The Killing Files
The Killing Files
Nikki Owen
No matter how fast you run, the past always catches up with you
A gripping and tense thriller’ Heat
A must have’ Sunday Express
Dr Maria Martinez is out of prison and on the run.
Her mission? To get back to the safety of her family.
Little does she know that this might be the most dangerous place of all
Don’t miss the second in Nikki Owen’s electrifying Project trilogy, perfect for fans of Nicci French and Charles Cumming.
NIKKI OWEN is an award-winning writer and columnist. As part of her degree, she studied at the acclaimed University of Salamanca – the same city where her protagonist of Subject 375 and The Killing Files, Dr Maria Martinez, hails from. Born in Dublin, Nikki now lives in Gloucestershire with her family.
To Brian – this one’s for you, Mr Blue Sky.
Acknowledgements (#ulink_6d02d248-8289-5af5-9a2d-eb6794a850d2)
Thanks to everyone in getting The Killing Files out into the world. Thanks to Sally, my Editor, to Cara, Alison and all the team at HQ Harper Collins. Also thanks to Adam, my agent (cheers, A!) and all the stellar PFD team. Big up to the supportive, beautiful book bloggers and Facebookers who make this such fun. And super shout out (once again) to Kelly Duke for reading this novel when, well, it wasn’t really one, and to my mum too, for giving it the thumbs up. Hugs to Marg and Brian for being the best friends and neighbours – Bri, you will always be in our hearts. And to Barry and Wendy for being the most amazing parents in law (and gardeners …) But, as ever, my biggest thanks has to go to my beautiful little family – Dave, Abi and Hattie, whom, without, I could never, ever write. DJ – you and me against the world, babe.
And, finally, to you now, holding this book – yep, you – thank you for reading The Killing Files! Without you, this book lark simply can’t exist. I am mighty, mighty grateful.
Table of Contents
Cover (#u351ec5ac-b74c-5398-901f-985aa540c416)
About the Author (#u665ef698-d644-529e-a3f1-23667821f7a4)
Title Page (#u4d90b565-c0a5-54ef-9444-af1c3facf474)
Dedication (#u7045e411-7d09-51be-bd40-6d92beb7bee6)
Acknowledgements (#udff32729-06d6-5bd6-b1d1-b32ba07eeef2)
Chapter 1 (#ua5775ffa-3b68-50dc-8a36-1bae0085988e)
Chapter 2 (#u2095b24d-b3f9-5ddc-acc7-f998f21577dd)
Chapter 3 (#ufc17f977-eecd-5668-b4ad-e343f8fd000a)
Chapter 4 (#udd18e7c8-178a-5d45-88d2-468ce1a106a1)
Chapter 5 (#uc2b1f6b6-61d3-5049-a353-5f6c501f6a92)
Chapter 6 (#u167b8c56-88fd-5d3c-b33d-01ddbdc231a0)
Chapter 7 (#uaacc3e00-a9dc-51ba-a1ed-a4b79057c596)
Chapter 8 (#u1984cca3-1278-5921-85bc-3a2c3b5bf240)
Chapter 9 (#u74b8fcac-d72c-577f-bd0f-8000a9664dde)
Chapter 10 (#u79d6e9c6-8308-5456-b52f-ffddfe998799)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_c8738ac0-c616-56bb-be7e-2000f279a214)
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
The room is dark, damp. I cannot see properly. I have been caught, that much I know, but I am unsure by whom. The Project? MI5? Someone else? I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how I am going to escape.
I lift my head but it feels heavy, a loaded sack filled with potatoes. I inch it back. My breathing is hot, the air a woollen blanket on my face, thick and scratchy, and, as my sight begins to adjust to the dark, slowly, like a curtain being lifted on a stage, I start to see small slivers of solid items. Where am I?
A room. I think that is what this is, but I am unsure. Then what? A cell? Prison confinement again? But I was found innocent. I am free, I tell myself. I am not guilty, have not killed anyone, yet even when I say the words to myself, for some reason, they don’t seem right, instead feel out of place, a code reassembled in the middle.
One breath, two. My eyes begin to adjust to the gloom and my sight registers small globules of shapes. The corner of a wall, the shard of a window—snapshots only of a whole picture. There is a seat of some sort, a table perhaps, but beyond that, nothing. The air is too black for me to take an inventory, the atmosphere sticky tar turning all the soft daylight into hot, putrid night as adrenaline starts to spurt out into my blood creating short, sharp alerts. I am not safe here.
It is then I hear it: the rustle of movement.
‘Who is there?’ My voice clicks with a cotton bud dryness, and I wonder how long it is since I last drank water as my brain rapidly attempts to calculate timings and bearings and any scrap of geolocation memory it can cling on to.
‘Who is there?’ I repeat, yet there is no answer, only darkness. A worry rises inside me, but I press it back, not wanting to panic, not wanting to melt down here and now.
Focus. Breathing. I can hear someone breathing, there, on the whisper of the air. I inch my eyes left, sensing what exists but almost not wanting to acknowledge it. Have I put them there, whoever it is? Is that what this is—a hit? Did I try to kill them? I didn’t murder the priest, but I doubted myself then, in court, at the trial. And then a horrific thought strikes. What if I have been on an operation for the Project and this is the result? A body on the floor beside me, injured by me and waiting to die. A killing I may later have no memory of.
My torso remains as rigid as possible, not daring to move. How did I get here? I think hard, connect my cognitive thoughts, but no matter how much I try, nothing shakes, as if my memory has been erased.
As if who I am doesn’t really exist.
The person’s breathing is shallow now, gravelled and raspy. I know what bleeding out sounds like—the sharp, slicing quality of oxygen intake—but this is not it. And yet, there is an urgency to the breath, a desperation that I cannot place, but it makes no sense why. I am a doctor so should know the signs, but still I cannot place them. What is wrong with me?
I blink three times and try hard to concentrate, to return my brain to function mode, focusing again on the room for clues. The edges. They are shrouded in black, but the window above affords a slip of light that plops in a puddle to my left.
It is then I see it—an arm—and a gasp slips from my mouth.
I track the limb, milky-white skin on a long, limp wrist, different to my own arms, my muscled, tanned ones, with bitten nails and dirt in the creases. Even in this murky room, I can tell that this arm is clean, scrubbed.
I keep all my attention on the body part and attempt again asking who they are, instinctively counting the time as I wait. The numbers sooth me as seconds rack up in twos, the action slowing, at least for the moment, the anxiety that is building inside, but when I ask again who is there and no one answers, a moan slips from my lips. The urine-coloured light has all but disappeared, yet somehow I start to see something slithering into view. A long, T-shirted torso. An elegant, white neck. A skull.
A face.
A scream pierces the air and I am shocked to realise it is mine. I catch my breath, frantically slap my hands up and down, straining to thrash my body forward from the seat, but still my pulse flies. Because there is a face, a face staring back at me, a face I know. Shaven hair, sharp cheekbones, gapped teeth and pool-blue eyes, eyes that even in this tar-black air, shine. My hearts races, my chest tightens. How can she be here? How have I let this happen? We are all in danger now, all of us.
‘Doc.’ The voice comes from the head on the floor.
I slam my eyes shut, not wanting to believe what is here, reciting an algorithm in a vain attempt to calm myself.
‘Doc, it’s okay.’ The voice is a cotton sheet flapping in the breeze, a rustle of green grass. ‘Doc, I’m okay.’
My eyes open. One millimetre then two, gradually allowing my sight to do the work my brain does not want to understand. My friend is here. My only friend in the world is lying crumpled on the floor beside me.
‘Patricia?’ I say, testing out the word. ‘You are out of Goldmouth prison.’
‘Yes, I got out on parole, remember? Two months after you.’
Confusion, worry. They spin round my head fast. ‘You are here. Why are you here?’
‘Because they have us,’ she says, the Irish lilt to her voice still there as I remember, but scratched now, torn. ‘The Project have caught up with us. You can’t hide from them any more.’
The Project have found me—that’s why I have woken up here in this room. They have entrapped us and there is only one way it will end: someone will die.
‘We have to get out. Tell me your status—are you injured?’
I listen for her reply, but there is only silence.
‘Patricia?’ Yet there is no answer, no words back to me as I continue to repeat her name over and over again in the gloom. When I finally stop calling for her, I flop back, flooded with fear, fear of myself, of who I am. Because it’s me—I have done this. I have caused this to happen. I slam my head back and back again, crying out, yelling into the thick, black air. Why can’t I recall how I got here? Why don’t I recognise where I am? Why?
Why?
One solitary, fat tear slides down my cheek. ‘Do not die.’ The words slip out, silent, unbidden. ‘Please, do not die.’
My eyes search for Patricia’s body, for an arm or a head, anything that can reassure me she is okay, that my friend is okay.
‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.’
I stop, haul in oxygen, listen for signs of life, but in the ten long seconds that next pass, the only sound audible in the thick, foul air is the rasp of my own breath.
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 59 minutes to confinement
The sun is blinding me. I kick off my running shoes, prop my hand on my forehead and, squinting towards the distance, listen to the morning as the mountains wake up. Clicking cicadas, dry summer grass rustling in the breeze, pregnant lemon and orange trees groaning under the weight of fat fruit spritzing citrus into the air, the distant bleat of a mountain goat—all the sounds that are now familiar to me, part of my daily routine. The security camera lights surrounding my hidden villa glow green, six lenses in total covering every angle of the property. The Salamancan earth is slowly rising.
I pick up my coffee cup, drain it then pad inside, counting my steps where the terracotta tiles are cold on my soles. One, two, three, my feet move forward until twenty-four arrives and I halt at the sink, my eyes watching everything. I set down my cup, pick up a white cloth and dry last night’s dishes: one plate, one knife and fork and one small wine glass. Opening a metal cupboard, I slot the crockery away, all of it easily fitting in, the only occupants in the large, spotless space.
I scan the rest of the kitchen, returning everything to its place. One pan, one white jug with a scratch seven millimetres long on the inside of the handle, one metal pot, small, for milk to warm at night when the sun rests and the night blanket covers the sky where the stars switch on and glow until morning. I count them all and document them in my head and, satisfied all is correct and present, I close all the cupboards and, stretching up my arms high into the air, recite the words I have spoken now every day since I came here to hide from the Project and MI5.
‘I am Dr Maria Martinez. I am thirty-three years old.’ My fingers ripple in the warm air, a gentle wisp of a breeze drifting in through the small open window, its wooden frame cracked yet solid. ‘I am innocent of murder. I am free.’
I stretch my hands further into the void, my muscles elongating into the empty space around me as I go through my routine to remind myself who I am, because if I did not tell myself, I fear I would be lost entirely. My hands fan out and my muscles are taut and strong, and, when I twist towards the glass door of the oven, my reflection stares back, green contact lenses patched over brown eyes, black hair dyed platinum and sawn in clumps to my small skull, the flesh on my face and limbs deep and sun-brown, lines thick and grooved and ingrained into my worn skin and elbows and ankles and knees.
