The quantum solution, p.30
The Quantum Solution, page 30
She had no leverage for a punch. Inches from the lava bubbling up from below she reached up, pressed her thumb into that soft spot just below the major’s shoulder socket. Because of the outfit Korokova was wearing it shouldn’t have meant much of anything, but in extremis Evan’s strength was sevenfold, tenfold, for that moment when it counted most, almost superhuman.
Korokova cried out. As she tried to twist away from the deep-seated pain, Evan heaved her own torso from the hips, where her inner power resided. Dislodged, Juliet Korokova was briefly airborne before Evan, on her knees, hurled her forward, into the steaming lava.
The major’s terrified scream was cut short as the skin of her face bubbled, peeled back, caught fire.
Evan sat back, pulled her gas mask back on, ignored the fumes, laced now with the revolting stench of broiling meat.
And so, you were wrong, Lyudmila, she thought. It isn’t over.
49
MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Three in the morning was the best time to visit Directorate KV. This Colonel Ferranov knew, as did the physicists who toiled there. The directorate was housed in a gray Brutalist structure that to passersby looked like a bunker or a museum, had no signage on the outside or even a street number, just an anonymous door. The directorate ran pretty much 24/7; however, those inside were scientists, not soldiers. They needed their breaks, no matter what time of day or night it was, no matter what shift they pulled. Three A.M. was break time for the night crew, always had been.
Ferranov, striding through the string of labs, entered his office without anyone being the wiser. This was planned; this was necessary. Behind his desk, he brought out a satellite phone from within a double-locked bottom drawer.
He punched in one digit, listened to the hollowness of the line, the vague hisses and sputters as if the call was being routed through a ghostly dominion, which, in a way, was true. No one could hack these calls, though infrequently made. Ferranov saw to that.
The call went through and was answered at once.
“Where is the packet?” he said when the male voice on the other end answered.
“You haven’t received it as yet?”
“No.” Ferranov’s elbows were planted firmly on his desktop, as if this aggressive posture could be transmitted across an ocean with his voice. “And I don’t have the money I sent you either. I’ve paid for the packet. I want it sent now.”
“The packet is in the mail.”
Ferranov growled like an animal. “Don’t be smart with me. Where is the packet with the formulae for the weaponized time crystals? I made a preemptive bid before your auction could start. I wired you the money, as instructed. Nothing has come back.”
“That is a pity, Colonel. I do apologize.”
“I don’t give a shit about your apologies. They mean nothing to me.”
“Again, a pity because that is all you’re going to get.”
“What?” Ferranov, apoplectic, jumped out of his chair. “Don’t fuck with me. The end result for you won’t be pretty.”
“I am certain the result you have in mind is quite grisly, Colonel. But you won’t find me. Not even your vaunted Spetsnaz will, this is my promise to you. My advice, forget all about the packet. You’re not going to get it.”
“I will kill you.”
“Mm. I am certain you will try. But think of this, Colonel. Your money is lost. It is a great deal of money. How, I wonder, will you explain to your, er, superior its loss?”
“Fuck you.” Ferranov paced around his office like a caged Bengal tiger. “I don’t want your advice. I don’t need—” But at that point he realized he was speaking to dead air.
He hit the button again. Nothing. And again, with the same result. “Nu vse—” He threw the phone against the wall. “—tebe pizda!” That’s it, you’re fucking dead.
It was at this moment that he caught a movement in the hallway just outside the door to his office. Was someone spying on him? Had they heard his side of the conversation? Intolerable. Whoever they were, he decided, they’d be dead too.
Taking a pistol from its polished black leather holster at his hip, he strode out into the hall. He turned this way and that. All he heard was the background hum of the electronics, the intermittent whirr of centrifuges, the imagined sound of neutrons being split apart. No voices, no footsteps. No one about.
What had he seen then? A specter? A floater in his eye?
A flicker at the periphery of his vision and he turned, his eyebrows raised.
“Captain Molchalin, what are you doing here?”
