The code breaker, p.3
The Code Breaker, page 3
part #2 of New Beginnings Series
“Ayayay, que hermoso.” Miranda’s thoughts had shifted to Spanish, but the sentiment was clear: Oh my, how cute.
But her next thought caught me by surprise.
“He’s so much like me, it’s scary.”
The thought repulsed me. I was nothing like her! I didn’t care about money. I didn’t dismiss people just because they aren’t useful to me. She was crazy.
And then reality seeped in.
I was working hard to make as much money as possible. Just like her.
Mom was the only person in my life that mattered, and I was willing to do whatever it took to get ahead. To improve both of our lives. And when my co-workers tried to pick my brain for advice, I’d effectively turned my back on them, because I wanted to take more calls.
Miranda wasn’t nuts. We had different motivations, but we both worked hard and were goal-oriented.
I also knew that this former ice princess was about to suggest we go out together after work. That made me uncomfortable. She was selfish in a way that I didn’t like. Material things were too important to her. I didn’t want that kind of person in my life. But any excuse I could give her would sound lame.
I stood abruptly before the words could leave her mouth. “I have to get going. I need to finish my calls and get home. I promised my mom that I’d bring her dinner early today.”
And I turned and walked away.
Mom had been running a pretty high fever. She insisted that she felt fine, but I saw the beads of sweat on her forehead and her bloodshot eyes as she lay on her recliner. She refused to take the aspirin I’d bought her and instead closed her eyes and fell into a restless sleep.
I was worried about her. At just after midnight I placed a moist towel on her forehead, hoping it would soothe her sleep. Then I lay back on the sofa, and I sensed Mom’s thoughts as she fell into a dream.
In the dream, Mom was in a hospital again, walking down a corridor. The signs on the walls were all written in Russian. When she stepped through a doorway, its meaning materialized in my mind: Laboratory for Genetic Modification.
She lay back on an examination table, there was a mirror on the ceiling and mom stared at herself. She looked so young, but it was definitely her. Mom looked as sick in the dream as she did in real life. She was sweating profusely, and her pale skin was flushed with red splotches.
A man in white scrubs and an operating mask spoke to my mother in Russian.
“The virus is crossing from your blood into your cerebrospinal fluid. It is the time we talked about. Just relax and let things progress as they must.”
The doctor strapped her arms and legs to the examination table. Mom’s breathing grew more rapid, and the muscles in her arms and legs contracted with spasms. She screamed.
Though it was only a dream, or a memory, it was painful for me to watch. And it was even more painful when I noticed she was pregnant.
Was that me in there?
She let loose a long string of profanity in Russian, then screamed, “Will my baby be okay?”
The doctor wiped her forehead with a towel. “The procedure is working, Agent Poriskova. The virus is carrying the new genetic code across the placental barrier. It is for the possibility of what your baby can become that this project was created.”
Mom shifted position on the recliner as the dream ended. She was in a fetal position, her arms clutching her stomach.
“Mom, are you okay?”
Her brows furrowed as she grunted, “It hurts.”
She’d said the words in Russian. A language she shouldn’t have known.
I put a hand on her forehead; she was burning up. “Mom, you’re much too hot. I’m going to the neighbors and calling an ambulance. You need to be in the hospital.”
As I turned to leave, her hand shot out and grabbed my arm with an iron grip. “Don’t you dare,” she snapped, still speaking in Russian. “Fill the bathtub with cold water. I can take care of things.”
I couldn’t believe how strong she was. The furrows she’d dug into my arm burned with pain. I nodded, and when she released me, I hurried to the tub and began filling it with cold water. A minute later she came in, staggered past me, and lowered herself, clothes and all, into the water.
I grabbed a hand towel from the rack, dipped it in the cold water, and wiped her face. I was worried about her current condition, but I was equally worried about what I now knew for certain was true: her dreams were real. Real things that had once happened to her.
She could speak Russian.
Which meant there were a lot of things I didn’t understand. The man had called her Agent Poriskova. An agent for whom? And what was that talk about a virus?
It was a sleepless night. As Mom slept in the half-filled bathtub, I scribbled in my notebook like I always did when I was nervous. No answers ever came from my leather-bound friend, but sometimes the simple act of writing things down helped me organize my thoughts.
What does all of this mean? I wrote. How can Mom speak Russian and not remember it?
As the ink faded, a memory popped into my head. A memory of Mom sneaking into the kitchenette when she thought I was asleep, bending low, and fiddling with the cabinet. I sensed enough of her thoughts at the time to know that something was hidden there, but I’d never looked. To be honest, I’d totally forgotten about the incident.
Until now.
I hopped up, went to the kitchen, and studied the spot where the kitchen cabinets met the linoleum floor. I was uncertain what I was looking for, but the bottom trim of one of the panels didn’t seem to be a solid part of the cabinet. I pressed my fingers against it, and with the satisfying sound of wood sliding against wood, the underside of the kitchen cabinet opened, revealing a small cardboard box.
With my heart hammering in my chest, I sent my senses toward the bathroom to ensure that Mom was still resting quietly. Then I opened the box.