‘I am Dr Maria Martinez. I am thirty-three years old,’ I repeat, inhaling, my back arching downwards and my arms reaching forwards so my palms flatten on the floor, the tiles cold on my skin, tiny sharp jolts reminding me I’m alive. ‘I am innocent of murder. I am free.’
The yellow morning rays shine warm on my face. I close my eyes and I breathe it all in, moving, exhaling, saluting the sun, feeling my body work as one with my mind as I repeat my chant over and over, losing my thoughts to the repetitive medicine of it, allowing my brain to soften itself of the millions of cognitive connections automatically made every second of the day and night. I bend my knees now, toughened skin touching down on the terracotta as I crease my spine upwards towards the ceiling, eyes still closed as I battle in my head with the pictures that sway before it, pictures of the loud, excrement-filled prison I was kept in, of the court trial and the beatings and the discovery of the Project entire, the shredded sordid secrecy. I breathe, try to let the thoughts pass by me as my spinal cord folds inwards now, rippling the muscles of my torso up and down, feeling them creak and stretch after the running outside, shorts riding up and itching my skin, vest top stuck to me with sweat, and even though the irritation of it is sharp, I continue focusing, letting my brain be even a little bit at ease with who I am, all the while chanting, reminding, never ever forgetting, because without conscious thought, what would we be?
Ten minutes pass in the early morning sun of my movements across the tiles and in the empty air, and, when I am ready and complete, I stand, exhale and open my eyes. The sun shines into them and I blink as my sight adjusts to the hazy film of the day that yawns out ahead of me, my mind registering with a glow of satisfaction that there are no people to attempt to converse with, no social games for me to decipher how to play. I turn to the sink. I extract one small glass from the cupboard to my left and, filling it with water, drain the contents, and mouth refreshed, rinse out the glass, and return it to its home.
When I am certain all is in its place, I wipe dry my palms on the back of my running shorts and pad towards the lounge, grateful for my daily routine, for each phase of it I have created. Every day since I left prison and came here to hide from the Project and MI5, after my morning run and yoga, I spend three hours tracking and documenting the latest news stories on the US National Security Agency prism scandal and any terrorist crimes or cyber security threats that I think the Project may be involved in.
I am just entering the lounge past the wooden crates on the floor when, today, it happens. I don’t know if it’s the thought of analysing the latest news on the NSA that has triggered it off or if it is because I slept badly last night, nightmares of prison waking me up in sweat-filled fits, but the memory arrives, fast and bright, not the hazy part of clouds that normally occurs when such recollections float to the surface, but this time quick, a taser prod, switching my mind from what is in front of me to what is inside, to a distant drug-hazed memory.
‘No!’ The sound of my solitary voice rings loud in the silence, sending the birds in the orange trees outside scattering in random directions.
I grip the kitchen sink. This process, this feeling, it is now familiar, so many times over the years has it passed, but still there is a fear as my brain is thrown into recalling something locked deep within my subconscious.
Something from my past.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_b95022d7-38f4-51d9-ae56-48b3bb0e18b2)
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 56 minutes to confinement
Suddenly I am not standing in my Salamanca kitchen, but instead am in a white clinical room, a room that now, from my dreams, from my nightmares, I know well.
I am fifteen years old, limbs long and thin, jutting out at awkward Bambi angles. I am sitting robot-straight in a metal bed and my long matted rope of thick black hair is uncut and wild and resting on a white hospital gown where freckles puncture plump sun-kissed skin, cashmere soft, no lines yet of a longer life lived. ECG probes sit glued to my small rib cage and concave abdomen, and in the background the pit-put of a heart rate monitor hums.
I turn my head and see him. The man. I intake a sharp breath, but there is no surprise in it, no immediate concern, as if I have been expecting him, as if this, here, is a routine that offers me some strange, warped comfort.
‘Your vital signs are good,’ the man says. His voice has a Scottish lilt, each word a slice of a knife, a slow turn of a screw. ‘Can you tell me who I am?’
‘Dr Carr.’ My voice is a feather, a butterfly wing. I shiver.
He smiles and when he does, his lips slice thin and it makes me think of a cut on my arm. ‘And you have a special name for me, don’t you, Maria—what is it?’
‘Black Eyes.’
I can feel my nerves rise and so I scan the room as a distraction. The walls are white and by them stand three stainless steel seats and two cream Formica tables. There are no pictures or soft materials, just brown plastic blinds and two officers guarding the doors with handguns hanging by their sides. I don’t like it and so start to jig my leg.
‘Maria, look at me. Can you look at me?’
‘No.’ Jig, jig. ‘I want to go home.’
His smile slips and, without warning, his arm whips out and slaps my leg still. ‘Stop stimming and look at me.’
A sting like one hundred needle points pricks my skin. My leg drops still. I want to scream at him, jolted by the feel of his touch, but am too scared because I know he could shout and the noise would bother me too much, and so instead I attempt to do as he says so he won’t touch me again.
He rolls his fingers into his palm and withdraws his hand to his lap. ‘I’m sorry for that,’ he says. ‘We are on a tight deadline today.’
I strain my eyelids, force my sight to stare straight at him, but it is hard, hurts, almost in an uncomfortable way, as if opening my eyes to his, to anyone’s, would allow them to see into me, see into my thoughts. In the end, I only manage to make contact for two seconds then have to look away, exhausted.
He inhales. ‘For the next few hours, I want you to practise making eye contact for half a conversation. This will help you slip more seamlessly into a regular situation if you ever go operational. Make you appear more … normal. Yes?’ He smiles and I think I see tiny eye creases crinkle out on the corners of his face, but I am unsure. ‘Yes, Maria?’
‘Yes,’ I respond on autopilot.
‘Good. Look at me.’ I do. ‘One second longer, that’s it. Two, three, four … Good. You can lower your eyes now.’
I drop my gaze, shattered, as he takes notes in green ink on a yellow page. Behind him, a woman walks over, petite, a tattoo of a cross on her brown neck, hair so closely cropped to her scalp, it appears to shine. The woman stops and whispers in Black Eyes’ ear. I cannot hear them so I bend forward a little, yet, when I look down at my thin, gowned body, the probes sticking out, it is merely crumpled, having barely moved at all. Beside me the heart rate monitor beeps faster.
My body shifts on the bed. Black Eyes is nodding now to the woman who has appeared in the room and at first, the words they whisper fade into the squashed air, but after two then three seconds, their sentences filter through as, slowly, my ears switch fully on.
‘The programme is showing her skills are improving, Dr Carr,’ the woman whispers. ‘Her handler at the church is communicating very positive results.’
‘Such as?’
‘He gave her a complex code to crack and she did it within thirteen seconds.’
‘Good. Good. What else?’
She consults her notes. ‘The subject’s IQ is exceptionally high, photographic memory sharp—she is obsessed with classical composers, tracks all their family details, their names, all their pieces—’
‘Has she learnt to play the piano yet?’
‘Yes. Self-taught, Trinity College London, Grade Eight standard within three weeks. Further information: the way in which she can sense acute sounds and scents is exceptional—I know you were concerned about that.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘And her dexterous skills, her technical assimilation—it’s getting faster. She can take apart and reassemble a radio clock, for example, within three minutes now, last time it was five. Her handler at the school recorded that.’
There is a nod from Black Eyes as he turns and provides me with a narrow stare. ‘We have been operating for twenty years now and this is our breakthrough. She’s the only one the conditioning appears to be working on.’
‘Yes.’
He looks to her. ‘MI5 will want to hear about this.’
The woman hands him a slip of white paper. ‘Done. Here are the results we sent over to our contact there.’
Black Eyes scans the data, his fingers pinching the page, each a spindled vine of pale flesh. ‘All these people we have conditioned and tested, and none of them are quite like this test child, this Maria Martinez. What is her confirmed subject number?’
‘375.’
‘Subject 375. Yes.’ He taps the paper. ‘We have some scenarios I would like to use her for, see what she can do. MI5 are pressing us to assist them with unusual security threats—cyber elements, computers etcetera. Let’s see how she can help us.’
His head dips and, without warning, his skeletal fingers creep forward so that they skim my calf. I instantly flinch, but he doesn’t appear to notice, instead seems in some kind of trance. ‘It’s okay,’ he says to me. ‘It’s okay.’ Then he turns to the woman. ‘She is strong, but not yet old enough to fight, but soon …’ He lifts his hand, knuckles and flesh hovering in the air, and the thought occurs to me that he may hit me. ‘While she is here, we will ask her what she knows.’
The woman frowns. ‘But won’t that stay in her memory, the covert details are just that—covert. What if she recites them when she is back in her normal environment?’
He shakes his head. ‘We will give her Versed as we always have, administered before she is dispatched home to Spain. It has worked well so far.’ He looks to me. ‘It will wipe her immediate mind so no secrets are divulged—she will simply believe she has visited the specialist clinic with her mother because of her Asperger’s.’ He hands the woman the paper. ‘The Versed drug means she will be unable to recall fully what she has or has not done, but enough remains in the subconscious for her to be useful until she reaches an age where she can be fully operational. It is important that you learn this.’ He folds his arms. ‘The subject may recall things, facts, but they will be hazy—like dreams. But we need that. We need this data, this training we give her, to remain stored in her brain somewhere so we can use it when the time is right.’
‘Maria?’ He is talking straight to me now. A rush of heat prickles my entire body and I don’t know what to do. My eyes search for a way out but there are no exits, here, anywhere. ‘Maria,’ he says, voice unusually soft, low, ‘where are we?’
But nerves rack me, and instead of speaking, I press my back into the bed, the cold cotton of the gown skimming my knees, goosebumps popping out.
‘I want to go home.’
‘You will. But first—that’s it, look at me, good—answer me: where are we?’
I look between the woman and Black Eyes. When I open my mouth, my voice trembles. ‘I am in a Project facility.’
‘And who are the Project?’
‘It is a covert group linked to MI5.’
‘And what do we do?’
Despite myself, despite my resistance, the words trip from my mouth, as if they are preset, robotic. ‘The Project is a covert programme formed in response to a global threat of terrorism and, specifically, cyber terrorism. It trains people with Asperger’s to use their unique, high IQ skills to combat security alerts. Only MI5 knows the organisation exists.’
‘And the UK government?’ he asks. ‘What of them—do they know who we are?’
‘Negative. They have no knowledge of the Project’s existence.’
‘Good.’ His chest puffs then deflates as his head bobs up and down, a smile snaking in to his face. ‘Good.’
