The quantum solution, p.24
The Quantum Solution, page 24
Evan had tried not to think about that, she recoiled from it; the very idea made her angry. “I drink when I have to, never because I need to.”
“I understand,” Tribe said thoughtfully. “You need a way to distance yourself from the horror of injury and death.”
Evan looked out the window. “Sometimes it works,” she said softly. “Sometimes it doesn’t.”
They had passed from the touristed area that had built up La Palma’s economy—the sleek hotels, oversized houses complete with Olympic-size azure pools, the billionaires’ yachts on whose decks the bronzed bikinied bodies of models were stretched out like gorgeous flowers in the sunlight. Away inland were the clusters of small houses of the people who made life for the tourists effortless. In backyards, instead of pools, rows of well-worn shirts and shorts, pinned to lines, fluttered in the desultory breeze. No tennis courts here, only tiny postage-stamp gardens from which stalks of tomatoes, child-size trellises of cucumbers rose like trembling fingers.
Then these too were gone as the inhospitable true nature of the island showed itself in ridges and escarpments ever steeper, merging into the foothills of the mountain range that ran like the crooked spine of a disabled veteran—almost like the letter Q. And inside that Q, the volcano.
The helo rose higher into the steamy air as they flew past the Caldera de Taburiente, approached the volcano itself, a seething hellscape of red and orange, crawling across blackened fields of cooled lava.
Occasional vents of toxic steam shot into the air, blurring their view. Beneath those noxious clouds, the lava flows bubbled and crept from the burning magma deep in the layers of the island’s subconscious.
No birds flew here; apart from the slither of superheated blood, no life at all. And yet, there was something compelling, almost hypnotic, about the aggressiveness of the landscape. A storm-roiled sea might be just as aggressive, but this outpouring changed forever what was beneath it.
* * *
The beachside village of Playa del Perdido basked in the late-morning sun as they set down on a flat area beachside. The eruption had turned the sand dark, rough, stubbly with chunks of lava, as if it had the pox. The flow from the volcano had destroyed many homes. Lives were lost, terrible damage had been inflicted, and where the red-hot streams had hit the water it created laze—lava haze—which was deadly, laced with hydrochloric acid. Explosions containing tiny bits of glass caused by the too-rapid cooling of the flow ensued, making immediate evacuation a necessity.
Now all was so quiet in Playa del Perdido after the helo’s engines had shut down that Evan could hear the water’s rush and suck against the tumbled rocks at the far end of the crescent beach. And yet, the aftermath of the destruction was all around her as she debarked, along with Tribe and their heavily armed escort.
No one met them, which she found curious. Together they trudged along the edge of the beach farthest from the water. Ahead, the end of the barrier road curved away to their right. Soon after rounding that curve, Evan saw the front porch of a wooden house—an oddity compared to the white stucco villas that clung like limpets to other parts of the shoreline. The house was set back into an outcropping of palms, their trunks curled by the onshore wind. Fronds waved at them, clattering, as if to announce their arrival.
As soon as they gained the porch, the front door opened and a figure appeared. Though it was in shadow, Evan immediately recognized the outline, accelerating her heart rate.
“Lyudmila,” she said.
The palms clattered, the sea whispered against the shore. Overhead, gulls wheeled, calling, calling as if lost.
Instead of coming out to meet them, Lyudmila stepped back into deeper shadow. Tribe crossed the threshold, disappeared inside, but Evan stood rooted to the spot. Behind her, the armed crew spread out, quartering the immediate area around the house.
“Aren’t you coming in?” Lyudmila’s voice, wafted on the wind.
Evan still did not move. She could make out Lyudmila’s tilted head.
“Am I such a surprise to you, being here?” She lifted her arm, held out her hand, and crossed the doorsill to where Evan stood. “I told you I managed to exfiltrate Marius Ionescu, the Directorate KV particle physicist. That’s why I’m here. With him.” She graced Evan with a familiar beguiling smile. “Come, darling. I would have had such little success without you.”
Now both her arms were raised, and at last Evan stepped into the shadows. She inhaled the familiar scent, but this time it was a lit match to a fuse. She hauled off and slapped Lyudmila across the face so hard the other woman, unprepared, stumbled back.