Inside was a small spiral notebook. I spent at least an hour thumbing through the pages. The words inside were in Mom’s handwriting, and some of them were in Russian. There were numbers, bank names, some addresses. It didn’t make any sense to me. I tried to absorb the colors and tastes, but I couldn’t get much meaning out of it. Just scattered words and phrases that seemed random.
Purple eyes.
Fever healing.
Lilith prayers.
Statue.
And then I came across the word “prophet.” That was the word Mom sometimes used when she looked at me with that confused gaze.
And then my alarm went off.
I quickly returned the notebook and box to its hiding spot and raced back to the bathroom. Mom had been woken by the sound, and as I entered the room, she looked up at me with wide eyes.
“What happened?” she asked. I was relieved that she was speaking English.
“You had a really bad fever, Mom. You were saying all sorts of things.” I didn’t mention that it was in Russian. “Do you remember any of it?”
She stood, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry, baby, but I don’t.” She wrapped a towel around her wet clothes. “Don’t worry. I feel fine now.”
Before I left for work, I ran to the convenience store and bought two pre-paid mobile phones. I left one with Mom and told her to call me if she began to feel sick again. I also wrote down my phone number on a dozen pieces of paper and scattered them throughout the apartment. I couldn’t take the chance that she’d somehow misplace the number, and I knew she’d never ask a neighbor for help.
Then I looked at myself in the mirror, and saw the bags under my eyes and knew I needed sleep. I’d been working long hours already, in the hopes of being able to afford to get a small two-bedroom condominium for Mom and me. She needed a nicer place, somewhere out of the projects, and I relished the idea of how happy that would make her.
I looked up at the ceiling and sent a private message to any divinity that was listening. “Mom deserves more than this kind of life. I promise I’ll do what it takes to make things the way they should be.”
As I completed another sales call, my pre-paid phone began to vibrate. My heart leaped into my throat as I answered.
“Mom, are you okay?”
There was only breathing on the line.
I closed my eyes and sent my mind searching across the signal. It was Mom all right, but she wasn’t talking.
“Mom, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Do you need me to come home?”
I dug into her thoughts, but picked up only emotions. Fear. Fury. Regret. And sadness.
I immediately rose from my desk and headed for the exit. “Mom, I’m coming home. I’ll be right there.”
Suddenly she spoke, her voice urgent. “Ya lyublyu tebya. Oni zdes’. Begi!”
It took only a moment for me to understand what her Russian sentence meant.
I love you. They’re here. RUN!
“Mom!” I shouted. “What’s going—”
The line went dead.
I sprinted for the door.
I just managed to jump onto a southbound train, and collapsed into a seat to catch my breath. My heart was pounding as the train rumbled from the Hialeah Station to Coral Gables. On the way, I tried several times to call Mom, but all I got for my trouble was a fast busy signal.
I prayed that she’d only had some kind of nightmare and was really okay. But I didn’t believe it. The anger and fear I’d felt from her rattled me to the core, and her message was perfectly in sync with those emotions.
When the train finally lurched out of the Douglas Road Station, I stood and grabbed one of the metal poles. The next stop was mine, and I intended to run the whole way home.
But when the train began to slow, I felt a prickle at the base of my neck. A warning. My sixth sense was trying to tell me something.
I focused on it, and realized it was someone’s thoughts that were creating the alert. I’d learned to block out the random mental chatter I was constantly being bombarded with, but sometimes something would stand out and draw my attention, as was happening now.
I studied the other riders on the train. None of them matched the thoughts that had caused my alarm. Then who?
As the train coasted into the station, I looked deeper into the mysterious person’s thoughts. I felt a moment of panic as I realized why it had alarmed me.
This stranger had an image of me in their head.
They were looking for me.
I knew the image, too. It was me standing in front of a fountain at the Vizcaya Museum. The same photo that was sitting on top of our ancient black and white console TV at home.
The hunter’s thoughts sounded in my mind. He was thinking in Russian. And he was waiting for me to get off at this stop.
The chill fingers of danger trailed over me. Mom needed me; but somehow I knew, just knew I couldn’t let this man see me.
The train came to a stop, and the doors slid open
Mom’s warning flashed in my mind. Run!
I tried to calm my rapid breathing as I shrank into the corner of the train compartment, trying to make sure I couldn’t be seen from the platform. I prayed that the doors would close quickly, and that the man who was hunting me stayed outside.
It seemed like we were there forever, but finally the doors slid shut and the train lurched forward on its way to the next stop.
Away from Mom.
I hit the redial button on my phone. Again, I got a damned fast busy signal.
I leaned forward, motioning for the cab driver to pull over. We were still a block away from my apartment complex. “Stay right here,” I said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I ripped a twenty-dollar bill in half and handed one of the halves to the cab driver.
I hopped out and ducked into the alleyway beside my apartment building. My mind moved ahead of me, combing the upstairs for signs of Mom. I couldn’t sense her, but I did sense someone else. A man thinking in Russian.
I sifted through his memories, trying to piece together who he was and what he was doing. I learned that he’d been trained by the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti. The words meant nothing to me, yet I knew this meant the Committee for State Security.