The woman nods once to Black Eyes then leaves via a door that has no handles or hinges. Black Eyes waits for her to exit then turns to me, perching himself on the end of the bed. I grip the sheets tight. At first he does not speak, but then, after two seconds, he opens his mouth and a precise, metallic voice strides out.
‘You will not remember being here, Maria. You won’t recall this conversation, you won’t recollect the details of the tests we carry out on you. But know that we are always watching you, are always … here for you. We are everywhere.’ He leans to the side and, from a metal trolley, picks up a loaded syringe. My heart rate rockets.
‘You are at school now, yes?’
I swallow, confused. ‘No. I am not at school now. Now I am here.’
He pauses, one second, two, three, his teeth appearing to clench. ‘Your teacher next year,’ he says finally, exhaling, ‘he will be working for us, helping us to watch you. These people you see nearly every day—they are your handlers. Even your family priest. But of course, you won’t—’ a strange mewed laugh emits from his mouth—‘you won’t remember.’ He sighs. ‘I cannot believe I am telling you this now—you’ll only forget. But Father Reznick, your friendly Catholic priest—he’s one of us.’ My eyes go wide. The priest? But I saw him kissing Mama. ‘Oh, the big brown eyes! Maria, I am growing to know you well now. You do remind me of my own daughter …’ He drifts off, momentarily looking downwards, the needle resting in his fingers, and I glance to the door and wish I could run. ‘Anyway,’ he says after a moment, ‘do not worry. When you go on to university and work, we will have our people there, too, Project people like me and you, people who will watch over what you do, even though you won’t, at the time, know they are with us.’ He flicks the needle with a finger. Sweat beads pop out all over my face. ‘Oh, there’s no need to fret,’ he says now, leaning in, studying the sheen on my forehead. ‘We are friends, aren’t we?’
I recoil. ‘I do not have any friends.’
He halts, tilting his skull. ‘No. No I don’t suppose you do.’ He drifts off again for a second, then, checking the needle, he handcuffs my wrist with his fingers and pulls my arm towards him. ‘Your mother, Ines—lovely woman, isn’t she?’
I say nothing, instead watch his eyes narrow as they inspect the vial for air bubbles. Vomit wells in the base of my throat.
‘Shame she is on her own now after your father, Alarico, died. Loneliness is a terrible thing. Car crash, wasn’t it?’
Alarico, my papa. Hearing his name makes my head spin a little, my heart ache. The vomit rumbles.
‘Still,’ Black Eyes says now, his Scottish lilt dancing on the cold air, ‘she’s a strong woman, your mother, a lawyer like your father, but, well, more forthright. She’ll make a good politician when she hits the Spanish parliament after she’s got over her little … illness. Your brother, too—Ramon, isn’t it? Seems like he’s following in their legal footsteps what with his fondness for debate club. Quite the family. And family, Maria, it’s important, keeps us together …’
Black Eyes is leaning in to me so close now, I can see the faint shadow of stubble on his chin, feel the hot garlic and tobacco of his breath on my neck. I want to scream. I want to run a million miles away, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot bring myself to move, and even if I did run, where would I go? Where would I ever go?
‘You though, Maria—my … our test child,’ Black Eyes says now, ‘for you we have plans. We would like you to become … a doctor. Try and press that into your subconscious, hmmm? Even though this will make all of today fade away. A plastic surgeon, specifically. We need to test your dexterous skills, hone them so they can one day be of use to us. Study in Madrid at the University Hospital there—that’s where one of our handlers resides.’ He smiles, a flash of crooked, tombstone teeth. ‘Do you understand?’
I nod.
‘With words.’
‘I understand.’
‘Good. Because you are the one our conditioning is working on and we wouldn’t want all these trips your mother takes you on to be wasted now, would we?’
‘Mama believes she is taking me to an autism clinic,’ I say, an unexpected flash of defiance streaking through me. ‘She does not know what you really do. You are lying to her.’
He stares at me. He levels his black, bottomless eyes at me and delivers a look so chilling that, even with my emotionally challenged brain, I get a shiver of fright.
‘We have a bit of terrorism to fight out there,’ he continues now as if I had never spoken. ‘Pesky little terrorists trying to break into our computer networks, into our global infrastructures. But now—’ Black Eyes taps my arm, lowers the needle to my skin ‘—now, my dear, sweet Maria—now you will forget …’
Chapter 3 (#ulink_a3464e01-1605-5524-81d0-c719e1839727)
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 53 minutes to confinement
I come to. I tumble into the present day, gasping in a sharp gulp of oxygen, falling against the kitchen table in my Salamancan villa, sweat pouring from my brow and arms and bare, wobbly legs. I go to haul myself up, blinking furiously, desperate for water, but almost instantly another subconscious recollection arrives, dragging me back into a deeper, stronger dream. More lucid and glaring.
This time I see myself sitting at a desk in a Project tech lab. The walls are regulation white, and around the bottom are long strips of brushed steel, all bases for junction boxes that contain red and green bulbs that flash on and off by a control panel to the left. Computers sit in pre-allocated slots, controlled acoustics used to minimise background sounds for the subjects, subjects like me who inhabit the zone. There is spatial sequencing and lights and levels that are all compartmentalised to define their use, everything routine, expected.
My fingers tap a keyboard and I notice they are older now, not fifteen this time, but tanned, longer, the fingers of my stronger twenty-year-old self. I am writing detailed notes from memory into an online file, classified Top Secret, scores of data and times and geolocations going directly from my brain to the computer. There is a photograph on the screen of a woman with caramel skin wearing a hijab draped under pink-rose cheeks. She has a prominent, aquiline nose and her eyes are so brown they look as if they are constructed of pure liquid. Her picture is superimposed on the file and as I type, I record details of her, of this woman who I have known for two years but who has now caused problems for the Project. My informant, my asset in the field, code named by me as Raven, a bird symbolising good omens, yet the keeper of deception, of tragedy.
A beep sounds and I stand, quick, lithe, the colt now a thoroughbred as, turning to the right, I march out of the door and to the main corridor warren of the covert Project facility. Scanning the area, I proceed straight to Room Six, where I enter through the thick metal door, shut it and turn.
Raven lies on the floor. She is splattered in blood and on her head, her black veil lies splayed out, torn down to her neck, exposing cut, charred skin and deep, gaunt eyes. Gone is the rose of her cheeks, replaced now by two worn-out hollows, and when I look at her I know she is the enemy, yet for some reason, a lump forms in the base of my throat and I have to swallow it away.
A Project officer, younger, files over to me. He wears a grey shirt made with soft cotton fabric and beneath the front of the right hand shoulder is the letter H followed by a three-digit number.
‘I was called here,’ I say. ‘What do you require?’
He turns to me but makes no eye contact. ‘You need to guard the detainee. I have been asked to go to the control centre. I will be back in three minutes and thirty seconds.’
He turns, exits, and I do not move. My eyes stay ahead, my body now defined, muscles strong, hands skilled and slim from the medical school training.
‘M-Maria?’
The woman lifts her head from her slump on the floor. Her gaze is raised to me but I do not look at her. The lump in my throat tightens.
‘Detainees are not permitted to talk,’ I say, eyes front.
‘It is you, isn’t it? Maria? You … you cut your hair.’ She coughs. Blood speckles the white tiles, and her eyes dart left and right then settle back on me. ‘I know you think I am the enemy, but I am not. That’s just what they made you believe.’ She heaves in oxygen. ‘They set me up, Maria—you have to believe me. They’ll do it to you, too, if they have to. I’m not a terrorist …’ She coughs again, wipes her mouth. ‘They’ll be back soon, so you must listen. There … there is a file. It’s encrypted.’ She licks her cracked lips. ‘It’s on a file within a computer that’s not … that’s not attached to anything, a standalone device. No server is linked to it, but it contains a file that you created, a hidden file, away from the Project. Do you understand? Do you understand what that means?’
‘Detainees are not permitted to talk.’ I strain not to look at her. She is the enemy, and yet her words, her injured presence—they bother me.
‘It has details, the file,’ she continues, ‘ones they cannot track. It will give you what you need—confidential data, who the Project has tested on, the files and names of who they’ve killed. What they’re doing is wrong, Maria. They can’t treat people like this, they can’t act like gods of the world, and yet that’s what they do. Give man power and I give you an eternity of pain.’ She spits out some blood and I fight the urge to wipe it away because, for some reason, I feel connected to this woman but I don’t know why.
‘Maria?’
‘Detainees are not permitted to …’ I trail off, confused, unsure which side she is really on.
‘You are struggling, I know,’ she says now, low, laboured, ‘struggling with who I am … but we were in the field together. Maria, I helped you and you helped me. They’ll mess with your memory after they’ve done with me, like they always do. The file will give you what you need, tell you what you’ve done—the truth! Find out who you really are, Maria! I know you, I do. We were … we were friends.’
My eyes briefly flicker to her then, snapping back into position, I look away. ‘I have no friends.’
The door bolts open and the officer with the H on his shirt returns accompanied by two other, higher ranking officers. They stride to Raven, haul her up, but as they pull her away, she digs in her feet. ‘The file,’ she whispers. ‘Find it!’
They yank her forwards and as they do she shouts, ‘They will make you complete it, Maria! Prepare, they told us. Wait. Engage! Eliminate the threat. They will make you kill me! You know this, Maria, I know you do. Fight it,’ she says, her feet leaving trails of blood in their wake, ‘fight the Project! Help!’
But I do nothing, instead watch her go and as she does, as she is dragged screaming away past the cold, pale doors of the Project walkways, what bothers me about her so much comes to me, slapping me hard on the face.
‘I never knew your name,’ I say aloud to the now empty room, the words echoing in a void that can never be filled. ‘I never knew your name.’
The image begins to swirl away, soft at first then faster downwards as a noise vibrates in my ears and I realise it’s the radio alarm clock clicking on, blasting a newscaster’s voice into the kitchen.
I intake a sharp breath and my eyes fly open taking in a woozy, hazy view of my warm, sun-drenched kitchen. I touch my head with a shaking hand then, falling forward, grab a glass, fill it from the tap and drain the water until it is sliding down my chin, fangs of liquid on my shocked skin. I slap the glass down, slam back into the wall, smear my lips with the back of my hand and try to steady my breath. The memory, the subconscious dream still fresh in my mind—these have happened before, but not this strong, not with her so vividly in them. I throw my hand to the side, feel my way forward, the image of the hijab throwing me off centre. What she said about the files—was that true? Did she store a data file at the Project? Did that actually happen? I spin round, brain firing left and right. My notebook. I need my notebook, need to write it all down, record it so I can track it and try to make sense of what is hidden in my head.