“I came to tell you that it’s done,” Rodion said. He’d never been good at prevaricating, but Kata was, and he was learning. “Alyosha Ivanovna is dead.”
Ferranov’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”
He doesn’t even know her name, Rodion thought, all qualms wiped away. “Kata’s inamorata.”
“Ah, yes,” Ferranov replied. “Well done, Captain. We may even decide to keep you around.”
The last word was distorted, ended with a screech of shock and pain. A line of fiery agony extended from the back of his skull down his neck, between his shoulder blades, ending at his coccyx, causing him to arch his body. With a second cry of pain he whirled.
“You!”
Kata lifted the emerald ring, one corner of which dripped his blood. “You’ve made so many mistakes, Ferranov, they’re beyond count. But the worst one was crossing me.”
“You,” he sneered. “You’re nothing, part of the past. The new order is here. You’re already dead, you just don’t know it yet.”
He lifted the pistol, finger already on the trigger. Kata’s hand shot out like a snake. Instead of fangs, it was the corner of her emerald that opened the vein on the inside of his gun hand. He tried to squeeze the trigger but he’d lost control of his fingers. The pistol was useless. In frustration, he tried to throw it at her, but couldn’t do that either. The weapon slipped from his frozen fingers, clattering to the floor.
“I have orders to make this last.” Kata’s eyes shone like marbles sent spinning through light. “What d’you think, Rodion? I defer to you.”
Rodion’s spine grew rigid. Even two days ago he would have hesitated, backed away, wanting to put as much distance as possible between himself and a thoroughly unpleasant part of the life he had chosen. The truth was that up until two days ago he had kept one foot outside this world, ready to panic-run at a moment’s notice like a terrified rabbit. He had been afraid to commit to the crimes enacted here daily. But then, in the FSB morgue, Major Korokova had introduced him to another side of himself. It had been torture being made an accomplice to the horrific way she dispatched Morokovsky’s corpse. Korokova was an animal; she had turned him into an animal, forced him to look inward at the worst parts of himself.
Afterward, Kata had introduced him to the ice, which he had mistakenly assumed would be to separate his mind from what at times his hands were required to do. But he was wrong. What was required of him was to unleash his mind, allow it to enjoy what at times his hands were required to do. Because of the torture Korokova had put him through, because of Colonel Ferranov’s insidious intimidation, he found this transition surprisingly easy. Kata made him realize that he must be in or out, fully committed to her. As a result, ice now flowed through his veins.
His hands came up to the center of Ferranov’s back, where Kata’s lethal emerald had made its vertical slice. His fingernails dug into either side of the slice, and with a powerful jerk of both hands he ripped apart the colonel’s hated black-and-gold uniform. Bits of skin and flesh adhered to the cloth, which was sticky with blood, making Ferranov shriek like a banshee. Rodion continued ripping and pulling until Ferranov was naked to the waist. He continued until there wasn’t a shred of the uniform left above a ragged puddle around the colonel’s ankles.
“Well,” Kata said, staring into Ferranov’s bulging eyes, “I guess we’ve got our answer, don’t we, Colonel.”
“Please,” he whimpered, his entire body shivering as with the ague. “Please.”
Kata lifted her chin toward Rodion. “What say, Captain? Thumbs-up or thumbs-down.”
“Oppressors stripped of their power,” Rodion said, “reveal themselves as cowards.”
People were running down the hall in response to Ferranov’s unholy yowls. The physicists, their break disturbed. Drowning in the mayhem, they stood immobile, rooted to the spot. Until Kata called out. Then they stepped back into each other, turned, and fled back down the hall. Doors slammed shut.
Rodion turned, saw a cadre of men, either huge as boulders or thin as scarecrows. All were muscular, however, and all appeared singularly focused.
“Who the hell…?” he said, tensing.
“Relax,” Kata said. “They’re on our side.”
Rodion’s eyebrows shot up, but he made no further comment.
Kata laughed as the crew stalked past them; a private joke, then, Rodion thought. She was always full of surprises. The men spread out down the hall, kicking in closed doors to make sure none of the physicists and lab assistants communicated with the outside world.
