The Chimera Vector (15 page)

‘I thought you were going to shoot me,’ he said.

She wiped the tears from her face. ‘So did I.’

She was different now. She couldn’t hurt Leoncjusz.

He picked up her passport and handed it to her. There was money inside.

‘This is your new life,’ he said. ‘You can do what you like now.’

***

The next morning, Sophia got dressed in a pair of jeans and a hooded sweater from the stash of clothes Leoncjusz had organized for her. She put the kettle on in the makeshift kitchen and noticed a dust-laden photocopier next to the bin. Leoncjusz must have found it in the library and moved it here.

She turned it on. It beeped and a strip of dust glowed green above a liquid crystal display. She lifted the cover and planted her hand on the glass, then hit the start button. The photocopier hummed to life and swept under the glass with a begrudging whine, then spat a piece of paper into the side tray. She picked it up and smiled. It was in perfect working order.

She screwed up the paper and tossed it in the kitchen trash can before entering Leoncjusz’s office to ask if he wanted a cup of tea. She’d already prepared the teapot for two, knowing he’d say yes. But he wasn’t in his office. She checked the clock on his desk. It was twenty to nine. He was usually in here from seven onwards, working away on his programming papers. He didn’t budge until he was hungry enough to make breakfast. And that was rarely before ten. Perhaps he was in the bathroom.

Letting the tea steep for a few minutes, she entered the Pacciani Room. Leoncjusz was there, dusting off a desk she hadn’t seen before.

‘A new desk?’ she said.

He looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh, yes. Well, no. Old desk actually. I found it in storage this morning.’ He gave it one final wipe with an old rag he’d made from torn clothing. ‘This should be suitable, yes?’

Sophia smiled. ‘Yes.’

He clasped his hands before him. ‘You have made decision then.’

She pressed her lips together. ‘There’s a bus I can take.’

He nodded. ‘It is best I don’t know where.’

‘Leon,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

He shrugged. ‘I shall thank you,’ he said. ‘I must to redeem myself some way.’

She forced a quick smile. ‘Me too.’

‘The resistance I am part of, it is called Akhana,’ Leoncjusz said. ‘I am meeting liaison this afternoon in Pondetera, to negotiate safe passage to Akhana base in Belize. It would mean lot to me if you stay until I return this afternoon. I cannot have you travel on empty stomach.’

Sophia found herself agreeing. ‘OK. I’ll hang around a bit.’

***

While Leoncjusz was away, Sophia found herself sitting at her new desk, her tea long gone cold. All she could think about was her dead family. She had to go home. At the very least, she felt she needed to say goodbye.

She returned to her room, took off her clothes and put on the para-aramid bullet-resistant vest Leoncjusz had given her. It was part of the package, along with the passport, flashbang and Glock that the Akhana had delivered to Leoncjusz. He had placed it outside her bedroom door last night. She inserted the boron carbide plates that came with it, then covered it with a T-shirt, a fitted black jacket and jeans. She double-checked her bag. Inside, her passport, the Glock and the flashbang.

There was one more thing she wanted to take. She returned to Leoncjusz’s office and fished out his journal. She took it to the photocopier and made a copy of every two-page spread. She bound them with bulldog clips and stuffed them into her bag. She had translated most of the journal already but there might be something she’d overlooked. She packed the Italian–German and Italian–English dictionaries too, only to find they weighed her bag down. She removed them and made a mental note to purchase a pocket-sized German–English dictionary.

As an afterthought, she stuffed the flashbang up the right arm of her jacket, pressed against her forearm, then zipped the cuff to stop it falling out. She moved her arms in circles and walked around, testing to make sure the grenade wasn’t going to slip out or impair her movement. Once she was satisfied, she unzipped the cuff and slipped the grenade into her bag again for now, then changed her mind in case someone wanted to search her bag and zipped it in her cuff again. She had the money she’d pickpocketed at the
Mercatino di Natale
as well as the stash Leoncjusz had put in her passport. In total, that gave her 1025 euros.

It was below zero outside, so she borrowed Leoncjusz’s second favorite coat and pulled it on over her jacket.