“I was worried about you,” Lyudmila said as Evan stalked into the house. She closed the door behind them, then hurried after Evan. “I know. Look at you. I went too far this time when I asked you to find Juliet Korokova. I should never have left you alone in Istanbul; that was a mistake.”
“One of many.” Evan finally found her voice. “But you wouldn’t stay in such a dangerous place as Istanbul when you had me to investigate for you. Instead, you ran here to take care of Ionescu, another cog in the mysterious engine of your plan.”
“Look, I helped you find Nemesis, didn’t I?”
“And in the process I was forced to kill one of my sisters. Was that part of your plan, too?”
Instead of answering her, Lyudmila said, “I helped you with Omega.”
“Where another of my sisters was killed.” Evan had worked up an impressive head of steam. “Once I had three sisters, now I have none.”
“And I led you to your birth parents.” But, Lyudmila thought, I never told you that your sister Bobbi is still alive, my agent inside the FSB. Some secrets need to be kept no matter the cost.
Evan turned, stepped away from her, angry, bitter, dazed with conflicting emotions.
The curtains on the south-facing wall of the house were closed against the heat of the sun and also, Evan guessed, from prying eyes, though she had spotted no one on the curve of beach nor boats out beyond the shore. The flow from the eruption had rendered Playa del Perdido moot as a tourist destination. It was possible it would never regain the popularity it enjoyed once upon a time.
The house was small, but only by the standards of the whitewashed villas of Santa Cruz de La Palma. It contained a living room, dining area, large kitchen, along with, Lyudmila told her, three bedrooms with en suite baths.
“Evan—”
“Don’t,” Evan said. “Just don’t.”
Tribe was in earnest conversation, sitting opposite a small, thin man with a prominent nose above a brush mustache. This, Evan supposed, was Marius Ionescu. His hair, pushed back off his forehead, was pale as his eyes. The conversation broke off as with a herky-jerky motion Ionescu turned. When he saw Evan enter the living room, his eyes momentarily darkened in fear. As he rose, a question appeared on his face. Finding a reassuring answer in a gesture from Lyudmila, he regained his composure, and, in a courtly manner that reminded her of von Kleist, he came to her, shook her hand, and introduced himself.
“This is Evan Ryder, a close and trusted friend,” Lyudmila said brightly, as if the altercation had never occurred, as if the rift that had opened up between them were a mirage. “And I see you’ve already met Marsden Tribe.”
“I am very pleased to meet you,” he said to Evan in his formal way. His brows crinkled. He appeared to be somewhere in his fifties. “Are you the one to get us to a safer place?”
“‘Us’?” Evan repeated. “You mean you and Lyudmila?”
“No. Oh, no,” Ionescu said. “Timur and myself.”
Evan shook her head. “Who is Timur?”
Ionescu stepped out of the room for a moment, reappeared with his arm across the shoulders of a slender boy of seven or eight. He had white-blond hair and pale curious eyes. Marius brought him to the center of the room. The boy clung to him like a remora to a shark.
“Timur is Marius’s son,” Lyudmila said. “I’m sorry, Evan. I didn’t tell you. Marius wouldn’t allow himself to be exfiltrated without Timur.”
“I’m a widower, you see,” Ionescu said to Evan. “Timur is all the family I have. Impossible to leave him behind. I’d never forgive myself.”
Evan stepped forward, knelt down in front of the boy. He stared at her, his eyes big and questioning. “My name is Evan, Timur. Yes. Funny name for a girl, right?”
“Woman,” he said, dead serious.
“What?”
“I’ve been taught that only girls my age should be called girls. You’re a woman.”
She laughed. “You’ve been taught well.” She gave Ionescu a quick smile and he nodded in return. “Anyway my name is funny, for a woman. Maybe my parents wanted a boy and got me instead.” She smiled and Timur mimicked her, but his soft laugh was gone almost before it began. “I understand you’ve had a hard time lately.” She took his hand. “But now that’s all over with. You’re safe now. We’ll make sure of that, okay?”
