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‘The code you just relayed,’ I say. ‘It connects.’
He wipes his mouth, eyes flying over the numbers. One second passes, two, three until he pulls his head up and mutters, ‘Jesus.’
‘What?’ Patricia says, glancing between the two of us. ‘What?’
‘It’s a warning,’ Chris says.
‘Huh? A warning? A warning for what? Doc, what does it say?’
My eyes stay on the code, decrypting it again to be sure, but still, no matter how much I wish to deny it, the message is the same.
‘It says the Project knows where we are.’ I close my eyes. ‘It says they are waiting for us at the next station stop at Interlaken.’
The train starts to pull away and pick up speed.
Deep cover Project facility.
Present day
‘This is an anechoic chamber.’
Black Eyes nods to a white-haired officer as he opens a door. The officer presses a green button and one hundred and seventy small LED wall-lights ping into life in a room that stretches in a long, tubular shape like an airplane cockpit of a space.
I place one foot inside. When I inspect the initial area, I see that each light throws a soft blue glow on my skin, face and hair, and when I twist my arm around to reveal the spongy underbelly beneath, a kaleidoscope of tiny rainbows dances along my skin in drunk, swaying circles.
‘Please walk in,’ the officer says.
I hesitate, then step forwards and the door behind me immediately whooshes shut, a draught of air sealing it behind me. I whip round, startled, and frantically scan the door, its metal whiteness a cold block of ice that freezes out the world from me, from these lights and sounds. A shiver breaks out all over me.
‘Walk three steps forward, please,’ the officer’s voice instructs over an intercom.
‘What is happening?’
On the curve of the wall there is a small, square window with a deep blue rim and, through it, I see Black Eyes. ‘This is the next stage.’
There appears to be two sections of the chamber. I move my feet into a different space where the light is almost gone. My pulse pounds. When I look once more through the window I see the officer. Worry shoots up my spine.
‘Stop there,’ the officer orders.
I halt. Unsure what is expected of me, I shift slightly to the side.
‘I said, stop!’ he shouts.
I instantly freeze, staggering at the loud volume assault. Black Eyes’ voice swims in, ordering the officer not to yell.
‘Maria,’ Black Eyes says after a fraction of silence has passed, his fingers, from the window, still clasping the file where Patricia’s head lies, ‘this is a place that can help you. Take a breath, calm down.’
I feel a strong urge to run away as fast as I can, to pound down the door with my fists, but manage to stay put.
‘You see,’ he continues, ‘we have found that subject numbers sometimes need assistance in… controlling their feelings, their reactions to situations. Although, as I’m sure you are realising by now, you, my dear, are… well, unique.’
As he cranes his head and speaks directly to the officer, my brain sparks somewhere at something Black Eyes just said. Other subject numbers. I don’t move, fear and uncertainty preventing me from barely breathing as I aim to think straight in this strange environment, attempt to locate what alarm is being triggered inside my mind. Why does the phrase other subject numbers suddenly tweak something in my mind, something distant, a hazy recollection of an event not long passed?
‘Maria? Are you ready, Maria?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good. Then let me tell you what will happen next.’
Chapter 9
Goldenpass railway line, The Alps, Switzerland.
Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 25 hours and 20 minutes
With Interlaken Ost Station fifty minutes away, Chris grabs all his equipment, fingers shaking, and shoves it in his rucksack. Rising into the aisle, his full head height skimming the ceiling of the carriage, he rolls his shoulders and turns.
I zip up my rucksack. Legs jigging in my seat at the nerves of what’s ahead, I afford a brief glance to the window. The early night air descending on the mountains has produced a low mist that merges from yellow to deep blue then black, and in the fields that yawn wide into the elbow of the valley below, the petals of the spring crocuses bob on the heads of their stems and sway in the breeze of the train as it rolls on by.
‘Right,’ Chris says, eyes to the left and right. ‘The hard drive’s erased. I’ve copied everything we need onto a file. I’ve tried using a signal blocker thing I have, but it’s not working, so we’ll try that later.’ He looks up to the far door of the carriage then back to our table. ‘How we gonna do this? I mean, why would this book woman warn us if she works for the Project?’
‘We do not have the answer to that at present. However, our priority is to reduce any threat level to us all, so the best course of action based on probability of harm or death is to alight the train and leave.’
‘Shit. What if it’s a trick?’