***

Firenze Santa Maria Novella station was all marble, concrete and skylight. The night train set Sophia back ninety-six euros and departed just after 1900 hours. She passed the time by drinking too much espresso and watching a well-dressed half-European, half-Asian woman con tourists out of loose change. By the time the train arrived, the woman had collected from no less than twenty-six tourists. Sophia had to admit she was impressed.

On the train, she tried to take advantage of the reclining seat by getting some sleep, but it was a conflict of old habits: trying to snatch sleep wherever possible and keeping her wits about her in public. She’d selected a seat in the corner, with easy access to the adjoining carriage and where no one could sneak up on her, but by the time the train pulled into Vienna the next morning, she’d only managed three hours of sleep. She felt like she’d been hit by a train instead of riding one.

The next leg of the journey didn’t have a reclining seat, but by that point she was too wired even to think about getting some rest. She played the scenario over and over inside her head. What if her parents opened the door? But it wasn’t possible. She knew they were dead. What if Denton had permanent surveillance on the apartment block in case she was alive? She had to be careful.

The train crawled under the arched skylight at Prague train station. She pulled the collar of Leoncjusz’s coat tight around her neck, grateful for its lambswool lining, and moved with the crowd onto the platform.

***

The dirty gray Communist-era
paneláks
—prefab public housing blocks—stood as concrete guardians in the snow. They looked like makeshift fortifications constructed by an army that was desperately short on funding.

She recognized her parents’
panelák
, only the concrete panels had eroded since she’d seen them last. She walked up the slick concrete path to find the nameplates on the intercom buzzer had been torn off.

Entry into the
panelák
wasn’t a major issue. The door was open, but the entrance was cluttered with idle residents, mostly women save for a topless barrel-chested man and a three-year-old boy who rode up and down the icy sidewalk in a little red plastic car. The women glared at Sophia as she walked up the concrete steps, but said nothing. A rake-thin young man wearing a white baseball cap and a sleeveless puffy jacket leered at her from where he leaned against the open door. She walked past him, inside, ready for anything he might try on her. But all he did was stare.

She moved through the lobby to the stairs. Even if the elevators worked—and they rarely had—she didn’t want to risk being stuck in one. Plus, she needed the exercise. It didn’t take her long to climb the six flights of stairs, although it did leave her out of breath and sweating inside the lambswool coat. She made a mental note to ramp up her physical training when she returned to the library.

The corridor walls were scrawled with graffiti in several languages. Sophia reached the door for her parents’ flat. None of this seemed familiar. But she knew it should. She felt sick in her stomach. She didn’t know what to expect.

She knocked, then counted to twenty. Once she reached twenty she would—

The door opened, the door chain still attached. An elderly woman peered through the gap. ‘
Máte prání?
’ Her voice smelled slightly sweet, like stewed apple with raw sugar.

‘Mrs. Novotný?’ Sophia said.

‘You have wrong place.’ Another voice, male. Strong and confronting, like burnt coffee.

Sophia looked over her shoulder to find the person who had spoken English. A waif-thin elderly man stood five meters away, oversized knuckles clutching a spindly walking stick. He seemed perfectly able to stand without it.

‘Josef and his wife,’ he said, ‘they were robbed years before.’

Her first operation had been made to look like a robbery. She’d stopped a cell of Al-Qaeda terrorists from preparing a dirty bomb in an apartment just like this. She had killed them all. The sick feeling in her stomach dispersed into the rest of her body.

‘Where are they now?’ she said.

‘Bless them. They were killed in the robbery. And their children too.’

All feeling drained from Sophia. She focused on an empty plastic bag in front of her. It drifted aimlessly across the floor. She turned and headed for the stairwell.

‘It wasn’t a robbery,’ she said.

Chapter 15

Sophia returned to Volterra the same way she had come. Two buses and two trains. This time, the trip seemed longer. She slept the last leg of the train even though it ran through the day.

When she arrived back in Volterra she was exhausted and hungry. And empty. She shut the large wooden doors behind her, locked them, then proceeded through the glass and iron-barred doors that separated the lobby from the library proper. She prepared in her head what to say to Leoncjusz as she walked into the Pacciani Room. But when she saw him, she forgot all about it.

He was lying in a pool of blood.