Timur nodded. He seemed reluctant to let go of her hand, but at length he did, tracing the air around her face with his fingertip. “Are you all right?” he said in a whisper.
“Of course I’m all right, Timur.”
“What happened to you?”
“I had an accident.” Think fast, Evan told herself. “Surfing. Do you know what surfing is?”
He shook his head.
“It’s when you take a board and paddle out into the ocean where the waves are and you stand up on the board and ride a wave into shore.” She cocked her head. “It’s tricky but sounds like fun, doesn’t it?” He nodded. “Well, I was surfing and got careless at the end, fell off my board into some rocks. Silly of me. I won’t do it again. Hey, maybe I can take you surfing sometime. Would you like that?”
He pursed his lips as if weighing the promised fun against her bruised face.
“I’d make sure nothing bad happens to you. I’d hold your hand the whole time.”
“Yes, please,” he whispered.
“Good. I’d like that.”
She was about to rise when Timur threw his arms around her and hugged her tight. She felt his heartbeat close to hers. The sensation of his arms around her, the desperation with which he clung to her, pulled at her heartstrings, and she was reminded of her sister Bobbi’s children, whom she had saved from their abductors. She was reminded most poignantly of Ben’s daughter, with whom she had a long, guilt-marred history. She ached to see their smiling faces, to hear their laughter, listen to the stories of their adventures since the last time she had seen them. She yearned to hold them as she held Timur, to tell them how much she missed them, how much she loved them. But it was too dangerous for them, for her birth parents, the Reveshvilis, to visit them now.
She had carefully locked away these feelings in a corner of her mind, the better to do her job without the distraction of emotion, but Timur had smashed that lock. Flooded with so many feelings she felt ill-equipped to handle at the moment, she put her cheek against the top of Timur’s head, inhaled the smell of his shampoo, the soap he’d used to wash himself—the scents of innocent childhood. Her eyes closed for a moment as he melted into her. She stayed with him for as long as he needed, for as long as she wanted. Slowly she calmed, then they broke apart. She turned to Lyudmila with a questioning look.
“No one else knew,” Lyudmila whispered.
With a sweep of her hand, Evan dismissed her words. “Tribe knew.”
“Actually, I didn’t.” Tribe had come over to them. “Not until I spoke with Mr. Ionescu.”
Lyudmila reached out. “Evan, please don’t be angry.”
Evan held up a hand. “Timur, would you mind going with your father back to your room?”
Timur regarded her seriously. Then he nodded, took Ionescu’s hand.
When the two of them were gone, Evan turned again to Lyudmila. “Listen to me, Lyudmila, you’ve been leading me around on a leash—a long one but one that nevertheless keeps me going where you want me to go, doing what you want me to do, irrespective of my own safety.”
“Evan, you’re being unfair. I’ve done everything in my power to ensure your successes in the field. You know that.”
When Evan made no reply, Lyudmila looked stricken. And then quite suddenly her expression changed to one Evan had never seen on her before. To her utter astonishment, Lyudmila looked ashamed.
“There’s something I want to show you.” She turned on her heel and went down a narrow hallway, past the rearmost bedroom and out a screen door at the end of the hall.
Evan hesitated, her roiling emotions pulling her in two directions. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tribe standing in the hallway outside the living room, inclining his head in the direction Lyudmila had gone. Still, she did not look at him directly, didn’t want to. His alliance with Lyudmila, whatever form it took, was yet another factor kept from her not only by Lyudmila but by Tribe himself.
Finally, she broke her stasis, followed Lyudmila through the house. Rustling sounds in the trees let Evan know that Tribe’s people were on guard all the way around the house even if she couldn’t see them. In fact, she felt better not being able to see them; they were doing their job well.
When she emerged outside, Lyudmila turned to her, that strange look still on her face. “You’re right,” she said softly. “Everything you said is true. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. I’ve been so self-absorbed with what I’ve been planning that I—”
“Just what have you been planning?” Evan took an unconscious step forward so they could speak in even softer tones.