The news piece on the radio is talking about the American national security agency, how Edward Snowden has revealed more information and is in hiding now. I try to pay attention. I try to press it all to my mind so I can lose myself and record it all on my wall, but the words are too much, the noise all too loud and I can’t think straight, the dream of the woman and her screams still lingering in my mind even in the bright glare of the summer sun. A dull moan slips from my mouth and I slap my hand down on the radio, silencing it as I count the steps that I now stumble into the lounge.
My eyes automatically scan the solitary armchair, the old brown piano with its back against the wall, the towers of books that sky-scrape their way across the room, the thousands of newspaper articles plastered to the wall, covered in scrawled notes of black pen and pin tacks and sketches of blank faces of people I don’t remember. I look at it all, my sight hazy, struggling to focus until, finally, I spot my notebook on the cabinet island by the far wall.
I immediately go to it, flip past the pages of algorithms and codes and sketches of Project facility buildings, all vague memories of events and details, and scratch out what I have just seen. Done, I slam the book shut. I stare at the cracked brown leather cover that curls at the corners. My memories, my nightmares are in there, the ones I don’t know about, the details and facts I cannot even recall occurring and yet, somehow they are in my head. Somehow, despite the drugs, I recall them. But why?
I think of Raven. What if there is a file? What if I have just recalled something that happened a decade ago despite the drugs Black Eyes gave me? If the file the woman stowed away is at the Project, does that mean it is still there, now, after all these years? I hold out my hands, look at my fingers, long slim trained doctor hands, a plastic surgeon’s, helping to reconstruct faces and injuries and a mix of disgust and sadness hits me. The Project made me become a doctor. It was not my choice or conscious will, instead it was a foregone conclusion, a fait accompli. But what are we when we are not in control of our own choices and life? What does that eventually do to us? And what do we eventually do as a result?
I stare again at my fingers and skin and cut-to-the-quick nails. I am Dr Maria Martinez. Raven said they would make me kill her.
Did I?
They have made me believe I have killed before, they got me convicted of the murder of a priest because they—MI5—wanted me hidden and out of the way when the NSA prism scandal broke out, just so the Project would not be uncovered. They framed me, despite my innocence, to suit their own ends, but even then I doubted myself, because if who I am and what I do in life has been decided and directed by the Project, if they have drugged me all along, how will I know with any certainty what really happened?
And who it has happened to?
I reopen my notebook. Perhaps if I scan the pages again, if I link my thoughts here to the wall and the research and the faces and facts, I can make some connections between what I know and what I have just seen. I can lose myself in my thoughts and record everything that swims to the surface of my memory, linking it, if I can, to the NSA, to MI5 and the Project, find some comfort purely in the challenge and routine and order of it all, safe in the knowledge that I won’t take it any further, that I don’t ever want to leave here and the sanctuary it provides, and if they don’t find me, I can remain hidden in my villa forever.
I look up at my wall. I study the multiple news articles and anonymous faces and facts and arrowed figures, and just as I am about to reach forward and readjust a pinned article so that it sits neat and straight and in order next to the others, the emergency cell phone shrills into the calm morning silence.
And everything stops.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_dcd7220e-b692-56e5-a123-d4563829d98a)
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 46 minutes to confinement
I pick up the cell, slamming down the button so the shrill will stop hammering into my head. ‘Who is this?’
‘Maria, it’s Balthus.’
‘You are speaking on the emergency cell,’ I say, fast. ‘Is there an urgent situation?’
‘What? No.’
‘Then why are you calling me?’
‘You haven’t contacted me for three days and I was worried.’
The ring of the cell still bangs in my head. I shake it. ‘Four days.’
‘What?’
‘I have not called you for four days.’ My eyes catch the sunshine dancing a waltz along the curves of the glass panes. I focus on it and, gradually, my head calms down. ‘You said three.’
There’s a pause. ‘Maria, we agreed when we spilt up in London—you’d stay in touch, contact me every day. I got worried when you didn’t call.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I care for you. Because I promised your father before he died I’d look out for you.’
‘Oh. Okay.’ The glass panes twinkle in the daylight. ‘I had another memory today.’
‘What? When?’
‘At 0612 hours this morning.’
I pick up my notebook and proceed to tell him what happened. He listens. This is what he does, Balthus Ochoa—I talk and he listens. When he was the governor at Goldmouth prison in London where I was incarcerated; him listening led me to find an encrypted file that uncovered the Project and my subsequent involvement in it. He has always told me how he promised my papa that he would be there for me, tells me he cares for me, and I catch myself feeling what must be gratitude towards him, but I never know how to express it, do not understand how people say what they feel inside.
‘That’s odd,’ Balthus says now, his voice a layer of gravel, a boulder on a mountain.
‘What is odd?’
‘Well … Okay, so it may be nothing, but there’s something bugging me about the standalone computer the woman in your flash mentioned, but I can’t figure out why it bothers me. Maria—the memory with the woman, with Raven—do you remember which Project facility that was at?’
‘No. I only recall the facility with Black Eyes when I was younger. That was in Scotland. That is the facility Kurt brought me to. Do you not remember this?’
‘Jesus, how could I forget? I bloody well suggested you see that therapist after you were acquitted—and he turned out to be working for MI5.’
‘He was working for the Project.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘No. You said MI5. Kurt—although his real name is Daniel, a Hebrew name meaning God is my judge—when he was meeting with me he was only working for the Project. By then—’
‘By then the NSA prism scandal had been exposed and MI5 wanted to ditch the whole Project because they were scared of a similar blow-up.’
My eyes rest on the wall, on my drawings and newspaper articles and lines of connections and notes.
Balthus sighs. ‘I don’t know, I just … What they did. I still can’t believe the Project framed you for the murder of that priest just to get you in prison and out of the way, so they could then get rid of you.’
‘So they could kill me to eradicate any connection to the Project.’
‘Yes.’ He pauses. ‘Yes.’
The window in the lounge is open, and in the breeze the muslin curtain drifts in and out, the white cotton veil of it brushing the tiled floor as it passes quietly through the room.
‘Anyway, look, Maria,’ Balthus says after a while, clearing his throat, ‘the other reason I wanted to call was just to let you know that there’s been no sighting or word from the MI5 officer who posed as our prison psychiatrist—Dr Andersson. You were asking about her.’
Dr Andersson. Her face instantly springs into my mind. Swedish blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, freckled pale skin. A vision of her making me take apart laptops, timing me to complete a Rubik’s cube—all the tasks she was doing to monitor me without my knowledge. I shiver. ‘She has not approached you or any of Harry’s family?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so. But Maria, listen—how are you about Harry now, since his death? It’s been six months since Dr Andersson shot him on the court steps when she was aiming to kill you. Harry wasn’t just your barrister or even simply your papa’s old friend—I know you had a soft spot for him.’ He pauses, three silent seconds passing. ‘I just worry about you. It’s a lot for any of us to process, never mind for you.’
I am momentarily stuck for words as a strange tightness presses against my chest. ‘The Kubler-Ross grief model says I should be at acceptance stage now.’
‘And are you at that stage, Maria? Do you accept Harry’s death? He cared for you a lot.’ I can hear him swallow. ‘We both did—do.’
I swallow and clench my jaw as conflicting feelings of anger and sadness wash through me. A tear escapes. I reach up, smear my cheek dry.
‘Dr Andersson killed Harry. MI5 killed Harry.’
‘Yes.’
Over on the window ledge, a small bird with golden-brown feathers lands on the white wood. It dips its head once, then going very still, it looks up, free, and flies away. For a few seconds, I watch the now empty, open space where the bird stood then, inhaling, I look back to the cell phone.
‘Did Patricia get parole?’
‘Yes,’ Balthus replies. There is a rustle of paper on the line. ‘I told her you were okay, in hiding from the Project, let her know what you did—sending the texts to MI5 and the Project on Kurt’s phone in London so they both thought you were dead. She understands you’re hiding, that you can’t contact her.’
‘And Dr Andersson has not been trailing her?’
‘No. I’m in touch with Patricia—all seems well. You two struck up a good friendship in Goldmouth. I’m glad, I’m …’ He stops. ‘You need friends, Maria. I hate the thought of you being on your own.’
My eyes catch the room. The solitary chair, the bare, whitewashed walls, the cell phone lying on the upturned crate with Balthus’s voice trapped inside.
‘Look, Maria,’ Balthus says after two seconds, ‘I don’t know why, but something about this Raven memory of yours … Well, I know I mentioned it just before, but it … well, there’s something about it that rings a bell, but I don’t know what.’
‘Is it a recent recollection?’
‘I don’t know. I …’ He trails off. ‘It’s just, well, something Ines told me when she called me when you were in prison. I don’t know if it even means anything, but it was weird.’
‘The word ‘weird’ means a suggestion of something supernatural.’
‘What? No, no, I didn’t …’
‘Weird can also mean connected to fate, to a person’s destiny.’
‘Okay. Well, anyway, she was specific, Ines, about talking to me, about calling me and telling me what she did.’
‘When exactly was this?’
‘It was before the retrial.’
‘What date?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why not?’
‘Maria, my memory’s not as accurate as yours. But, look, it was strange. We hadn’t spoken for years—since Alarico’s death, in fact—and then, after her visit to you in Goldmouth, she calls out of the blue talking about … God, what was it …? Something about secrets … Damn it. I can’t remember. I just know she was acting odd.’ He breathes out. ‘It’s probably irrelevant anyway.’
‘How did you know she was acting odd?’
‘What? Oh, I don’t know, her tone of voice, perhaps? It was like she was under pressure or something, as if there was someone there, maybe. In danger? I really couldn’t say for sure.’
I go quiet, not understanding how a simple tone in a voice can lead to so many unconfirmed conclusions.
I pick up a book, one of many on computer coding and language, a routine, orderly subject, and place it on a tower of other research, and turn to my board. The faces containing different expressions, different photographs of people who I know, sketches of those I vaguely recall from hazy, drug-filled dreams. Ines, my mama, sits there, a photo taken from her Spanish parliament file, her face sculptured and clean, coiffured black hair, gold jewellery, shoulder pads and rouge. Next to her my brother, Ramon, thirty-five now, tanned, lean, a slick of tar-black hair on top of defined cheekbones, the black suit he wears to his legal firm tailored in place. And then my papa, an aged, more lined photograph, yet still I can see very visibly his eye creases, his lined skin, his crisp white linen shirt, and by his side is me, my hair long and dark, and Papa’s arm is over my shoulder, holding me, the only person, back then, I would allow to touch me without instantly jumping or yelling. I close my eyes. I can still smell him—the spice cologne, the ink from his quill where he used to write in his study. I open my eyes and look at an image pinned to the right—a fading picture of Balthus, Harry and me taken just after we won the retrial, after I was acquitted. My fingers trace Harry’s face. His skin is plump and black, and when he smiles, he too, like my papa, has eye creases that crinkle outwards, his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles perched on the tip of his rounded, shiny nose. Next to him is Balthus. Balthazar Ochoa. Name meaning lone wolf. In his picture he is tall, athletic even for his fifty-plus years, his skin washed with the Mediterranean sun, his black hair silver at the tips, his face consumed by two brown pools of eyes. But while Harry and Balthus’s bodies are relaxed and smiling, mine, in contrast, is rigid and tight, flinching at close group contact, my olive skin pale from months of incarceration, hair dark and sawn into a jagged cut that grazes my temple and neck, eyes sunken into razor cheeks. I touch my neck. The Salamancan sun has drenched my skin now into a deep golden hue, my dark pixie cut is bleached blonde and my once-brown eyes are replaced by green contacts. A fake look for a fake world.
