The quantum solution, p.13
The Quantum Solution, page 13
That a member of Kata’s directorate had shown up was hardly a surprise. Rodion, however, was. In the three days he’d been here she had made it her business to get to know him. He was no idiot, no unthinking drone Kata Hemakova had sicced on her. He was more, but how much more she had yet to determine. She had chosen him to help her wrap Levrov’s opened corpse in a winding sheet in order to observe his nerve and stamina for foul odors. The portable heaters that had kept Morokovsky’s fingers flexible during the autopsy had also had a deleterious effect on the body. The air around it was fetid with the noxious gases the corpse was still emitting in occasional furious mini-bursts.
Despite them donning rubber gloves and surgeon’s masks, Rodion’s motions were herky-jerky, as if he were trying to hide a trembling in his hands under wraps. His eyes above the mask were so big she could see the whites all around. It was clear that Rodion had no experience with either death or corpses. Why Kata had chosen him for Directorate O was a mystery she felt she needed to solve.
Korokova held no goodwill toward Colonel Kata Romanovna Hemakova. In their initial meeting a year ago, Kata had tried her best to dragoon Korokova into clandestinely working for Directorate O, never mind that she and her directorate were FSB and Korokova herself was GRU. By long-standing tradition, military intelligence and FSB were at each other’s throats, continually fighting over territory. Every once in a while a mini-bloodbath would break out, quickly quelled, the ringleaders instantly vanished off the face of the earth.
They finished the winding and she sealed the sheet’s outer end, then called for two of her men to haul Levrov’s remains out to the pyre. She did not watch them go but rather kept her gaze steadfastly on Rodion. Rather than relaxing as the body disappeared through the tent flaps, his muscles stiffened even more and she knew he was anticipating what was to come. Stripping off gloves and mask, she left the tent; he had no choice but to follow.
From the moment of their first meeting, Korokova had wondered for whom precisely Kata was working. Of course she reported to Minister Darko Vladimirovich Kusnetsov, the head of FSB. Her meteoric rise through the ranks was nothing short of astonishing, fairly unprecedented, unless you counted the aborted career of Lyudmila Alexeyevna Shokova, who graduated out of FSB into the Politburo, only to flame out there within eighteen months. Her fall from grace was, so far as Korokova had been able to determine, shrouded in secrecy that even she could not penetrate. The Sovereign wasn’t inclined to talk about it and she surely wasn’t fool enough to ask.
There was about Kata a certain clandestine quality—well, that was, of course, to be expected, but it contained an edge of the subversive, which, to Korokova’s mind, was unusual, not to say suspicious.
The flames crackled, rose higher, smoke curling over the blackened body like cupped hands. The smell of roasting flesh was too much for Rodion, who abruptly turned away and vomited up his last meal. The soldiers in a circle behind him and the major did not utter a sound. Their expressions were solemn, unbreakable. No one laughed at Rodion; no one would make fun of him, even behind his back. These men were far too disciplined, far too familiar with the major to step out of line in any manner. If they were curious as to the ritual ending for the victim, it didn’t show on their faces. Theirs not to reason why. In their lives curiosity killed. Without exception.
When it was over, the pyre reduced to a caved-in jumble of charcoal and ash, Korokova headed back to her tent, Rodion at her heels. She stopped once, on the far side of the smoking remains, lifted her boot up and smashed it down on a partial row of teeth in Levrov’s lower jaw. They shattered like glass, made distinct sounds like popcorn bursting in hot oil.
Inside the tent, she poured them both a drink—slivovitz, this time, one hundred proof, rather than vodka. They shot them down their throats in one go. Both their eyes watered. She cleared her throat roughly while Rodion coughed and sputtered like an out-of-tune engine. He ran his tongue around the rim of his lips. The inside of his mouth seemed to have disappeared. He tried to speak but it was no use.
Korokova seemed to realize that. She smiled at him but not in a condescending way. Perhaps the shared exposure to death during the ritual of the winding sheet had drawn them closer, or maybe she was more inclined to gloss over his naïveté, which she had marked as a flaw.
