Absorption (43 page)
Authors: John Meaney
So, the Med Centre it was.
‘Here we go,’ he said aloud, to an entire reality inhabited only by him. ‘Might as well start now.’
It would take seven, maybe eight days to reach the exit point he had decided on.
Reading subtle rune-like markings on the pillars - his own secret code - he headed in the chosen direction. Perhaps twenty minutes into the journey, he stopped.
‘My God, Admiral. How did you do it?’
For he had worked out the meaning behind her actions, and could not imagine doing it himself. Such discipline and courage were beyond him.
The neural wiring had been active and adaptive, reinforcing itself as it worked, predominantly inside the right hemisphere of her brain. Thinking back, it was obvious.
Every intelligence officer learned to read minutiae. In everyday conversation, often a person’s left hand will make subtle gestures that either reinforce or give the lie to the words that the person is speaking. It happens all the time, yet so few people notice.
But, though the admiral’s left hemisphere could utter words, it had not been enough to quell the cross-brain compulsion from the implanted neural ‘wiring’ - a femtoviral targetted infection.
Not until she had directed her inductive energy inwards, burning out the corpus callosum in her own brain, severing the bridge that linked her two cerebral hemispheres.
And then she had fought, herself against herself inside her mind, giving him time to escape.
Admiral Kaltberg. She deserved to be remembered with honour; just as her enemies deserved to experience eternal pain.
Now he had two reasons to keep on going.
THIRTY-THREE
EARTH, 1930-1939 A.D.
One afternoon on Bahnhofstrasse, Gavriela was walking with Florian Horst, the big ex-soldier who had been in her class that first day, helping Herr Professor Möller use the big wire basket as a Faraday cage. Like Gavriela, he was working on his doctorate; and they were deep into discussion of the new Rutherford results when someone called Gavriela’s name.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Florian, these are old friends of mine.’
Petra, Elke and Inge were smiling, waiting to be introduced. Elke blushed when she shook Florian’s hand.
‘You’ve known Gavriela for a long time?’ asked Florian.
‘Since her first week here.’
‘Well, that’s how long I’ve known her.’
‘So,’ said Petra, ‘do you know any juicy scandal about Fräulein Wolf that we don’t?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then we’ll just have to tell you all her secrets.’
‘Oh, please.’ Gavriela was smiling.
‘You’re not the one who’s going to Denmark, are you?’ asked Elke.
‘Ah, no.’ Florian shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘That would be Lucas Krause.’
‘I see,’ said Elke, smiling.
Petra, Inge and Gavriela exchanged looks. Lucas was the one with the offer to join the Bohr Institute; he was also the one whose eyes captivated Gavriela, but who shied away from any hint of intimate conversation.
‘I believe I know you, sir,’ said Elke.
‘Fräulein?’
‘There was a strongman competition in a beer hall, during the autumn festival. Lifting the stones and anvils.’
‘Ah.’ Florian grinned. ‘That could be.’
‘Herr Horst used to be a soldier,’ Gavriela said.
‘I adore the military,’ said Elke.
‘But I’m only a physicist now.’
‘So you can explain to me how big the solar system is?’
‘And the entire universe, which we call the Milky Way.’
‘Gavriela was talking about the galaxy, but I didn’t understand.’
‘Galaxy and universe are the same thing,’ said Florian. ‘The Milky Way is just our perspective on the rest of the galaxy-universe. We’re right out on the edge, you know.’
‘Near the end of everything?’
‘That’s exactly right.’
Elke shivered.
‘And it’s also the reason,’ Florian went on, ‘that we need careful management of the peace, because we’re a fragile species on the only known inhabited world, orbiting around the only star that is known to have planets.’
The awe on Elke’s face bore little relation to the mild interest she showed in Gavriela’s physics. Among themselves, the others would later decide this marked the moment Elke fell in love.
‘We were about to go to a café,’ said Petra, for Elke’s sake. ‘Please join us.’
‘I’d be delighted.’
Once installed at a table, they chose cakes and ordered coffee. While they were waiting, Petra put a tiny silver box on the table.
‘Anybody need a pick-me-up?’
‘What is it?’
‘Something that Sigmund Freud recommends’ - Petra nodded towards Gavriela - ‘as a way of clearing the mind of neurotic malaise, a positivity tonic.’
‘You mean cocaine,’ said Florian. ‘I hear it has some unfortunate drawbacks.’
‘Nonsense. Does no one else want to try some?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Not for me.’
Petra opened the little box.
‘Suit yourselves.’
Later, Gavriela would pinpoint that day as a turning-point, when their old friendships changed course. For Elke, it would be the commencement of a swift romance, a delirious marriage, and eventually emigration, as Florian too gained a post in Copenhagen.
For Petra it was the beginning of a different kind of tale.
Over the coming months and years, Gavriela sometimes met a lover - but only in her dreams, and though she sometimes woke with Roger’s name upon her lips, by the time she came to full wakefulness, the shards of remembered fantasy had sunk into amnesia.