‘Maria? Are you still there? Look—I was thinking. The flashback you had, the one with that woman—I think you need to understand where that facility is and get to it—I can help you. If there is information there, it could mean we could put a stop to it all, to all this madness. Maria, it could end the Project.’
Heat rushes to my head accompanied by a clear, frosted image of Black Eyes and his tombstone smile. My eyes go to my villa, safe and hidden. ‘No.’
‘What?’
‘I said no. I do not want to understand where the facility is.’
‘But Maria, why track all the NSA stuff in connection to MI5, the explosion of it all, if not to get at the Project?’ He pauses. ‘Look, you’re not on your own. I know you think you are, but you’re not. You have me. You have Patricia. Jesus, you even have your mother and brother. Maybe they can even help? Ines knows a lot of people high up in the Spanish government—she’s Minister for Justice now.’
Black Eyes. Raven. My tortured, sweat-drenched nightmares that keep me awake in the middle of the night when there is no one to soothe me. I glance to their scratched sketches on the wall. ‘No.’
He sighs. ‘Please. Just consider it. Say if you could connect what I can hopefully remember from a conversation with Ines to what you have told me about this woman—Raven? It may help you know where the memory is coming from. If you know the facility, it will lead you to the file.’
I open my mouth to tell him no then hesitate, but I do not understand why.
‘This woman,’ Balthus says now, pressing on, ‘she said the file she loaded up will give you what you need to know, tells you what you’ve done, that it will help you know who you really are. Why note down all the dreams you recall, Maria, want to know how it’s all connected, if you don’t want to find out how to put an end to it all?’
I look down, confused. I thought the answer was obvious. ‘I have my notebook. I like to record information. That is why I require the details. I just record the data, all of it.’ I glance to my coding books, to the structure and the formality of them.
‘But this woman said the files could help you. Don’t you want to know who she is, find the file? Don’t—’ there is a pause and when he speaks again, his voice is oddly lower, more quiet ‘—don’t you want to know who you really are?’
I look at Balthus’s photo on the board, stare at all the unframed images and notes and encryptions and news articles, and, after a second, they all start to blur into one solid image of colour. I switch, glance to the turrets of books in neat, multiple piles, to the solitary seat, the makeshift wooden crates for tables, to the single toothbrush that lies on the shelf. I walk three steps to the worn piano by the wall, gently press my finger down on a key, the smooth ivory cold beneath my skin. E sharp tolls out.
‘I know who I am,’ I say after a moment. ‘I am Dr Maria Martinez, a plastic surgeon, born in Salamanca, Spain. I want to remain hidden. I do not want to go back to the Project or to their files or to anyone from there. It is too chaotic. I will record what memories appear, but no more. I do not want to endanger my family.’ I glance to the image of Harry. ‘I do not want to endanger you and Patricia.’
‘I understand that, I do. I really do,’ he says. ‘But they’ll find you, Maria. You know that, I know you do. I worry about you there on your own with no one. You need answers. I can help you. I have a contact. I sent you an email about him. He’s called Chris. He’s a hacker, used to be in Goldmouth. He can—’
An alarm sounds, high, war-siren sharp. My head jerks up.
‘Maria? Maria, what’s wrong?’
I sprint to the laptop, head dipped at the noise, but my feet are so sweaty, I slip on the tiles, toppling into the crate, knocking the computer clean off the upturned box.
‘Maria?’
I shake myself off, wincing at the scream of the siren, dragging the laptop over to me, scanning it fast.
‘Maria? Shit. Can you hear me? Maria? What’s happening?’
Leaning forward, keeping my fingers strong, steady, I click the icon flashing on the screen.
‘Someone is on my property.’
Chapter 5 (#ulink_2297b177-fda1-538d-b45d-671e7defe363)
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
I don’t know how much time has passed. I blacked out, only coming to now as somewhere in the room a noise clicks high in the air, one, two, three, four.
My body instinctively bends forward, brain attempts to gauge the level of danger and then I remember: Patricia.
I call her name, yell into the abyss of black. There is a click, another trip of light mixed with darkness and then, finally, a voice, singular, pure.
‘Doc? Doc? Are you there?’
She’s okay! ‘Patricia?’
‘Doc!’
‘What is your status? Are you injured?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so, but … my leg—it hurts. Help me, Doc.’
I open my mouth to ask her specific diagnostics, but the air is so black and hot, so suddenly suffocating that it feels as if a palm is being pressed into my nose and mouth, an acrid taste of metal poisoning my lips. I struggle hard against it. I have to know where we are, and yet nothing here seems to make sense, but I do it. My conditioning, my training, despite my horror at it, kicks in and I begin to function on cognitive thought.
‘Doc! Doc, where are we?’
Click. The sound, there again on the surface of the room—it makes me halt.
‘Doc—what was that?’
Tap, tap, tap. My heart rate rockets. ‘Patricia, stay still.’
I listen. It’s like the beak of a robin on a window pane.
‘Who is there?’ I ask to the thick stench of the room. Click, tap. Click, tap. My breathing becomes fast, shallow. ‘Who is there?’
But no answer comes back. I slap away the fear and strain my neck, try to catch sight of something, anything, but just as my eyes clear, just as they begin to see through the haze, the click sounds again and something happens inside me.
A heat, a surge of liquid in my veins burns its way through me, scalding one second then freezing the next, and an ice-blade of pain stabs me. I cry out.
‘Doc! Doc, what is it?’
My mouth opens to yell, but I am mute, a primal fear taking over, a tsunami of fight or flight, the words, ‘You are in danger! You are in danger!’ screaming over and over in my head, and I must be moaning, groaning, because I can hear Patricia shouting at me to stay awake.
My eyelids vibrate, brain attempts to calibrate a connection, find an answer to what is happening to me, but the codes, numbers, solutions that instinctively inhabit my head are all jumbled up, as if I have been shaken like some unwanted toy then discarded on the ground and kicked under a bed to gather dust and wither.
‘Patricia,’ I gasp, my chest ready to explode. ‘Escape. I need you to escape.’
‘I don’t … My leg aches, Doc, but I think I can …’ A grunt, a scrape. ‘My hand—it’s free.’
‘Does that mean …’ The searing pain is so hot in my chest now, it burns and I have to force myself to concentrate once more on my eyes. ‘Does that mean, if your hand is free you can be mobile?’ And then I spot something: a lick of light. There! In the corner …
‘Doc, it won’t … I don’t know. Oh, God. My leg feels numb.’
The single sliver of light disappears and I try to reach out, grab where it was but nothing moves. A hazy, grey film is slowly bleeding over my lenses.
‘Something is happening to me …’ I swallow. ‘Drugged,’ I slur. ‘I must be drugged.’
‘Are we …’ Patricia’s words waver. ‘Does that mean we’re at the Project? At their facility?’ There is a shake in her voice, a tremble.
And then I hear it: water. A trickle of water, a rush of liquid. I shake as a terrifying thought tears into me: we are drowning. We are not actually in a room or a cell or in a locked-away facility, but we are drowning, almost dead already and this haze, this grey film, this distant cry of Patricia’s Irish voice that I can only just detect is the last twisted haemorrhage of my lie of a life. The Project have found me, are to kill me and now this is it, here: death.
‘Can you feel any water around you?’
‘What? I … Wait.’ A scream, a gurgled cry. ‘Doc, I’m hurt!’
Panic swells. ‘Drag yourself free. Quick!’
‘I don’t want to die!’
‘Stay awake!’
‘I … I can’t breathe.’
I struggle to cough, try anything—a lick of my lips, a last gulp of oxygen—anything to dismantle the rolling tide as, to my side, Patricia groans.
‘Pull your arms up!’ I shout. ‘See if there is anything you can grip on to.’
‘There’s nothing! Only a … Oh, Jesus, help! It hurts! Doc, help, please …’
Her voice stops, abrupt, a TV being switched off. ‘Patricia?’
Nothing.
‘Patricia! Patricia, shout to me that you are …’
I stop breathing.
My hands form two fists, knuckles white, chest bursting, ribs ready to crack, as my mind prepares, because this is it. The final seconds of me, of my life. Dr Maria Martinez.
Gone.
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 32 minutes to confinement
I shut down the alarm and haul in a breath.
‘What’s going on, Maria?’
‘Wait.’ My eyes remain locked on the computer screen, but my vest has become sweaty and it itches my skin. I scratch my stomach, up down, unable to stop as the nerves seep out.
‘Maria, for God’s sake, what’s happening?’
‘The red icon is flashing.’
My skin flushes, feels as if it’s burning, nerve endings so sensitive to the change in the fabric. It is too much to bear. I rip off my vest, throw it to the floor. The relief is almost overwhelming.
‘Anyone on the cameras?’ Balthus says now.
I flip open the surveillance programme then pause. The reality of what could happen slams me in the face and I recount Abel’s binomial theorem to focus my mind.
No matter how many times I scan the CCTV film, it comes back blank, eight square, grey, live pictures of the fields and walls around the villa. No trespassers, no intelligence officers, just everything as it was before I stepped inside the house.
‘The cameras are displaying no signs of intruders.’
My body leans back as my mind attempts to get a handle on what is happening, already planning ahead on what I may need to do. As I think, a whip of wind lashes at a funnel of cypress trees outside, sending a swarm of starlings scurrying into the sky, and it is so sudden, so fast and loud that I jump, slapping my hand to my chest.
‘Maria, is everything all right? Talk to me.’
The starlings rush away, their swarm temporarily blackening the sky.
‘Birds,’ I say.
‘What?
The last remaining starling flies into a candy floss cloud. ‘I was frightened by a murmuration of birds.’
‘A mumur-what …?’
I stare at the now empty branches outside, wiping the sweat from my face. The air is static. For a moment, I swear a shadow glides over the sand-coloured earth, its hazy contours rippling over the deep green cypress tree giants that guard the perimeter of the villa, but when I blink and rub my eyes it is instead the tall, scorched grass reeds I see, their long, stretched shadows swaying innocently in the morning air, but each movement of the reeds vibrates in my eardrums. I take the heels of my palms, bang them to the sides of my head to try and dislodge the sound.