“You know, Rodion,” she said, “it occurs to me that I have been afforded a glimpse inside the Trojan horse your Kata sent here.”
She made to refill his glass but he quickly placed his hand over the top, mouthed, God, no.
That smile again, made radiant by its benevolence. “Slivovitz is an acquired taste, I will admit.” Her head tilted, making her seem younger, less formidable. “Didn’t your father or grandfather ever give you a taste?”
“My—” He halted at the thin sound of his dry croak, tried again. “I never knew my grandfather. He died young, before I was born. As for my father, he drank only in bars and only vodka. My mother, all too aware of his predilections, wouldn’t allow liquor in the house.”
“A dry house.” The major appeared amused. “In Russia, no less.”
“And what about your parents?” Rodion asked.
“Mm, well, my father’s father was half Swedish. My father used to call me his Little Valkyrie, a name my mother, being Russian through and through, hated. When she chided him about it he laughed.” She looked away for a moment. When her eyes swung back, something had changed within them, they looked flat, almost dead. “They came from families with a long-standing hatred of one another. By marrying they defied their parents, uncles, aunts, sisters, and brothers. What did they care; they were in love.”
She poured herself a bit more slivovitz, sucked it down as if it were a necessity for continuing. Possibly it was. “You’d think love would last—isn’t that what books and films and TV shows tell us.” She huffed. Her eyes turned glassy. “But their love turned to hate. They fell back on their respective families’ old feud, split up. They live now in different parts of Moscow. They never see each other, never even talk to one another. And I—I scarcely talk to them. They have sunk back into the past where life is stoked by suspicion, hatred, and vengefulness. They’ve given up on each other.”
Just then they heard the arrival of a helo, but to Rodion’s ears the sound was different from the helo that had brought him here. This one was heavier, louder. He felt the vibration of its rotors sweeping through the air through the soles of his boots. Curious, he stepped outside the tent, saw a large military-style gunship. It was painted a glossy black with gold trim and a sigil on its side he’d never seen before.
Sensing the major beside him, he asked her what was going on. Without answering him, she moved forward until she was just beyond the rotors’ radius, one hand shielding her eyes from the snow devils, the swirls of pine needles.
At length, the rotors swung to a stop. A door in the helo slid open and a smart-looking young man in a black uniform with gold trim stepped down. Immediately upon seeing the major, he stepped toward her. From the messenger bag slung over one shoulder he produced a large thick envelope, buff-colored with a thick black line along its borders. Even more curious now, Rodion came up behind her. He just had time to glimpse the Sovereign’s seal at the top of the paper inside the envelope the major had quickly slit open before she noticed his interest and walked away.
Taking his cue, he turned away, stared at the black gunship crouched like a giant insect feeding on the fuel from the hose the major’s men had inserted into its belly. Where had it come from? he asked himself. What division within the GRU could have such an aircraft? But then what did he know about the GRU, less than almost anyone. The truth was his eyes were always on the FSB; he had no interest in the GRU. Until this moment, that is. Now he was intensely interested.
Just then his sat phone buzzed. The call was from Kata. Briefly, he told her what he was currently observing.
“But the messenger and the helo are black with gold trim?” she asked him. “You’re sure.”
“I am. And the message that was delivered to her was from the Sovereign himself.”
“What?” Kata’s voice buzzed in his ear like an angry wasp. “How could you know that?”
“I saw his seal—the Sovereign’s. There’s no mistake.”
The silence at the other end of the call stretched on for so long he felt obliged to voice her name. “Kata. You still there?”
“Shut up. I’m thinking.”
He shut up. Looking over to where the major stood, her back still to him, he saw her rereading the message.
“Rodion.”
“Yes.” He snapped to attention.
“At all costs you must stay with the major.”