Lyudmila sighed. “It’s complicated.” She waved a hand in front of her, as if to forestall any response Evan might make. “Okay, that was an all-encompassing anodyne cliché, but in this case…” Her voice trailed off for a moment. Then, as if coming to a decision, she shivered despite the heat. “You have to understand, extreme paranoia has informed every moment of my life for the last decade.”
“How can I understand anything, Lyudmila, when everything you tell me has the substance of quicksand.”
“I deserve that. And I deserved this.” She put a hand up to her jaw, which was already darkening, puffing up in response to the blow Evan had dealt her. “Well, the truth now. No quicksand, okay?” She looked around as Evan had done moments before. “Five years ago I set an agent in place inside the FSB. I groomed them, made sure they knew what to do and how to do it. And they did. They were ruthless and clever. They kept climbing the FSB ladder. All well and good. I had it in mind that they should come to the attention of the Sovereign, that they would get close to him.”
“And kill him.”
Lyudmila nodded. “Precisely.”
“A suicide mission, then.”
“Something I made certain never to tell them.”
“But it didn’t work. Obviously. What happened?”
Lyudmila sighed again, and for once she looked tired. “The Sovereign’s damn war happened, and with it, a changing of the FSB guard. My agent was sidelined.”
It was at this moment that Evan noticed the dark rings under her eyes. She couldn’t imagine the pressure her friend must be under. The first plan blowing up in her face and then the planning and extreme danger in exfiltrating Ionescu. But at this precise moment that was an observation, accompanied by no feeling at all. Her incarceration and torture in Istanbul had broken a line of trust that she wondered now whether she had been a fool to accept. Gone were the humid, sun-splashed days, the chittering moon-drenched nights in Sumatra—the easy laughter, the shared secrets, letting down their guard. Evan had to wonder now whether it was all lies, whether Lyudmila was even capable of letting down her guard. She stared at Lyudmila and wondered if there could be anything worse than a betrayal by a friend.
“So, on to plan B,” Lyudmila continued in an even more subdued voice. “As far back as eighteen months ago I had heard about the breakthroughs Directorate KV might be making in the world of quantum computing. I had heard a rumor they were trying to weaponize something called time crystals.”
Evan felt the urge to tell her that Tribe had talked to her about time crystals but decided to keep her mouth shut. Better to hear about it from Lyudmila.
“Though sidelined, my agent was still operational. In fact being sidelined was helpful in them going outside FSB itself. They found the weak link.”
“Ionescu.”
“Indeed. He didn’t like the direction in which the experiments were going. He was willing to leave but only if he could bring Timur with him.”
“That must have made the exfiltration exponentially more difficult.”
“I had planned for such an eventuality.” A smile thinned by hesitation. “Now you know why I recruited von Kleist. He has the reach and wherewithal of all his clients.”
“He helped with the exfiltration.”
Lyudmila nodded. “And now that his usefulness is at an end he’s gone back to his clients full-time and happy to do it.”
“But what does Ionescu bring you?”
“Leverage,” Lyudmila said. “The weaponization was discussed off his theories. Without him Directorate KV has been set back at least three or four years. By that time they’ll be behind everyone else. More importantly, the Sovereign will be without the weapon he needs to keep himself in power.”
Evan considered this, and her heart plummeted into her stomach. “So then it’s impossible that the Russians are behind the quantum advancement of the Havana syndrome.”
“So far as I know, that’s right.”
Evan’s sense of foreboding was growing by the second. “Tribe told me that coming here would prove he isn’t behind the weaponization of time crystals.”
Lyudmila looked away into the trees, as if searching for something only she knew was there. Her expression was clouded by conflicting emotions. When her gaze returned to Evan, she said, “If he meant Ionescu that won’t do it. Marius refused to be part of that.”
Dread started to overcome her. This situation, this probability had pierced the internal wall she had built to separate her steely professional self from her vulnerable personal self. It wasn’t even a wall, she realized; it was a membrane, always too thin, too delicate to protect her from her own feelings. What she felt for Tribe was now in the open, feelings she had long denied. Her words came back to her like a slap in the face: “Smart, rich, handsome. Charismatic.” That’s what she’d said to Tribe in the helo on their way here. She winced. Had she been flirting with him all along?