‘Maria?’
One more hit and the reed rush will be gone …
‘Maria? Maria, answer me.’
Bang. Done. ‘What?’
‘Did you install the tripwire system I told you about?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it’s not flagging anything up?’
‘Negative.’
‘Then what could have triggered the surveillance? Could there have been a system error?’
I consider this but am unconvinced. The CCTV shows no trespass entry, so why the alarm? My mind scans through every tiny detail, yet still concludes that all is as before—the fields are empty for several kilometres, the long gravel drive is free of foreign vehicles and the only car is an old black truck I use on the rare occasions I need to drive into the village in the fading evening sunlight for supplies. So why did the alarm sound? A colony of nerves collects in the depths of my stomach and my thumb taps my forefinger.
‘Maria, do you think you are in danger?’
My eyes flicker to the window then return to the red icon that still flashes on the laptop. ‘I cannot say with certainty until I run a complete check. But …’
Another shadow creeps across the cypresses again, this time more distinct, more clear.
More human.
A bolt of electricity shoots down my spine. ‘Someone is here.’
‘What?’
I grab my notebook, hide it behind a stack of books and run to the window, adrenaline immediately spiking as I slam my back against the wall and count to three.
‘Maria, have you seen someone?’ Balthus calls out, but I ignore him because if I shout now, if I utter one single word, whoever is out there will know my location.
Another shadow passes by. I track it. Breath heavy, heart rate way beyond acceptable, I count my steps as I drop to the ground, crawling to the opposite side of the window then standing again, acutely aware that I am unarmed, and yet instinctively knowing what to do. It scares me, always has. It scares me that if someone came in now, I am trained to not even need a gun to kill them.
Slowly, I inch my head up to the window ledge, one millimetre, two, three, until I reach the edge where the citrus scent from the groves beyond drifts in. If someone is standing by the outside of the wall, then, if I move one centimetre further, they will detect my presence. My cortisol peaks. Taking one bare foot forward, I raise my hands and step to the left, manoeuvring my body so it slips almost invisibly to the side, my brain instructing me, from some hidden training tactics manual, what to do. Prepare, wait, engage. For some reason, the phrase flicks into my mind. Prepare, wait, engage, and I realise, with revulsion, that I am recalling something the Project must have trained me on.
But, despite my disgust, I do it. I track the area, I pause, listen to every minute sound, to each tweet, rustle, bleat, creak, creating a full itinerary, a complete map of the exact scene before me until I am ready. Ready to engage.
I exhale, long, deep into my diaphragm as the sunlight dances across my eyelids, cheeks, onto my forehead, my neck, onto my bare sweat-drenched shoulders as, gradually, one millimetre after the other, I peer over the edge to the glazed window.
There is a face staring right back at me.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_31839db3-0896-5798-b0f5-cb74d332d71b)
Salamanca, Spain.
34 hours and 28 minutes to confinement
Dr Andersson stares straight back at me.
I yell out her name, alerting Balthus, still on the cell, as Dr Andersson ducks out of sight, running towards the far entrance where the kitchen yawns wide open, exposed to the fields and beyond.
‘Maria,’ Balthus whispers, ‘where is she?’
Panic. Sheer panic and chaos rise now as I look to the cell phone. I need it, cannot have any noise give away my location. Checking left and right, I count to three then, fast, drop down and crawl on all fours, scurrying forward, snatch the cell then scamper back, slamming my body into a corner, hidden by a tower of books and by the lost, cracked crates that scatter the room.
I catch my breath, try to think.
‘Maria? Talk to me.’
I gulp down saliva. ‘She is here,’ I whisper. ‘Dr Andersson.’
‘Oh shit. Oh shit. She’s with MI5 and MI5 want the Project gone. That can mean only one thing, right?’
‘She is here to kill me.’ The words hang in the air, a foul stench jarring against the fresh, fragrant green grass burst from the fields beyond. For a moment, I freeze, not wanting to acknowledge that my peaceful retreat, my quiet hideaway has been shattered.
‘MI5 want all connections to the Project to disappear,’ Balthus says. ‘Kurt—Daniel—he said that to you, right? That’s why he wanted you to stay with him. The Project did not want to disappear, they broke away and wanted you with them; MI5 wanted you gone. Maria, you’re right. Oh Jesus. She’ll kill you—she’s a trained officer.’
I scan the kitchen door—nothing. Yet. ‘I am trained also.’
‘Yes, but she, well, she’s not like you. She won’t hesitate to do what she’s been told.’
I open my mouth to respond to Balthus when I stop. The image of Raven floats to my mind. They will make you kill me. I have no recollection of what I actually did to her, no tangible evidence of whether I ever hurt the woman or not—no real idea of who I am, of what I am, in truth, capable of.
I glance to the window. It is open. Another bird sits there now on the wooden ledge, head jerking right and left. I can see its feathers soft and shining even from here, a brown and black sheen shimmering in the morning sun.
‘There is no sign of her,’ I say, turning to the phone. ‘She may have a map of the dwelling.’
‘How did they find you?’
‘What?’
‘MI5,’ Balthus whispers. ‘How the hell did they find you? You’ve been off radar.’
I think for a moment, uncomfortable. Have I made a mistake in my encrypted file tracking? In my proxy ISP emails? ‘It is possible they may have infiltrated some files if they have the right technical people to carry out the hack.’ My eyes glance to the laptop open on the crate. ‘I need to hide my notebook.’
‘What? Maria, get out of there!’
A clatter of crates rings from outside, followed by a shatter of glass. Every single part of me drops still.
‘What was that?’ Balthus whispers.
My eyes dart to the side, unable to answer Balthus as I focus, every part of me on fire, desperately pressing back the guttural fear that surges upwards. I need to move now, get to the laptop then leave, but if I go to the right, I’ll have to open the door to the bedroom where my bag is stored, yet if I turn to the left and head past the kitchen where Dr Andersson may be, then I have no chance of grabbing the laptop and notebook.
My instinct is to go into meltdown, to curl up into a ball and slam shut my eyes and plead for this all to go away, so hard is it for me to cope. Yet even as my brain shouts at me to run, gradually, like a rainbow appearing on a stormy day, something happens—a change, a simmering, butter-coloured difference: I become calm. A coolness crackles over me as, in my head, an instinctive knowledge takes control, and over and over in my mind one phrase shoots across the shadows of my thoughts: prepare, wait, engage.
Up ahead, the kitchen door, before closed, is now swinging open.
My hairs stand on end. ‘She’s here.’
‘What? Get … you …she …’ The phone crackles, Balthus’s voice dipping in and out of audio.
I grip the cell tight, telling myself that if I do so, maybe, somehow, I won’t be on my own.
Every muscle in me becomes rigid, ready, suddenly not caring about the illegal means in which I was trained by the Project, because, right now, I want to know it all, want desperately to remember every tiny detail of what I was taught, because it could save me. My eyes land on the lone toothbrush on the shelf by the wall.
The phone flickers again.
‘Maria? Maria, are you okay? Are you there?’
Balthus. The sound of his voice, the familiar curve of it floods me, for some reason, with relief.
‘I am here.’ I keep my volume low—there are sounds creaking from the kitchen.
Prepare.
I do a rapid assessment. I am wearing my running gear. I am fast, fit, but even when I calculate the time and trajectory at which I can sprint, I know that if Dr Andersson has a gun and surveillance of her own, I will never escape unless I can get to the bedroom.
‘Can you get out?’ Balthus says.
‘The bedroom door opens onto the shed where the truck is parked—it is my only safe route out.’
‘Good! Can you get to the door?’
I look to the kitchen, calculate the angles and trajectory. ‘I cannot determine if I can be seen.’
‘Well, is there another way?’
I think fast when my eyes, scanning the area for Dr Andersson’s face, see something, something long, thick, rusty—solid.
An iron bar by the cabinet, one I use for the fire pit outside, now sits discarded, tossed to one side after I got distracted from obsessing over tracking every tiny detail about the NSA scandal.
The kitchen door suddenly sways, a waltz, one, two, three, one, two, three, dancing in and out of the room. Is she here? I look to the iron bar then back to the door, and even though it screeches when it swings, too loud for my ears, for my senses, I slap the aggravation it causes aside because it offers me something, that unbearable noise: it offers me cover.
I drop like a stone. Flat to the floor, I scurry along the tiles so fast, so quick that by the time the second creak sounds, my fingers are handcuffed to the iron bar and, on the third creak, I am hauling it up and crawling back to where the window sits.
The cell phone crinkles and Balthus’s voice trickles in. ‘Where are you?’
‘Home.’
‘No, I mean … Oh, it doesn’t matter. Have you got the laptop and book?’
‘No.’
‘But you can get them?’
‘Yes.’ I glance to where they still sit. Right now, it is all a matter of timing.
Wait …
I rest my back for a moment against the cool wash of the wall and listen. My hands squeeze the iron bar as I assess where the danger source is, scanning my memory, determining what I should do next. For some reason, after two, three seconds pass, I find myself slowly coming to a stand. It surprises me, the move, makes my pulse rocket, but still I do it, slipping the cell phone into the band pocket of my shorts, watching as my feet, ghost-like, become taut, engaged, and before I can stop myself, before I can order my body to halt its course, I am holding the iron bar aloft and preparing to stride straight through the kitchen door.
Eliminate the threat.
‘Maria,’ Balthus says, ‘have you left yet?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘I can eliminate the threat.’
‘What? No. Just get the laptop and notebook and run.’
‘Negative. The best course of action is to—’ I see her. There, in the solitary cabinet, a waterfall of blonde hair reflecting in the glass panes in the wood. My chest tightens as panic shoots up. ‘She is here.’
‘What? Christ, Maria. Move!’
I go to run, to dart out of the way, but before I do, before my feet flip fast enough, the window behind me shatters, a clap of thunder in the silence. Shards of glass rain down onto my bare neck, shoulders, arms and legs, scissor splinters tearing apart the warm, suede air of the summer sun.
A bag is thrust over my head, plunging me into a sudden frightening, claustrophobic darkness. I thrash about, frantic to get out, and, as I lift my arms to try to rip the bag off my head, the iron bar slips from my grip and clatters to the tiles.
‘Maria? Maria?!’
The bag becomes tighter and tighter, and Balthus’s voice echoes from the phone, the sound of him reduced to just lost, helpless words drifting alone into the ripped, fractured room.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_6fd9f438-82a8-5ad7-9c90-617368e45585)
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
I wake up once more to find myself still alive.