‘People, it seems, play tricks all the time,’ I say. ‘This is no different.’
Patricia wrings her hands together over and over. She secures her bag to her shoulder, gripping it and, catching strands of her wig in the handle where it pinches her jumper, she stands.
Chris glances over to her. ‘You okay? You seem jittery.’
She nods but keeps her eyes down, and when I look at her other hand, wondering how jittery appears, I see her thumb nail picking at the skin on the cuticles of her forefinger. I spread out my five fingers; Patricia looks at them and gives a thin smile.
I scan the train. I check the people and the families and the smattering of random, vague faces, observing life as it is: normal, regular, each person connected by an invisible thread of relationships. I glance to my two friends, slip my fingers into my bag and stroke, for one second, the spine of my notebook and rub the soft edge of the photographs tucked inside.
Breathing in once, and with the Project’s mantra in my head – prepare, wait, engage – I withdraw my hand, secure my bag and start walking. ‘We have to find a way off this train.’
We negotiate the sway of the carriage and come to a stop by the door that opens up to the outside between the two cabins.
‘Doc?’
I am scanning for the best exit. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m not used to this kind of thing.’
She chews her nails and I search for something appropriate to say. ‘It is highly unusual to be chased by a covert organisation previously unknown to the UK government, who would kill you if they had to in order to capture your friend.’
She lowers her fingers from her mouth and, taking this as a signal that I have delivered an adequate comment, I recommence examining the area.
I observe the eyes and the faces of each and every passenger. Patricia moves close by me now, nail nibbling again, and I use the partial cover her body provides to study the travellers. The old man is asleep in his seat, head hanging, brow tapping the window. The young girl has her face glued to her chewed copy of 1984, music shoved in her ears, while the father and his two boys, it seems, have fallen asleep, each body resting on the pillow of the other, the bread-faced woman opposite watching them, smiling. Nothing jumps out, nothing screams, run. I breathe a little easier.
We move along one metre further to the far door where we are due to alight and consider our options of escape once on the platform. The train is moving a little faster now, not at great speed, but the chugging has increased in its ascent up a steep incline.
‘Have you located any remote device trackers?’ I say to Chris.
‘I don’t know. My phone’s picking up some strange signal, not a virus or anything on the cell, but different.’ He searches the carriage. ‘I don’t know where it’s coming from. And look.’
‘What?’
‘Well, after we realised we were being traced with the Weisshorn virus, I quickly checked those subject numbers, you know, the ones crossed out. There was a link underneath the yellow edge of the countdown square.’
Patricia looks to him. ‘I thought you couldn’t get a Wi-Fi connection.’
‘I can’t. I mean, you don’t need one for this. It’s just embedded code.’ He turns to me. ‘I didn’t see it at first, it was hidden behind a series of encryptions that created the strike-through lines across the numbers, but I did a little digging and, well, it led to a place, just a file name header, but a place all the same.’
‘What place?’
He hesitates, eyes flickering to Patricia then back to me. ‘The Office of the Ministry of Justice. In Spain.’
‘Doc, isn’t that where Ines used to work? Wasn’t she a member of parliament in that department?’
‘She was the Minister.’
‘Well, the subject numbers,’ Chris continues, voice hushed, ‘whoever the people were – they seemed to have been, like, generated from there, from the Justice Ministry. What d’you think it means? Do you think it’s all connected? Or is it just random, because Ines was always involved with the Project anyway?’
I grab his phone, examine the data, but no immediate answer comes.
‘Er, Doc?’
I scan the data again. It seems valid, but how are the subject numbers linked? How can the government Ines used to help run be involved? It may simply be that Ines stored the data at the department. Only facts will tell.
‘Doc?’
‘Yes?’
‘Doc, you need to look up, like, now.’
‘Why?’
‘Who’s she?’
Patricia is pointing to the dough woman, striding down the aisle at a speed that betrays her age.
Chris’s mouth drops. ‘What the..?’
The woman moves quickly, unusually so for her height and build, her sight locked on us as she makes her way up the carriage. My pulse rises. I glance at the boys and the father where they lie asleep: the father’s arm drops to the side, loose, oddly limp.
‘What’s that in her hand?’ Chris whispers. ‘Is that… Oh, shit – is that a gun?’
Prepare, wait, engage.
I instinctively slam my two friends out of the way.
‘That is a Beretta 92-FS pistol with a 9mm silencer.’
