The quantum solution, p.12
The Quantum Solution, page 12
“My problem, Ben, is this,” she said after a time. She was so neat she had no need to wipe her chin, but she very delicately licked the grease from her lips. “I’ve done my homework on you. In the field you have repeatedly proved yourself intrepid, inventive, and above all loyal.”
He ate even more slowly than she did; he never took his eyes off her. He was studying her features, the microexpressions that flitted across her face in less than a blink of an eye. The concentration was exhausting but, he was certain, worth it. There was no effective way to gain the advantage over an enigma, and Zahra Planck was the greatest enigma he had ever encountered. Next to her, Isobel was more or less an open book.
“These three qualities are what make you so good at your job,” Zahra continued. “However, for me, at this particular moment in time, the third quality—namely loyalty—is an issue.”
Ben knew there was no need for him to query her; she was going to keep going and it would be counterproductive to interrupt the flow.
“You are loyal to Evan Ryder, to Isobel Lowe, to Marsden Tribe.”
Now was the time to step in. “I have histories with Evan and Isobel,” he said evenly. “I have personal relationships with them. I trust them implicitly.”
She snatched at the opening he had given her. “And Marsden Tribe?”
“What about him?”
“As of a year ago you had no history with him. You have met him, what? Three times?”
“Two actually.”
“So we may assume you have no personal relationship with him.”
“He pays my salary, my expenses. He’s extremely generous.”
“With money.”
“You’re stating the obvious.”
She ignored that gibe. “What about with his time?”
“I report to Isobel, not to Tribe. In any event, he’s an inordinately busy individual.”
“Not too busy to spend time with Ms. Ryder.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“Is that so.” She cocked her head. “Is she, like Marsden Tribe, too busy to tell you? Or has she stopped confiding in you?”
Something was rising inside Ben. He could not quite put a name to it but knew he didn’t like it. “We’re not joined at the hip,” he said tartly. “We have our separate lives.”
“Within the confines of Parachute security?”
“I don’t care what she and Tribe are up to.”
Her dark eyes gleamed like obsidian. “So they are up to something.”
She had neatly led him into this trap. This supposed diversion wasn’t a diversion at all. It was a pickaxe to undermine his relationship with Evan. In hindsight it was so obvious that he now wondered why he felt anything at all. But Evan and Tribe? Really? The thought sickened him, but again he couldn’t figure out why. Why should he care, and yet he did. Worse, Zahra could see it on his face. A blow well struck.
Babak came and cleared away the plates and silverware. He said nothing, did not look at either of them, scurried away as fast as was seemly.
“We’ve wandered far afield.” It was all he could think of to say.
She pulled herself up. “Quite right.” Her voice was clipped, businesslike. “The real question is whether or not you trust Marsden Tribe.” She spread her hands. “You must admit the evidence we presented is compelling.”
“Is it? You’ve shown me what you wanted to show me. You’ve told me what I was looking at. Perception, that’s all that is.”
She gave him a look he couldn’t read, which annoyed him when it should have concerned him. He watched her slip out a file folder from her bag, open it on the table. She turned it around so that the contents were facing him.
“These are photos of the MRI scans I was shown before.”
She pointed to the top photo. “This one is, yes.” She set that aside, revealing a second photo of Thompson’s brain from a slightly different angle. “This one as well.” She set that aside to reveal a third and fourth photo he knew he hadn’t seen before. “But not these two.”
He glanced up at her. “Why not?”
“Because General Reade and his little cabal wouldn’t know what to make of them.”
“And you do?”
“Yes.”
Ben was following the thread she was laying out for him. “But you haven’t told them.”
“No.”
“Again, why not?”
“Because I want to show this to you.”
“What I’m looking at makes no sense to me.”
“That’s because I put this scan under a microscope. This photo is the result.”
Her hand swept over the scan. “What you’re looking at is one of the three detonations inside the late secretary of defense’s brain.”
He nodded. “If that’s what you say it is.”
For the first time an edge of annoyance flickered across her face. “You don’t need me to tell you anything. Look for yourself at how damaged the brain cells are around the detonation.”
He could see that. “All right,” he acknowledged.
“Now I want you to concentrate on the precise center of the detonation.” Her forefinger stabbed out, the nail touching a spot before moving away.
Ben took up the photo, tilted it so that more light shone on it.
“What do you see, Ben?” she asked.
“Nothing.” His brow furrowed. “Nothing at all.”
“And yet there must be something there.” Her eyes were shining like those of a zealot. “Something caused the detonations. They didn’t appear out of thin air.”
He shook his head.
“But you’re right. Even under microscopic scrutiny nothing is visible.”
“Well.” Ben’s brow furrowed. “It can’t very well be invisible.”
“And yet it is,” Zahra said. “To the naked eye, to a microscope. Which means we’ve got to go smaller still to find it.”
“What if nothing is there?”
She sat back. “Fine. Give me your explanation as to how three detonations inside Thompson’s brain got there.” Her eyes flashed. “We’ve already precluded all known medical causes.”