Woozy, weary, my eyelids flicker as my sight takes in a panoramic view of the room, of the black, the stench. My muscles ache and throb, and in my head is a searing pain that shoots down my neck to the base of my back and stays there, pulsating, a globe of pins pricking my skin and bones. I curl my fingers into fists. The hallucination, the memory of it all floods back, the water, the feeling of drowning all fresh in my mind as if the shore were still at my feet.
‘Patricia?’ I croak. ‘Can you hear me?’
There is a cough. ‘D … Doc?’
‘Patricia?’ Hearing her voice makes me happy for one solitary, exquisite second and I let out a small whoop. ‘What is your status?’
A laugh ripples out, weak, vanilla, but there. ‘I love how—’ she halts, hacks up something from her throat— ‘I love how even in a shithole like this, you’re still so formal.’ She gags then hauls in a shoal of breath. ‘My leg’s killing me.’
‘Your leg is killing you?’ I panic, confused. ‘How can your leg kill you?’
‘No, no it’s not …’ She laughs again, but it does not sound like her, as if were altered somehow, down an octave. ‘Doc, it’s a phrase. Remember those? I taught you about them in prison. My leg’s not actually killing me—it just means it really hurts.’
‘Oh.’
Some time passes, but I don’t know how much. I drift in and out of consciousness, the blackness of the room throwing a blanket over everything, rendering each line of vision I try to establish useless. Slowly, though, after a while, an element of lucidity begins to return. It is small, the tide of it, the clarity that trickles back towards the shore, towards the solid certainty of the land in my mind, but nonetheless it is there and, for the first time since I awoke in this room, there is a grip of strength inside me.
‘Doc, where are we?’
I let out a breath, one controlled exhalation, then think. Location, logistics. How did we get here? If there are drugs in my system, then how were they administered and why? To transport me? But from where? And if so, does that mean Patricia has been drugged too?
For the next few moments, we remain silent. Patricia, lying on the floor at whichever side she is, sings some type of Irish lullaby, a song about the sea, and for ten seconds, I become calm, listen only to her melody, all whipped vanilla cream and light chocolate soufflé. I know it is wrong. I know that for her to be here means danger, being in this room trapped with me, yet still, as she sings, as her voice dances through the air, gliding through the gloom, I feel a slice of gratitude, of selfish thankfulness that my friend is near to me.
‘Hey, Doc,’ Patricia says after a while, after the serene song has faded into the dark air, ‘do you remember when we first met?’
‘Oh. Yes. It was a Tuesday.’
‘Was it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cool. And do you remember what you said to me?’
The image of the scene flashes in my mind. Patricia, tattoos of the Virgin Mary and a blackbird on her arm, me bending forward to analyse them without saying anything at all to Patricia until she spoke again to me, telling me I was ‘getting a little close.’
‘The first words I spoke to you were about your name,’ I say. ‘“Patricia. It is the female form of Patrick. Patrick means—”’
‘Means nobleman.’ She laughs, joining in the end of my sentence. There is a sigh, small, mewed, and I find myself breathing more easy at the sound. ‘Your face was all bruised, Doc, do you remember?’
‘Yes.’ A flash comes to me, an image of a fist to the face. I swallow.
‘Doc, I’m so sorry I brought it up. Are you … are you okay?’
‘Why do people think I am a freak?’
‘Huh?’
‘Why do they call me weird?’
She wheezes into the air. ‘I don’t know, Doc. People are idiots. They don’t always see that it’s okay just to be who we are. Last time I looked, we were all, by, well, our very human nature, I guess, different to each other. At what point does different turn into weird? Who the hell knows? My answer? It doesn’t. We just are who we are, and the quicker the world accepts that, the better a place it will be.’
I sit and think about what my friend’s words mean and how, when I am confused, she seems to cut through the bewilderment, and the clouds in my head part a little quicker and the cage that surrounds makes me feel just a little less isolated.
After a few moments Patricia coughs. ‘She worked for MI5, right, that Michaela?’
‘Yes. She did.’
‘Jesus, it’s fucked up shit.’ She pauses, the blackness of the room pressing down on us. ‘I’m glad I met you, Doc, even though we’re locked up now in God knows where—I’m glad I met you. Without you, I … I wouldn’t have got out on parole so fast—that Harry lawyer of yours helped me, before he … well, you know.’ She inhales. ‘I still think about my mum, how she was in pain. It was the right thing to do to, you know … to end her life. I’d do the prison sentence all over again if I had to, just so she wouldn’t have to suffer.’
‘Euthanasia. That is what you did.’
‘Yep.’ A sniff. ‘Yep.’
‘I am sorry you are sad,’ I say after a moment. ‘Thanks, Doc. Thanks.’
We sit, the two of us, in silence and thoughts where the blackness of the room covers us almost totally. My muscles ache. I try to roll my shoulders to move the blood in them, but when I do, each bone creaks and my neck at the back goes rigid.
‘Er, Doc, you there?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘I can see something.’
I forget my sore neck and jerk forwards. ‘What?’
‘On your hand, there—some light.’
I look down. She’s right. I can see my hand for the first time, illuminated by a globule of buttered light. Adrenaline shoots through my bloodstream as inch by inch, a rash of light spreads from my hand, to my wrist, shining on the rope tying me down, then it continues up my arm to the well on my inside elbow, until it shows me something that I did not at all register until now.
‘Doc, what is it?’
I blink, check once more, but there is no denying it, because I am a doctor—I have seen thousands of them.
‘Doc! What?’
I start to shake. ‘The drugs are in my cubital vein.’
‘The cubital … Wait, what?’
‘The cubital vein resides in the ante cubital area.’
‘What? Doc, you’ll have to explain in words I can understand, because you—’
The light shines bright. My panic hits a high. ‘There is a needle in my arm!’
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 20 minutes to confinement
The bag on my head has blacked everything out and all I can see through the pin-prick gaps of fabric are shards of sunlight and shadows of shapes. I try to get a handle on where Dr Andersson is, but the bag is so scratchy on my face that it is becoming distracting, and the urge to yank it off, claw at my face over and over until the heat subsides, is almost overwhelming, but when I reach up one free hand to pull, it is snapped back.
‘Move.’
I gulp in buckets of breath, sucking on the bag as she pushes me forward, my bare feet flopping over the tiles. Then, we stop. For a moment, there is complete quiet. I jerk left and right, disorientated as I try to pinpoint where Dr Andersson is, willing her to utter one more clipped accent of a word, but all I can hear is the sound of my own breath rushing in my ears as if a sea shell were being held to my head. I don’t move. My muscles scream out at me, itching in agony where Dr Andersson pinches my wrists and shoulders. And all the while my cell phone sits hidden in the band of my shorts.
There is a click of a phone, but it is not mine.
‘It’s me,’ Dr Andersson says now, her voice a punnet of plums, a rich slate board of cured meats.
Another voice speaks from what must be her cell. ‘Is it her?’ A male, speaking in pebbled English. Who is he?
‘Yes. It’s her.’ There is a tug on my wrist. ‘Stay still!’ I wince. ‘Her hair’s blonde now, she’s skinnier, but it’s still Martinez.’
‘Good. Good. Well, you know what to do. We have to put an end to the Project. And she’s it.’
My mind races. She’s it. She’s it. Nerves rise in me, immediate, urgent, but the will to survive, to forge something that will get me out of this situation is stronger than even my urge to curl up in a ball, moan and hide.
‘You cannot kill me,’ I say, spitting out fluff and fibres.
She slides a plastic tie around my wrists, pulls it tight then walks away, her boots slapping the tiles. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and then there is utter silence as she seems to go into another room. Where? The kitchen? I slam my head left and right to determine where Dr Andersson is, stagger back a little and count in my head, the numbers not only soothing me, but allowing me to analyse the time frame and give me a slice of clarity. I reach thirty, listen. Nothing. Just the starlings on the cypress trees in the fields and the light tidal rush of grass in the wind. My body relaxes a little, shoulders softening—and then I remember: my cell.
‘Balthus,’ I whisper.
There is a scratch of static and then one word. ‘Maria?’
His voice is low, quiet, but hearing it, knowing he is there makes the heat of the bag, the confusing disorientation of it all more easy to bear.
‘Maria, are you okay? My God, she’s going to kill you, you have to get out. Can you?’
‘I do not know.’ I blink, try to gauge any shapes from behind the fabric. I sniff the air. ‘Chanel No. 5.’
‘What?’
‘It is Dr Andersson’s scent and I can smell it. The scent was strong before, but now is less so. Judging by the distance now of the perfume, it means she is not in the room, yet she still remains on the property.’
‘Well get to another room then! Move out of there.’
He is right. It is a risk, but if I can get to the bedroom, I can run.
I begin to raise my arms, slow at first, the plastic ties digging in, then fast, projecting the direction in the dark my body will need to crawl when the scent of perfume suddenly becomes so strong it feels as if my head will explode at the sensory assault.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
She’s here! I go to grab the bag with my tied hands, desperate to run, but Dr Andersson hauls me back, slams my arms down.
‘No!’ I yell.
‘Just stop fighting. God, Maria.’
I kick out, but Dr Andersson’s grip on me is tight and she jerks her elbow into my ribs. My torso folds in like a pack of cards, my eyes watering, lungs burning as I heave the bag so hard into my mouth to claw some oxygen that I begin to suffocate. There is a fierce kick to my shin. It catches me on the bone, ripping a fire up my leg, expelling the fabric momentarily from my mouth allowing air to slip in. I lash out my tied fists, but she knocks my head, pinning me against the wall.
‘How long have you been tracking the NSA?’
‘Let me go.’
She exhales hard and shakes her head. ‘I’m tired,’ she says. ‘I’ve come a long way and my family are at home and I’m missing my daughter’s third birthday for you, for this, so just do—’ she shoves me hard against the wall then loosens her grip ‘—as I say, Maria. Jesus.’
I hear her stride away, and I catch short sprints of breath, listening, a wild animal caught in a trap. There is a rustling of paper, tearing.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Finishing what I was supposed to do when you were in Goldmouth.’
The tearing restarts and I realise: she is at my wall where my news articles and images sit, tearing them off from the plaster, tracking the data I have traced. I toss my head left and right, shout out, but another kick hits my shin, harder this time, felling me, knocking me clean to the floor where a punch reaches my stomach, a balled fist sinking into my abdomen. I yell, curl up as a stab of heat shoots through my whole body and amidst it all the cell phone slips further down and all I can think about is not the pain that roars through me but the cell phone, Balthus, and whether Dr Andersson has seen it.
I have to do something quick. Taking in a fractured breath, I roll what I think is to the left then hit something. What? The wall? A crate? I go rigid, adrenaline mixing into a lethal cocktail inside me.
‘She has everything here—news articles, the lot.’
She’s talking somewhere on her cell again. My eyes blink at lightning rate as I listen out for a clue, for anything. Is Balthus listening, too?
‘There is CCTV all over the place,’ Dr Andersson continues.