“So, it’s done, Ferranov.” Kata’s eyes grew dark. “Your brave new order has died in its infancy.” She leaned in, smelling the stink of his fear. “I wanted you to see its death before.”
“Before what?” He could scarcely get the words out.
Kata’s smile was sharp as a scimitar. “This.”
The emerald rose, sliced deeply from the right side of his throat to the other.
“Right.” Stepping deftly away from the spurt of blood, the collapse of the body, she signaled to Rodion. “Let’s go. Our work here is done.”
Silence but for the machines continuing to do what they were programmed to do, unmindful of fear or pain or death.
50
LA PALMA, CANARY ISLANDS
Evan was engaged in what field agents euphemistically called “mop-up duty”—that is, killing the last of the people who had been hunting you down—when she heard the faint but unmistakable thwop-thwop-thwop of a helo’s rotors though she could not yet see it. Hurrying now, she took down what her gyring sweeps had assured her was the last of Major Korokova’s cadre and hastened even faster to the wreckage in which she had left Lyudmila.
She thought, Lyudmila is wounded and I’m just about done. This second wave of Korokova’s is perfectly timed because it will kill us both.
So it was that she felt no relief, only an impending sense of doom, upon reaching the downed helo without further incident. There she found Lyudmila trying to get herself vertical by bracing herself against the side of the locker. She had found a long vinyl raincoat somewhere, probably in one of the lockers, and wrapped it tightly around herself to brace her cracked ribs. Bugrov, the first of Korokova’s Spetsnaz casualties, was sprawled facedown at her feet, one arm extended as if searching for help. She didn’t even want to look at Ionescu’s shattered body.
“What’s happening?” Lyudmila said without prelude; there was no time for niceties.
“First wave down,” Evan replied.
“First wave? What d’you mean?”
Evan pointed skyward. “Hear it? Incoming.”
Lyudmila closed her eyes for a moment. Her face was ashen, the blood in retreat.
Evan reached out to her. “You shouldn’t be standing. You’ve lost blood from the gunshot wound.”
Lyudmila shook her off. “And Korokova? What of her?”
“Facedown in a river of lava.”
A sigh. “Well done, Evan.”
The sound of the helos grew louder. They could hear the wind whipped up by its rotors; cascades of pumice and loose stones rattled against their temporary shelter, some of the detritus assailing the inside in blinding spurts. It was like trying to protect yourself against a sandstorm.
Evan handed Lyudmila one of the two AKS-74U assault rifles she had grabbed from the corpses outside. “We have to prepare ourselves.”
Lyudmila looked at her, took the rifle. “For a helo full of Spetsnaz the most vulnerable time is just before they land.”
“Also the most dangerous time for us,” Evan said, shading her eyes against the inconstant hailstorm. “We’ll hardly be able to see.”
“Good thing a helo’s a large target.”
The ground began to tremble under them as if an earthquake were about to erupt. With a terrific roar a ragged crack formed in the floor of their helo, growing wider by the second. The noise was now deafening.
“It’s now or never,” Evan shouted.
Lyudmila nodded, but as Evan made to pass her, she staggered.
“Lyudmila!”
Evan dropped her weapon, grabbed hold of her friend as she started to go down. Evan tried to hold her up, but the rent in the floor cracked open and the entire helo juddered like a ship hit by a titanic wave. She lost her grip and they slid down together with a crash. The vinyl raincoat fell open to reveal a bloody torso that Lyudmila was still trying to keep together.
“Oh, my God.” Evan moved Lyudmila’s arm away, saw the jagged shard of metal stuck into her abdomen. “Oh, my God, what happened?”
Lyudmila grimaced. “It seems that Bugrov wasn’t quite dead.”
“He did this?”
“Just before I kicked his head in.”
Evan couldn’t get her head around this. Lyudmila couldn’t be dying, she couldn’t.
Tears filled her eyes. She could scarcely draw breath. “I won’t let this happen,” she gasped.