He looked again at the photo but tellingly said nothing.
“Of course,” Zahra said. “There is no other explanation. Qubits—quantum particles—are too small to be seen with either the naked eye or a microscope. Similarly, the holes they made in Thompson’s skull wouldn’t be picked up by the best forensic scientists.” She spread her hands on the table. “My conclusion—the only logical conclusion—is that somehow Marsden Tribe, your boss, has figured out a way to weaponize qubits.”
Ben wanted to snort in derision but he couldn’t make himself do it. What if she was right? What other way could those detonations inside Thompson’s brain exist?
“I’ve told you, I have no idea what’s going on inside Parachute itself,” he told her. “Our security team is completely sealed off from the rest of the company.”
“Not completely sealed off,” she said quietly. “Perhaps Evan Ryder knows.”
Now it all came together. Ben sat back, head spinning, the wheels within wheels of the enigma he saw sitting across from him.
“Of course,” he said, his voice perfectly flat. “Of course that’s what you want.”
“No, no, Ben.” She leaned forward, placed her hand atop his. Her palm was warm like embers burning, her fingers cool as water. “You mustn’t think you’re a means to an end.” Her gaze grasped his, would not let go until her fingers had curled his around a thumb drive. “There is more—something else inexplicable. It’s all here”—her fingers squeezed his lightly—“in what I’ve just given you. I’m trusting you to get this to the right person, Ben. I trust you. You are my end.”
17
MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Ever since he’d returned to Moscow and his cold lab, Morokovsky remained in a mood most foul. Days later, in fact, his rage had grown exponentially. He tasted it in his food, he lay with it sleepless in the night, and since he couldn’t take it out on the major, he did the most human thing and took it out on those around him—those closest to him. There was not a person on his team who did not cringe from the full fury of his wrath. That they had no idea why they were being reprimanded made little difference either to them or to him.
He stomped into his office in the square six-story Brutalist raw cement structure that passed for postmodern design these days. Three stories above ground, three below, it was referred to ironically by those who toiled away there day and night as the medical arts theater.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The procedures carried out within its walls were as brutal as the architectural design of the building itself. There were no windows in his office, just as there were none in the mortuary, where the dead and mutilated lay sleeping on their stainless-steel trays. All except Ivan Levrov. What the major had planned for the corpse was anyone’s guess. Worse, it was out of Morokovsky’s control.
Control was Morokovsky’s thing, his guiding light, his god. Within his autopsy room he controlled everything and everyone. So what if they called him a martinet behind his back. He cared more for the corpses than he did his living crew. They were all nitwits anyway. They were clever enough not to ask him about his trip to the Rostov forest, and if they were curious about why he had not brought the corpse back they said nothing. Anyway, they were too busy being browbeaten for standing too close to him, standing too far away, not answering his questions quickly enough, answering too quickly. He picked on their personality failings no matter how minute. They all stood and took it, of course, like good little soldiers. His hands curled into fists at his side; he wanted to punch every one of them in the face.
This harsh methodology had been drummed into him by his father and grandfather, both of whom had been illustrious pathologists with a number of international patents in pathology instruments to their names. Now here was their son and grandson enjoined from completing perhaps the most fascinating autopsy of his career, stymied by a woman no less—a woman with direct connection to the Sovereign. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He wasn’t connected to anyone of note, let alone the Sovereign.
He went to work on a pair of corpses—they were backlogged, as usual—dictating his findings into a hanging mic, carving out vital organs and weighing them on a scale as he imagined one of the ancient Egyptian gods of the dead did—never mind his name. After two hours of him playing god of the dead, his stomach began its noisy protest. He washed up, left one of his assistants to write up his dictated notes, and went upstairs to the commissary.
The commissary was on the top floor, flooded with light, and large enough to accommodate the entire staff, though it was rarely even a third full. It was an in-between hour—after lunch and before the dinner service had begun—so there was only a sprinkling of people. Good. It was here he could get away and relax, if only for the twenty minutes he allotted himself for a meal.
If there was one person in the medical arts theater he could call a friend it was Maria Mariskiovna, his assistant pathologist. She was young, blond, with pretty eyes beneath long lashes. She reminded Morokovsky of Tatiana, the daughter he had lost last year to a bacterial infection no one knew how to treat; the terrifying scourge was resistant to every known antibiotic. Frantic, he’d done everything he could think of to save Tatiana, but to no avail. He was consigned to watch her waste away, day by day, each one more painful. As for his wife, she had a complete psychological break and was now shut away somewhere in the German countryside.
As usual at that hour, Maria was just coming off shift. They greeted each other with weary smiles. Slicing open dead bodies, scooping out major organs to weigh them, inevitably took its toll, even on someone like Maria, who was just starting out. This made Morokovsky sad. Over their time together they had become more than comrades-in-arms; they were confidants.
“You always look like crap,” she said in her bantering tone, “but today, I fear, is something special.”
That made him laugh. “You’re right, I do feel like crap left out in the rain.”