It continued that way until the decade’s end, when nightmare rushed into the waking world, as German tanks began to mobilize and the warlike mood strengthened, after the horror known as Kristallnacht descended out of nowhere.
Even after Kristallnacht, there had been letters from Berlin. But as the year slipped from ’38 to ’39, the news became worse. Many of those imprisoned at first were released - save for the two thousand beaten to death during their incarceration; but then the true intention of the Nazi state revealed itself. News became darker, whispered rumours and the things that were not stated in the newspapers; and eventually, no more letters from Berlin, none at all.
Switzerland, determined to maintain neutrality, continued to run train services, though no one pretended these were normal times. It was possible, if you chose to risk it, to travel into Germany.
One morning in September, nearly a full year after Kristallnacht, Gavriela walked to the Hauptbahnhof without luggage and bought three return tickets to Berlin. As she boarded alone, she could only hope - or delude herself - that her parents would be with her on the journey back.
Dmitri awoke to the sight of pert buttocks - four cheeks, two nice little arses - bare to the air in his bed. Piotr and Ludmilla were brother and sister, and very willing. To do anything, for so little payment, but never for free.
They were in his bed, but he was alone, and always would be.
He rolled out, bare feet on the cold floor, and found the greatcoat he used as a dressing-gown. Then he pulled it on, slid open the wooden door to the hallway, and grabbed his towel and soap from the table inside the apartment’s front door. He could have washed with the pitcher and bowl in his room, but he preferred the communal bathroom.
Also, it was a test. If any of his belongings were disturbed on his return, he would take it out on Ludmilla first, then her lovely brother. And the valuable stuff was beneath floorboards, at the back of the pantry, and underneath the wardrobe, in hiding-places that amateurs were unlikely to discover.
Back in his bedroom after getting washed, his hair slicked down and tightly combed, he dressed quickly, using double knots on his shoelaces as always, because the ability to run could be a lifesaver. His twin stilettos went into their usual hidden sheaths - on his left forearm and left calf - because they could be deathbringers.
He adjusted collar studs and cuff-links, checked his reflection, ran the comb through his beard, then turned to the two naked teenagers on his bed.
‘Be out of here by nine. Take your present from the table by the door.’
Pulling on his overcoat and fur hat, he left.
The street was cold in the early morning, wide and deserted - like Paris but free of traffic, for only a few official cars ever passed along the wide boulevards. Few Muscovites would know what Paris looked like; but Dmitri was no ordinary citizen, and the comparison seemed natural to him.
There was a large M over the station entrance, and whether you pronounced it
mye-tra
or
mé-tro
, it was still the same thing, another similarity. Dmitri descended into the depths of Dobrininskya Station with his fellow commuters.
mye-tra
or
mé-tro
, it was still the same thing, another similarity. Dmitri descended into the depths of Dobrininskya Station with his fellow commuters.
Here, the similarity to Paris ended. The walls were a yellow neo-Renaissance splendour, with a mosaic whose nearest Parisian counterpart was inside the Louvre, not an underground railway station. But Moscow’s Metro stations were palaces of the future, with crystal chandeliers and the most expensive marble, each station unique in its artistic architecture.
In a secular state, the proletariat’s faith was restricted to their descendants’ hopes for prosperity; the stations were a reminder that such mundane paradise was possible.
At Park Kultury, sometimes called Gorky Park but never officially, he alighted from the Circle Line. Coffee-coloured swirls in marble surrounded gleaming white panels; and again the chandeliers shone.
He made two interruptions to his journey, both short stops to meet informants, and finally reached Dzerzhninsky Square, where Beria’s fearsome statue frowned down upon the citizens who dared not look upon his face.
Inside Headquarters, a young lieutenant saluted and said: ‘Sir, Colonel Yavorski would like to see you now.’
‘Thank you.’
There was a samovar in the canteen full of the dark tea he needed to get his brain functional. But if the colonel said now, he expected instant compliance. Dmitri’s shoes clicked along the parquet flooring, then he knocked on the colonel’s door and slid it open.
‘Sit down,’ said Yavorski, ‘so I can thank you properly for another job well done.’
‘Sir?’
Dmitri closed the door and crossed to the hardbacked chair, while Yavorski took his place behind the heavy desk, beneath which was slung a holstered Stechkin pistol that was supposed to be a secret.
So what kind of thanks do I get today?
Inside, he smiled, though his face remained blank. He had dark impulses, betraying what he thought was right; and he had
twisty
impulses, driving him to betray the darkness inside him, to trick the Trickster. It gave him a love of gambling, though he despised money.
twisty
impulses, driving him to betray the darkness inside him, to trick the Trickster. It gave him a love of gambling, though he despised money.
He preferred more interesting stakes.
‘I’m referring,’ said Yavorski, ‘to one of your perspicacious reports from several years back.’
There was a folder on his desk. A vindication or proof of incompetence?
Here it comes.
Yavorski tapped the folder.
‘The Nationalist Socialist movement in Germany has risen from obscurity to power, as you predicted. Although how you could guess that Hindenberg would offer the Reichschancellorship to Hitler, I have no idea. Luckily, your report was my defence.’
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