Rodion saw Korokova torching the letter and its accompanying envelope, holding them by their corners until the very last instant before she allowed the remains to drop to her feet, where she ground the ash into tiny particles that turned the snow to black smut. He had a brief flash of the pyre; the stink of roasted meat still hung in the air. He was also aware of a certain tension in Kata’s voice. Was it simply urgency or something else altogether?
“Is everything all right?” he blurted out.
“It will be if you do your job right,” she snapped in return. “Listen to me, Rodion, you cannot let that woman out of your sight.”
“But how—?”
“Romance her, take her to dinner, get her drunk—fuck her if you have to.”
“What?”
“It can’t be such a hardship for you, can it? I mean there’s nothing in your file to indicate otherwise. Did we miss something?”
“Not at all,” he said. “It’s just that…”
“What? Morals, scruples? You left them at the door to FSB.”
He heard her voice turn to granite and he shuddered. He did not want to piss her off. “It’s just that what you’re ordering me to do wasn’t in my original remit.”
“Everything changes, Rodion. Especially in the field. This is critical. Do you understand me?”
“I do.”
“Good, then get to it. And Rodion…”
“Yes?”
“When you get back to Moscow get yourself a bagful of burner phones. When you’ve activated the first one text me to the following number.” He memorized the numbers she recited. “Oh, yes, there’s one other thing you should know.”
He listened to what she had to tell him without interrupting her. He might have asked her a question or two afterward but she had already rung off.
* * *
Rodion’s call reminded Korokova that Inessa was overdue for a sitrep. Stepping away from the mess she had made on the ground, she punched in a number on the sat phone. Inessa did not answer, and she did not leave a message, which would be insecure. Next, she called Taissa’s cell, but again got no answer. Inessa was supposed to have checked in by now and, if not her, than Taissa. Concerned, she made a third call. Someone she didn’t know answered the phone. “Abd-El-Kader is unavailable,” he told her when she gave him her name. Obviously a newbie, she thought, annoyed. “Find him,” she ordered. “He’ll speak with me.” But he wouldn’t, the phone jockey told her. Clearly her name meant nothing to him. “I’ll leave the message that you called,” he said. “Don’t,” she told him, and disconnected. Something was very wrong. She called one of her permanent Russian contacts in Istanbul.
“She’s gone,” the contact said. “Lyudmila is no longer here.”
“Then where is she?” Korokova snapped, her anger and anxiety rising as one.
There was a pause, so that she knew what was coming next. “We don’t know.”
The major growled deep in her throat. “And the female that was with her?”
“Of Evan Ryder there is no sign,” her contact said. “She was last seen entering Alila International’s warehouse.”
This news shook Korokova. “She’s with Abd-El-Kader?”
“It seems so. But…”
She snapped her fingers impatiently. “What?”
“That was yesterday.”
“You said she was last seen at the warehouse. Don’t tell me your people missed her exit.”
“Well, that’s just it,” her contact said slowly and carefully. He knew his controller was one step away from exploding. “She hasn’t reappeared.”
“That’s not possible.” Silence in Istanbul. Korokova put her hand to her forehead, pressing against a migraine starting behind her eyes. She took a breath, then another. “Find out what’s happened to her. If—When we find Ryder we’ll have a lead on where Lyudmila has gone.”
It was at this point that she became aware of Rodion coming toward her at a fast clip. His call had ended. “Get back to me—fast.” Then she closed the connection.
He was staring at her with an expression entirely different from any she had seen on him before.
“What is it?” she said with a sense of foreboding.
“It’s your pal Morokovsky.”
“He’s not my pal,” Korokova said acidly.
“Don’t I know it.” He turned away from her, stepped toward the open field, where the black bristling helo crouched, all fueled up and ready to go.
“Wait a minute,” she called after him. “Where d’you think you’re going?”
“Back to Moscow.” He turned around to watch her face. “Something detonated in Morokovsky’s brain. Sound familiar?”
Korokova’s face drained of color. “He’s dead?”
Rodion grunted. “As a jackrabbit on a spit.”
20
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
“All due respect,” the Syrian said, “I’d prefer ‘Abd-El-Kader.’”