He bought them both coffees and some pastries and they sat at a table near one of the windows. He liked the way the sunlight struck her face, pulled all her good features into prominence.
“So why the particularly long face?” she asked.
“Ah, well, I feel like a horse who’d been beaten for pulling a hearse with too much ease.”
She looked at him quizzically. “Meaning?”
“So, okay, a horse walks into a bar,” he said as she sipped her coffee, “and the bartender says, ‘Hey, buddy, why the long face?’”
She laughed so hard the coffee almost came out of her nose.
“Tatiana always like that one,” he said with a chuckle. “I began telling it to her when she was seven. She laughed no matter how many times I told it to her.”
“I will too,” Maria said.
He turned away then, abruptly overcome with a visceral memory of Tatiana’s unique scent, the loving way she looked at him. The uninhibited way she laughed at his stupid jokes. Really laughed; she was doing him no favors. Where are you? he wondered now. What I wouldn’t give to talk to you one more time.
Maria put a hand over his. “But really.”
He sighed deeply. “Truth?”
“Always.”
“I don’t much care for being sent home as if I’m ready for the glue factory.”
It was at that moment that the pain exploded inside his head. One after another, detonations took him farther and farther away from Maria, the commissary, the medical arts theater, his memories. He could no longer see, could no longer hear. He was unaware when his arm swung out, swiping his coffee cup and saucer onto the floor. Securely locked within the multiplying punctures of agony assaulting his brain he had no idea that Maria had jumped up, that she was screaming his name, had taken him by his shoulders and then, as his eyes rolled up in his head, began shouting at the top of her lungs for medical assistance.
Moments later he got his wish; he was with Tatiana again.
18
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
Inessa entered the room where Evan lay, and her eyes opened wide at the sight of her dead sister. Her shout echoed off the walls of the room, rebounding over and over as she gave voice to her grief and rage. She snarled like an animal whose cage door had been left open.
She took a step into the room, nose wrinkling at the thick, gamey stink. Her gaze bounced from her sister to Evan, over and over. The venom in her eyes turned them black as moonless midnight.
“I will kill you.” Her voice was thick and hot as the astrosphere, guttural in nature. “But not quickly, oh no. Slowly as I watch the blood drain out of you drop by drop. I’ll laugh as your face becomes deathly pale and I’ll stop to allow you to recover just enough before I start again. Edging you toward death. But not before pain, agony, and screaming that will rip the lining of your throat.”
Evan watched her standing there, not moving. She had heard these words before, or ones like them. She was inured to words; there was nothing to be done about them. Words were the altar of the bully and the coward. Words were meaningless, a weak attempt to intimidate and induce terror. It was action Evan was concentrated on, and there was none from Inessa. Oddly, she simply stood one step inside the open doorway. Seething. Planning her initial attack. What would it be? Evan was suddenly filled with anxiety. What had she been thinking? In her debilitated state Inessa could do just about anything to her, even if she wasn’t built like an MMA fighter. Evan had little strength left and all her stamina was lying in a puddle around her. There was no other exit from the room that she could see, and even if there was one it was sure to be locked, and even if by some miracle it wasn’t how far could she get without passing out?
These were her concerns, mounting steadily into a silent scream when Inessa, advancing on her, stumbled badly. It was only when she fell to her knees that Evan became aware that she had been shoved hard from behind.
Another figure strode into the room, undoubtedly the man who had pushed Inessa. To Evan’s astonishment it was the Syrian, Abd-El-Kader, “servant of the powerful.” He stood behind Inessa, though she seemed unaware of him. Her head lifted, her eyes staring into those of her twin. Her mouth constricted into what might have become a feral snarl had Abd-El-Kader not grabbed her forcibly by the collar of her jacket and jerked her backward so hard her teeth clacked together. She went wild trying to squirm out of his grip, whether to get to her sister for solace or to Evan for revenge was impossible to say because she was brought up short by a terrible blow to the side of her head from the Syrian.
“Know your place,” he growled. He seemed totally unaffected by the charnel house the room had become. Maybe it wasn’t the first time, Evan thought.
“My place is with my sister.” Inessa’s voice was thick, horrible-sounding.
He grabbed a fistful of her hair, jerked her head back. “Soon enough you’ll join her, but not yet. Hear me?”
She glared up at him, her lower lip extended in a pout. “I’ll kill you,” she husked, “after I kill her.”
Abd-El-Kader laughed. “What d’you make of this one?”
It took Evan several seconds to understand that he was no longer addressing Inessa. Another man had entered the room. Even staring at the face, even feeling the weight of his gaze on her, she could scarcely believe her eyes. “You,” she whispered. “What are you doing here?”
“It would be unreasonable for me not to be here,” Marsden Tribe said. “I just bought the Spider’s business.”
19
ROSTOV REGION, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Major Juliet Korokova, wondering why Kata had sent such a lamb to her, watched the crackling fire consume Ivan Levrov’s corpse along with any definitive evidence of what had actually caused his demise. That was her job; that was why she had been sent here on emergency orders.