She inhaled sharply, fought the urge to vomit. Her attention was transfixed on his body. Several gunshots to the chest. The blood didn’t look fresh. He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t wearing his vest. He was supposed to wear his vest but he wasn’t. It looked like he hadn’t been breathing for quite some time. She couldn’t think. Her breathing was sharp and erratic. She forced herself to take deep breaths. She leaned forward, hands on knees.

Focus. Think. Focus. Breathe. Breathe. Carpet. Black and red dye. Breathe. Shot in the chest. She wasn’t here to save him. She fucking wasn’t here to save him.

She stopped breathing, her senses tuned to the silence.

She wasn’t alone.

Emerging from the front, to her left and right were—how many of them were there?—Blue Berets. Their MP5s with suppressors aimed at her head.

If they find you, they will kill you
.

One of them, likely the sergeant although he wore no rank insignia, yelled, ‘Hands on your head!’

Sophia slowly raised her hands to the back of her head. She blocked out Leoncjusz as best she could and analyzed their movements, their location, their weapons, her weapons. Everything. She processed everything.

They moved carefully to form an asymmetrical circle around her. There was movement on the balcony above. A figure appeared, leaned against the railing to watch her. Denton. Her captor. She imagined putting two rounds into the bridge of his nose.

‘You told me my family died in a terrorist attack,’ she said as she slipped her little finger into the cuff of her other sleeve.

Denton smiled. A calculatingly gradual smile. It seemed rehearsed. ‘Considering our specialty is fabricating terrorist attacks, I actually told you the truth.’

Her little finger explored the cuff, touched the ring of the flashbang.

The lights from the high ceiling cast a white silhouette over Denton’s shaven head and imprinted a heavy shadow over his gaunt face. His cheekbones looked razor sharp and the shadow of his slightly hooked nose formed a black arrow from his nostrils down to his thin lips.

‘Apologies for the intrusion,’ he said. ‘For each operative I bring out here, they need to babysit ten Blue Berets apiece. Hardly convenient.’

‘Neither is having a conscience.’ Sophia tugged at the ring. ‘But I suppose you wouldn’t know.’

Denton caressed the railing with both hands. ‘I’m not here to kill you, Sophia. In fact, I was hoping we could come to some sort of arrangement.’

The muscles working in his jaw were visible as he closed his mouth and clenched his teeth. A spaghetti-shaped vein quivered above his right eye.

Minimum of ten Blue Berets and one operative. She wondered where the operative was.

‘The decision is entirely yours,’ he said. ‘Of course, if you decide not to accept, then our contract will need to be terminated.’

The flashbang slipped from her jacket cuff and hit the ground behind her, the ring still in her hand. The grenade bounced towards a Blue Beret at her seven o’clock.

She planted her hands firmly over her ears and, through clenched teeth, said, ‘I couldn’t agree more.’

***

Jay stood on an Etruscan watchtower, the suppressor on his M110 SASS rifle leveled over Volterra’s moonlit rooftops. He’d heard the flashbang go off. Now all he could do was wait. And watch.

‘Oscar Five Delta to Tango Zero Juliet.’ Denton’s out-of-breath voice hissed into his earpiece. ‘Eyes on the rooftops. It’s the target’s only way out, over.’

‘Tango Zero Juliet to Oscar Five Delta,’ Jay said softly into his throat mike. ‘If she’s on the roof, she’s all mine, over.’

He allowed his vision to slip into the near-infrared range and watched for fiery red and orange shapes in the distance. He might’ve missed the intake for the Mark II shocktrooper program, but at least he’d scored the pentachromatic upgrade. Not only could he see ultraviolet like the other tetrachromatic operatives, he could see infrared as good as any pigeon or butterfly. Forget the night-vision and thermal goggles, he was a motherfucking butterfly now. And it made for a nice party trick.

He could make out Blue Beret snipers posted in two other locations, and a local middle-aged male about three blocks from the library. He leaned against a wall, drawing impatiently on a cigarette. Jay ignored him and focused on the hot zone.

‘This is Echo Four Whiskey,’ a Blue Beret said. ‘Target has vacated the building from the second floor. I repeat, target has vacated the building from the second floor, over.’

A red human-shaped blob slinked across a neighboring rooftop, rose to full height and then began running, head down low for balance.