Marsden Tribe’s eyes bored into him. “In my experience ‘all due respect’ means ‘fuck you very much.’” He lifted his head. “Is that what you mean? Örümcek.” The Spider. “Because if it is you and I have a serious problem.”
Abd-El-Kader’s eyes lowered. “I didn’t mean that at all, Dr. Kimble.”
Tribe’s gaze moved back to Evan. “That’s my alias today, Ryder—Richard Kimble.” His eyes danced. He wore a deep sea-green shantung silk jacket that must have been made for him, considering it would have been in style in the 1940s; jeans; and ankle boots. “Remember him?”
The hero of The Fugitive. “I do.” She realized with an inner start that Tribe couldn’t have done any better at lightening her heart. It was like coming back home from a long run overseas and watching an episode of Friends.
In an instant, Tribe switched gears. “You still with us, Ryder?”
“I’m still afloat.”
He nodded. “I know the feeling.”
She was willing to bet he knew precisely what treatment she needed better than she herself did. She had worked closely with him for over a year. Observing him keenly during that time she had come to recognize and absorb the quirks of his methods and behaviors. She had learned that what he didn’t say or do was as telling as what he did say or do.
To that end, Tribe was already giving clipped orders into his cell phone. “Ayman, get my men in here ASAP. Have them bring a stretcher and the PA from the plane—what’s her name? I forget. Honi Werner, is it? My friend requires immediate medical treatment. Right. Also there’ll be a second female. Noncompliant, possibly violent, so a pair of steel handcuffs are in order, maybe an injection as well. The PA can take care of that if necessary.”
Unable to keep her head up a second longer, Evan lay back onto the floor, unmindful of how many dead rat bodies she was using as a pillow.
“Hang in there, Ryder,” she heard him say from far away. “We’ll get you fixed up in no time.”
She closed her eyes then, and she was done, returned to the sea of endless night and Rebecca’s welcoming arms.
PART TWO
THEORY
Time crystals are a new phase of matter. Imagine a cube that becomes a hexagon, then reverts back to a cube. Now imagine a group of them—cubes, hexagons, cubes, hexagons. Though this cycling continues, the cubes or hexagons don’t lose any energy. Try to imagine that. How can that be, you ask yourself. It’s because—and here is the truly startling breakthrough—as time crystals they don’t fall victim to entropy. But doesn’t physics tell us that everything in the universe is subject to entropy? Yes, it does. Or did. No longer. Because time crystals defy the laws of classical physics. Fantastic, yes. But essentially useless until we find a way to manipulate them.
—from a TED Talk by Marsden Tribe
21
WASHINGTON, DC
“What song did they sing you?” Isobel asked.
Ben sipped at his coffee. “‘The Ballad of Betrayal and Patriotism.’” He took a bite of a freshly baked croissant.
Isobel was seated on an antique chaise longue, velvet-covered, with short hand-turned oak legs. They were in what back in the day was known as the morning room. Though it was close, dawn had not yet arrived. Isobel, who it seemed never slept or, if she did, for not more than forty minutes at a time—a habit born during her time in Israel’s Shin Bet—had been waiting for his return. “An old chestnut,” she said. “But often an effective one.”
“They’re convinced Tribe is behind Brady Thompson’s death.”
“Using what? Voodoo?”
“Close.” Ben wiped his lips. “Qubits—quantum particles.”
“Reade thinks Marsden has somehow found a way to weaponize qubits?”
“I think that’s the premise they’re working from.” Ben sucked butter off his fingertips. “And it’s not just General Reade and George Wilson and Wes Connerly we’re talking about. There’s also a woman involved, the brains, I think, behind the group. She claims her name is Zahra. A quantum physicist, heading up the government team working on quantum computers. According to what she told me, her mother was Iranian, father German. Oh, yeah, she claims Max Planck was her great-uncle, but with most records in Eastern Europe destroyed in World War Two it’s impossible to verify her story.” He expected Isobel’s laugh and wasn’t disappointed.
