looking directly at Matt. Then behind him, Matt heard a movement: the sound of a safety catch being taken off a pistol. He spun round. Orlena was standing up, her legs positioned two feet apart, her back perfectly straight, and her right hand held out one foot in front of her. A Marakov pistol was nestling in the palm of her hand, pointing directly at Petor.
'That's enough,' she barked. 'These are old men's stories. We will listen to them no more.'
Matt looked towards Petor. He could see the surprise in the old man's eyes, but also the defiance. The old are not so afraid of dying, he reflected. They have thought about it, they know it's coming, and they have made their peace with it.
'Shoot me if you must, young woman,' Petor said calmly. 'It makes no difference.'
'Are there any papers left?' shouted Orlena. 'The papers must be destroyed.'
Petor glanced around the room. 'My papers are all around me,' he replied. 'You can do what you like to me, but it will make no difference. If anyone has been given XP22 they have to be treated. Or else there will be a terrible price to pay. I can –'
The sentence was left drifting through the room. The bullet cracked out of the barrel of the gun, impacted against the side of Petor's head, crashing open his skull and sending a cupful of blood splattering against the side of the chair. A tear in the side of his cheek opened up, as if you had ripped through an old and rotten sheet of paper, and his head slumped forward. His eyes had already closed.
A young man sometimes survives a bullet to the head. An old man has no chance.
Matt lunged forward. Orlena was standing ten yards from him, the Marakov still in her hand. His own pistol was tucked into his jeans, impossible to get at in the split second he had available. He spun round on his heels, reaching out for her hand. His fingers brushed against her skin, but her reactions were good: she had already jumped back, the gun still in her hand.
'On the floor,' she shouted. 'Stay on the fucking floor.' She paused, capturing her breath. 'I told you not to come. I'll destroy this building, and then I'll destroy you.'
Matt could see the barrel of the gun level with his head. It didn't matter what kind of a shot she was, she was not going to miss from there. Ahead of him, a trickle of Petor's blood had started to seep down from the chair, and was running across the floor towards his face. Now Orlena was opening up a lighter with her other hand, sprinkling its fuel across the bookshelf. She took a match, tossing it into the papers. The heat of the summer meant everything in the room was tinder dry: in seconds, the bookshelf ignited with a roar, the papers turning gold and crimson, as a thick cloud of black smoke filled the room. Orlena stepped back to avoid the heat, and Matt suddenly reached out, snatching the heel of her shoe. Pressuring all the strength in his shoulders on to his fingers, he yanked himself forward. Orlena swayed, her arms flying outwards as she struggled to regain her balance. The gun swung through the air. Matt reached up, smashing his fist hard into her hand. Her grip loosened as the pain swelled through her arm, then collapsed: the pistol spun away, flying through the air, smashing against the wall.
Matt leapt at her, his head bowed, his shoulders crashing hard into her legs. There's not much about unarmed combat that can't be learnt on the rugby pitch, he reflected, as she fell to the ground. Go in low and go in hard.
Huge balls of black smoke were already filling the tiny room. Matt could feel his lungs choking on the heavy air. He pulled himself up, stamping his boot down on Orlena's neck, pinning her tight against the floor.
litis is no time to be a gentleman.
'What's this job really about?' he shouted, his vocal cords choking on the fumes. 'It was never about drug counterfeiting at all, was it? You wanted something in that factory.'
He could see her eyes looking back at him, her expression insolent and angry. The fury started to rise in his chest. 'Just shoot,' she spat. 'Just shoot if you must, it makes no difference.'
'Tell me,' Matt shouted, squeezing his foot tighter into her neck. 'What is this job about?'
'I'll tell you nothing.'
'I'll kill you if you don't talk.'
'You don't have the guts,' she snapped. 'You're a coward.'
Matt leant down, looking into her eyes. He could smell the anger sweating out of her and see the fury coiled up in her lips. 'Whatever you're hiding, whoever you're protecting, it's not worth it.'
'I'll tell you nothing,' she screamed.
Matt pulled her up and slapped her once across the face. 'It's not worth dying for.'
Orlena's voice turned cold. 'I'll die the way I want to.' She moved back towards the bookcases, which were now a raging inferno, bellowing out great clouds of black smoke.
Matt held the Marakov in his hand, pointed it towards her retreating figure, and fired a single bullet. Orlena's silhouette tumbled towards the flames that were now engulfing the carpet, curtains and chairs, into the thick smoke.
Make that fifty-one ways to leave your lover.
Matt could feel the smoke stinging his eyes, and his stomach was starting to heave as the fumes filled his lungs. He pulled himself up off the ground, and started collecting as many of the papers as he could from the shelves. He tucked a bundle underneath his arms, and started to run towards the front door. The smoke was thicker and blacker, and waves of flames had started to crawl across the ceiling, drowning the apartment in heat. Soon the entire building would be on fire.
In the halfway, the carpet and the door were already burning. He held his breath to stop himself taking in any more smoke, then forced himself forward. The metal of the lock was already glowing from the heat. Matt slammed the bolt backwards, a sharp pain running down his arm as the metal burnt the skin on his fingers. With his foot, he kicked the door back, sending it flying open. A rush of oxygen flooded into the hall, stoking up the flames.
Matt ran outside, gasping for air. He sprinted away from the block, not pausing until he was at least a hundred yards from the building. An armful of papers were clutched tight to his chest. Behind him, he could see people starting to stream from the building, and within a few minutes he knew he would hear the sounds of police sirens and fire engines.