Chris rams himself behind me. He is close, but I cannot let the confined space bother me, not now, not with my friends at risk.
‘Doc,’ Patricia says, a wobble to her words, ‘I don’t like it.’
She looks like a harmless grandma, her chest a plumped, padded duvet encased in a lilac gilet, the armholes encircled with delicate flower patterns. She smells of boiled sweets and lavender. Nice, sweet – except for the gun.
‘Do not move,’ the woman says. Her voice is a clipped typewriter of words, harsh, metallic.
I stay walled in front of my friends, arms spread in an iron fence to either side. ‘Who are you?’
‘You know who I am with.’
‘If you’re MI5,’ Patricia says from behind me, ‘you can fuck off!’
‘I am from Project Callidus, not MI5, and there’s no need for such language. There are children present.’
I glance to the father and the boys. Do they know? Do they know who they have been travelling near? My heart races. I feel the bodies of Chris and Patricia behind me, their heat and breath, the shake of Patricia’s arm, the warmth of Chris’s torso. I have put my friends in danger again and at every turn they have found me, so if I run, will this never, ever end? But the email, the email we sent from Madrid airport to the Home Secretary – the Project will be investigated and culled.
‘Who are they?’ I say, gesturing to the father and boys. ‘Are they the Project, too?’
Her green eyes briefly flit behind her. ‘With the Project? Them? Oh, no, no.’ She sighs. ‘They are… collateral.’
My blood chills.
‘What?’ Chris says.
‘Children,’ she says. ‘They can just get far too inquisitive sometimes. It can cause… problems. Sweet little poppets they were, though.’
‘Jesus,’ Chris says. ‘You… you mean you killed them?’
‘No,’ I say, panicking. ‘No, no, no…’ My sight goes straight to the little family. The father’s hand hangs over the edge of the seat rest, the boys’ heads are slipping downwards just a little more than sleep would normally allow. I start to sway, even though the train travels relatively straight. ‘The Project are for the greater good. How… how can this be for the greater good? I have to help them.’
‘No.’ She slams her arm across the walkway, blocking my path. ‘It’s time.’
I stare again at the father, think of the way he smiled at his sons, ruffled their hair, the way his eyes creased when his lips upturned – a family, a real loving family. I clench my teeth, heart slamming against my chest, a rage in me burning. ‘I am not going anywhere with you.’
She emits a small sigh, bosom rising then falling. ‘You have no choice, Subject 375. Project Callidus needs you.’
‘How do you know that number?’
‘Because I am here to see you back to our family. Our nickname – Cranes, remember? We represent peace.’
‘You are not my family.’
She smiles and it confuses me – there are creases fanning from her eyes.
‘Doc, don’t listen to her.’
Chris thrusts his head forwards. ‘The Project is over. The British government has all the information on the entire programme. It’s no longer a secret.’
The smile remains on her face, but now her eyes droop downwards, making the creases deepen. I try to decode it, translate what it means. Eye creases with a smile mean happiness, doesn’t it? So, is that what she feels upon seeing me? Content, whole? If so, why?
‘Leave us the fuck alone,’ Chris says now, moving forwards a little. I feel his warm, moist fingers link between mine; I surprise myself by not pulling away.
‘The Home Secretary – she has an email,’ he continues. ‘An email with all the files stretching back thirty years on every twisted little thing the Project and MI5 have done.’
‘You mean this email?’ The old woman’s words are cashmere soft as she slips her hand into her pocket, pulls out a phone and holds it aloft with the full email and file sent to Harriet Alexander when we were in Madrid.
Chris shifts forward, looks. His mouth hangs open. ‘What the fuck?’
The woman switches her gaze to Chris. I do not move. The old man in the carriage ahead is absorbed in his newspaper. The young woman has earbuds in connected by a thin white wire to her phone. In her lap open at the page is Orwell’s dystopian novel.
‘Mr Chris Johnson,’ she says, ‘the way you encrypted that email to the UK Home Secretary, well, you gave us a hard task to decode it. If you are game, we are very interested in acquiring your special… services. Better to have you onside than off.’ She smiles. ‘Still, we found you all. Eventually. But of course, we did have a little help.’
‘Fuck you.’ Chris spits at her.
She glances down to the saliva on her gilet, then points her gun to Patricia’s head and looking at me, says, ‘I’ll make the choice for you now really very easy: come with me or I kill your friends.’
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