“Ah, well, darling, it’s happened. No going back.” Lyudmila tried to smile but gritted her teeth instead.
Even through her frantic ministrations Evan knew Lyudmila was right. A wound like this, in the abdomen, required immediate surgery and even then … Once the metal shard was removed, she would bleed out in a matter of minutes. Evan was now faced with a choice: take up both the rifles and step out of the helo guns blazing like Butch Cassidy or stay with her friend until the last breath.
Of course that was no choice at all. She moved closer to Lyudmila, held her tight. She bent her head; their foreheads touched. Outside, a great shudder. The helo had landed. Any minute now Spetsnaz boots would be thudding across the puckered landscape to take no prisoners. She was sure of that.
But part of her didn’t mind—or more accurately didn’t care. Here, at the end, she was with her friend, a woman closer to her than the sister she had lost. There was no word in any language for what they were to each other. In a world filled with bloody shadows, death, lies, and deceit they had found each other and formed a bond like no other.
Lyudmila coughed. Evan held her tighter, felt the rhythm of their hearts merging. From outside, the sound of boots on the ground grew louder and louder until their heavy tramp drowned out even the noise of the helo’s rotors.
“You’ll find Timur,” Lyudmila whispered. “You’ll take care of my son.”
“I always keep my promise,” Evan said.
“I know you do.” Now a smile, however brief. “One of the many things that made me love you.” More coughing, thick with strings of bloody phlegm. “Ah…”
“Lyudmila, don’t go.” Evan was sobbing openly. “Don’t leave me.”
“Don’t be so maudlin, damn it.” A flicker of the old defiant invincible Lyudmila shone bright as a sun through the pain and blood. “What a good friend you’ve been.”
“Hush now,” Evan whispered. “Save your strength.”
There was a stirring behind them, a slurry of raised voices.
Lyudmila tried to take a breath but all that came out was a gurgle. Evan held her tighter, but Lyudmila was fading in and out. She rocked her like a child, whispered to her, cajoling her, begging her to hold on a minute, thirty seconds, ten, even one more second to still be together.
Then Evan felt hands on her, saying something she could not understand, trying to pull her away from her friend. Her shoulders flexed. “Get the hell off me.” And then, softly, “Lyudmila. Lyudmila. I’m still here. Hold on. I’ve got you. No one’s taking me away from you.”
“Good. That’s good.” Lyudmila’s voice was thin, dreamy, as if coming from another room. It was not Lyudmila’s voice, not really. But against this inimical tide she still struggled.
“Timur.” It was akin to the sigh of a very old, very tired woman.
“Yes. I will find Timur. I will tell him all about you.”
A bloody smile formed on Lyudmila’s lips. “But you don’t know me.” She shoved something into Evan’s hand—a tiny rectangle coated with her own blood. She shuddered in Evan’s arms. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was like a weed in a storm, bent out of shape. “I’m so sorry.”
Then the hands—more of them—did pry Evan loose from her dead friend. She screamed, struck out until strong arms wrapped around her, binding her tight. In one fist was hidden the sticky object Lyudmila had given her.
“Bastards! I won’t tell you … anything,” she cried in anguish.
“That’s all right, there’s no need,” a male voice said in perfect English. “We’re Mr. Tribe’s men, Ms. Ryder. We’re here to take you and Ms. Shokova to safety.”
Evan’s head came down. She was shaking so violently she thought she must fly apart. “No. You can’t.”
“I beg your pardon, Ms. Ryder. We will. We must. These are our orders.”
“But look, look,” she cried, weeping. “Can’t you see she’s dead.”
51
MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
“Poland.”
“The magic word,” the Sovereign said in Kusnetsov’s ear.
“I’ve solved the problem. I know how to best open a second front.”
Kusnetsov spoke into his phone while watching men in the weight room of Crocus Fitness go through their routines. He’d finished his forty minutes ago, had taken a steam, then a cold shower, and was now dressed in his black-and-gold uniform, which already smelled of sweat and very bad coffee.
“Excellent. Where are you? I’ll have a car fetch you.”