Russian security?
And then I noticed something about those three words, and my blood ran cold with a sudden realization.
Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
KGB.
I’d thought that the KGB didn’t even exist anymore after the fall of the Soviet Union. But it didn’t matter what I thought. This was as real as it got.
I quickly dialed 911.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
I cupped my hand over the receiver, gave the operator my apartment’s address, then said, “There’s an armed robbery taking place right now. Get here before something terrible happens!”
I hung up, looked up from the alley at the back of my apartment, and waited.
From the edge of the alley, I saw the three police cars race in with their lights flashing. Two officers with their guns drawn approached the building, and two more moved left and right, in a flanking maneuver. The last two remained by their cars, keeping their eyes on the scene.
I heard the sound of breaking glass in the alley behind me, and one of the flanking officers raced past me. I was still reading the Russian man’s thoughts, so I knew exactly what had just happened.
He had leapt from the second-floor window.
As he ran, he was speaking into a cell phone, and I picked up on his thoughts.
“She must have called the police before I could stop her. Poriskova is self-aware again. No matter, I’ve confirmed the identity of the prophet. We know what he looks like.”
The burly cop pressed his hand against my chest with a stern expression. “I’m sorry, but your apartment hasn’t been cleared for entry yet, Mr. Samuelson.”
Behind me, the coroner’s van had just arrived. I couldn’t hear Mom’s thoughts, and the van confirmed my worst fears. Tears blurred my vision, and I began to sob.
“I know this is difficult for you, sir, but the scene has to be cleared before you can enter.”
The officer’s shoulder-mounted radio crackled to life. “Harrison, is the son still with you?”
The officer pressed a button on the transceiver. “Yup, he’s right here.”
“Send him up. We need his help to determine what happened.”
On hearing that, I pushed past the officer, ducked under the yellow tape, and vaulted upstairs to bear witness to something I’d hoped never to see.
The coroner was zipping up a body bag when I arrived, but instead of Mom inside, it was a man I’d never seen before. Mom, to my shock, was still alive and breathing, though her face was badly bruised. The paramedics had just finished looking her over.
“Mr. Samuelson,” said an officer, “can you ask your mother what happened here?”
I was an emotional wreck as I took her hand. Her thoughts were a mixture of fury and betrayal at the man the coroner was wheeling out.
“Mom,” I said, “who was he? What happened here?”
She focused on me, and her anger dissipated. She smiled and touched my cheek.
“My poor boy,” she whispered in Russian. “The people who visited were not interested in me. They wanted to take you back. I can’t let that happen.” She glanced at the officer, who was watching us. “They can’t know what happened. My cover can’t be revealed.”
The officer cleared his throat. “Does she speak any English?”
I sensed his thoughts. He wasn’t upset with me or Mom; he just wanted an explanation for the dead guy in the living room.
I looked up at him. “Sir, I think she’s really rattled, and I’m sorry to say that she doesn’t trust the police. But if you could give us a few moments of privacy, I can probably find out what happened.”
The officer nodded. He grabbed his partner, and the two of them stepped out the door and into the hall.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Mom wrapped me in a bear hug and whispered in my ear. “Listen to me. I only remember pieces of the last twenty years of my life. I’m thankful to God that the flickers of memories that I do have are of you.
“Jeremiah, you’re in danger. There is very little I know about why these men are after you. It has something to do with me being assigned to an experimental project, but I don’t remember the details.”
She sat back, and I saw activity behind her eyes—which was unusual. For as long as I could remember, Mom had been spiraling deeper into her own world. But now, she seemed to be more aware than she had been in years. And instead of her usual confusion, I saw focused determination.
“Mom, I have so many questions, I don’t know where to start. What kind of danger are we in? Why are you speaking in Russian all of a sudden?” I tilted my head toward the bloodstained carpet. “And who was he?”
She shook her head. “We don’t have much time to talk. They’ll regroup and come back. So much of what I was told has been proven to be lies, so I’m not sure how much help I can be. But I can tell you this much: I wasn’t born in the US. I’m really happy that you learned to understand Russian. Was this in your high school classes?”
I nodded. It was easier than explaining.
She continued. “I was recruited a few years before you were born to be a part of the Committee for State Security in Russia. I volunteered to be a part of an experiment that was supposed to create a super child. You, my son, are a product of that experiment.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Mom shook her head. “There’s something about the fevers and medicine… I just can’t remember. They helped me persevere where others didn’t. I just didn’t expect you to have the fevers as well. I’m sorry things ended up this way.”
“Mom, are you saying the fevers you’ve been having actually helped you?”
She pursed her lips for a moment, then gave a brief nod. “I’m sure of it. I’m remembering flashes of you helping me out of the bathtub. It’s how I nursed you through your fever. Yes! I remember it now. When I ran from Russia, I was nine months pregnant with you and deathly ill. Yet there was something driving me to run. I don’t remember how I knew it, but the fevers were going to help me. Transform me, so that I’d survive your birth. I’m remembering more and more every minute. I suppose I’ve sort of been healing ever since, and my most recent fever brought me out of the healing stupor I’d been in.”