‘You’ll have to destroy all evidence,’ the man replies, voice breaking up, ‘erase any trace of her presence. We are at the agreed rendezvous point. Surveillance is pulled back so no ops can be tracked. It’s down to you now.’
A rendezvous point—does that mean her team are near? I try to think it through, but my brain is so overloaded by the bag and the adrenaline that it is almost impossible to be coherent, and if I—
There is a crash. The breaking of items, the pulling of drawers, throwing of books to the tiles—she is tearing apart my villa. I try to think fast and what to do and then I remember: my notebook.
Some time passes. I try to count the seconds, track the minutes, but pain from the kicks comes in waves, swelling then rolling back. After a while, crashing over, I hear her stride into what I think again is the kitchen and I take my chance.
‘Balthus?’
A second, two then: ‘Oh, thank God. What’s happening?’
I tell him fast then blink, try to see.
‘Maria, have you slipped the ties from your wrists?’
‘What? No. I have tried but it is secured with some type of—’ A smash. I wait, swallow, ‘—with some type of hard plastic that I am unfamiliar with.’
‘Hang on. Can you feel it, the plastic?’
I touch the tether with my fingertips. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘How small are the groves on the tether?’
I feel. ‘One millimetre depth.’
‘I think I know which type it is. If it’s just one millimetre, sounds like it’s the new restraints we sometimes used at the prison.’
A flicker of hope begins to burn. ‘Do you know how I can untie it?’
‘Yes … I think so.’
There is another smash from the kitchen. ‘Then tell me. Fast.’
After three, perhaps four minutes, Dr Andersson returns. Her boots sound lighter now on the tiles as if she has changed shoes and when she walks, the drift of her perfume is softer, more weak. She marches up to me and halts. The bag, cemented still to my head, scratches at my face but I try hard to ignore it, bite my lip, keep my back steady and wait.
For a moment, there is no movement. She is crouching in front of me, I think—I can just make out the outline of her body in front of me. But more than that, more than simply her presence, is the heat of her, of another person that catches me off guard and, oddly, the thought strikes me that this, now, is the first time in six months that I have encountered, with such geographical closeness, another human being.
‘Right,’ she says finally, ‘let’s do this, shall we? The day is getting on and so is time.’
The bag is whipped from my head and my skin, slapped by sunlight, stings as, for the first time, my eyes blinking over and over, I get a complete look at Dr Andersson as she looms now in front of me. Her blonde hair is tied up into a ponytail that slides down her back and rests down her spine all the way to her hip bones. Her forehead is high and sharp and peppered with freckles, and on either side of her straight nose sit two rose crescents for cheeks, each propped up by defined, prominent bone structure. I choke, spitting out the fibres of fabric from my mouth and throat.
‘What do you want?’
She offers me a smile, the one I remember from Goldmouth, with white teeth and scarlet, plumped lips. ‘I want to do my job and get home. I understand you’re on the harsh end of this, I really do, but MI5 wants the Project to end, which means I have to deal with you, end you.’ She takes out a gun. ‘I’m really very sorry, Maria. I always rather liked you.’
And then, with one bullet, she shoots me in the leg.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_687645b6-11b4-566b-bb44-16edf7b11e2a)
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
‘Doc, are you sure there’s a needle? Can you see it?’
‘Yes. But the light is fading again.’
The blackness has reclaimed the air, but, now I know the needle is there, I will my arm to move as much as it can, wriggling my fingers in an attempt to feel the point of the metal inserted into my veins. At first, nothing shifts and I feel so thirsty, am so desperately weak and tired that my mind begins to think it has imagined the entire thing.
And then it moves, there, the needle, in the crease of my elbow. Just one pull at my skin and veins.
‘Can you see it now?’ Patricia says.
‘No. I can feel it.’
‘Doc, you know what this means, right?’
I go to speak the words they are drugging me again but instead clam up, an instinct to yell out, to cry as loud and deep as possible welling up inside of me. This was not supposed to happen again. No, no, no, no.
‘Doc, are you still there?’
‘I ran away from them,’ I say after a moment, catching my short, shallow breath. ‘I hid. The Project and MI5 thought I was dead after prison. I thought I had escaped it all.’
‘Oh, Doc. Doc, I’m so sorry.’
For a moment, in the blackness, it feels as if everything has stopped, as if, here, now, all I have is collapsing on me, folding inwards never to push out again. It feels hopeless. I sit there, silent, scared, until, on the murky moisture of the air there is a rush of something.
‘Doc? Doc, you’re groaning. What’s the matter?’
I squint as hard as I can, frantically forcing my eyes to see something, anything in the dank, suffocating space as to my direct side, the rush sounds again, distinct now, a click licking the air as what must be a liquid begins its gentle whoosh. It is only when I hear again that my groggy brain engages in the intricacies of the noises around me and I realise with a stabbing clarity what is actually happening and what it means to me—what it means to us both.
‘What if they are drugging me, so they can transport me to another facility somewhere? If they do that, what will happen to you?’
‘I’ll be okay, Doc.’
‘What if they are intending to kill you? That is what the Project does—it kills those I love.’ My breathing begins to speed up in short, rapid intakes of oxygen as the worry inside me escalates.
‘Doc, Doc I can’t get to you, so look, it’s going to happen either way, so try to breathe through it. There, that’s it …’
I try so hard to focus on her voice, slam my arms against the rope on my wrists, desperate to escape, to run, hide, because what is charging forward now like a pack of hungry wolves makes my heart stop, makes every sweat gland on my skin scream out in fear. A hallucination.
‘Breathe, Doc. Keep breathing. Keep listening to me …’
A body with multiple heads, each one of them spinning 360 degrees, hurtles towards me. I scream. My nails scratch into the wood of the chair, legs kick out, but it does no good, and I know it must be the drug, be the liquid shooting inside my veins, but there is nothing I can do. I am trapped.
The monster is on me now, here in this room. I yell out my friend’s name, hear the distant scream of her voice, but I can’t reach her. The heads in the image sway, thorns in the breeze, and I hear a voice screech and realise it’s mine, because the heads, the faces on them—they are Mama and Ramon. My mother and brother.
‘Patricia, where are you?’ I yell.
‘I’m here, Doc. It’ll be over soon. Keep calm, okay? Keep breathing …’
I try to scramble back, tell myself that none of this is real, but still they come, the heads grotesque, twisted out of shape, all images in a fairground mirror, their mouths and eyes huge, each of them laughing over and over like two sick clowns. ‘Freak! She doesn’t understand,’ they sing. ‘She doesn’t understand, the freak.’ The children run beside them, children I recall from my school days, and they skip and they chant, Weirdo, weirdo, stinky nerdy weirdo. And I ask them what they mean, scream at them to tell me what is happening, but the heads, all of them, family, children, they simply look at me, at each other, and then, just as I think they’re going to disappear, they let out one roar of a laugh and, merging together, morph into a gun as tall as a car and shoot me, point blank, in the head.
My eyes fly open. I choke, claw for air, chest ripping, struggling as I look down at myself, at the black room, shaky, scared at what just happened.
‘Patricia, the drugs …’
‘Sssh. Sssh.’
I stutter, voice cracked and it takes a full minute for my body to settle, for the nightmare of the image of my mama and brother to slowly subside.
‘Doc, I’m here. It’s okay. It’s over. It’s over.’
I hear my friend, cling onto her voice as if I was sinking and she were my life raft in the sea. My brain recalibrates itself, but it is taking time and each movement of my eyes and hands and limbs makes the room sway and soar and whip up a pile of nausea in my stomach.
After a moment, after the heat has subsided, Patricia checks on me then asks me a question.
‘Doc, you know these hallucinations, right?’
‘Y-yes.’
‘Well, why’s it only happened now?’
My head throbs, throat runs red raw. Everything in the room still fades into black. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, if this needle, yeah, this drug is permanently in your vein, why’s it not causing you to trip all the time?’
I begin to think. What she is saying, what she talks about—my brain finally starts to shrug off the drug effects and engage, calculate.
‘Doc, I guess what I mean is,’ she says now, ‘what’s making the drug only come out in doses?’
And in the dark, in the foul mouldy odour, I sit and I think and I try to understand what is happening.
And how to make it all stop.
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 11 minutes to confinement
A searing heat instantly explodes in my thigh.
The room begins to sway, the white sun from the window blinding me, mixing with the pain to create a lethal cocktail, slow at first then faster, and when I look at Dr Andersson her smile appears distorted, as if someone has taken an axe to her head and sliced it clean down the middle. Nausea balloons as blood begins to spew from the wound.
I force myself to keep my hands were they are, fixed in the position behind my back, despite the instinctive compulsion to throw my arms forward and tend to the wound.
As the pain rips into me, I focus on the cell phone, still hidden behind me, knowing that Balthus has listened to everything that has happened. Sweat drains down my face. Ahead Dr Andersson proceeds to tear apart my laptop, pocketing my USB sticks, disabling every part of my surveillance system, all that I have been unable to hide now being destroyed, and it hurts me, every smash, every rip and pilfer—what she is doing feels as if it is physically hurting me, the way in which she is creating pure chaos out of my routine and order.
If she is destroying evidence, it will soon come to the point where she will find my notebook.
I have to stall for time. ‘I need to stem the blood flow from my leg,’ I say. ‘I need to press my hands into it. Untie me.’
She throws me a glance, hesitating for a moment, her eyes on my wound, and I think she may come to assist me, but then she checks her watch, shakes her head and returns to pulling apart my data.
My body is getting weaker. The blood from the wound is slowing a little, but still oozing and if I don’t get pressure on it soon, I may bleed out entirely and lose consciousness. My eyes spot the iron bar—it is still on the floor where it fell.
Dr Andersson comes over and crouches by me. ‘Maria? Can you hear me? I need you to tell me something—is the Project still functioning?’
‘You are MI5,’ I say, winching at a stab of pain, ‘you should have the intelligence for that answer.’
She sighs. ‘I’m looking for a file.’
My ears prick up. ‘What file?’
She glances around at the mess. My teeth clench at the chaotic sight. ‘There is a file hidden by a woman, a woman you knew, an asset in the field some time ago when the Project was more … useful. Do you know where the file is?’
Sweat trickles past my eyes. Raven, the dream. Does she know? ‘What is the woman’s name?’
‘Ah, now wouldn’t that be easy, if I had a name?’ She wipes her cheek dry of sweat. ‘I’m afraid that’s what I was rather hoping you could provide.’ I shift, careful not to dislodge the cell phone. ‘Do you know where the file is, Maria?’
‘No.’
She stands. ‘Then I’m sorry, but …’ She administers one swift kick to my injured leg. I cry out in agony.
‘B … B …’ My speech slurs. I must be losing more blood than I thought.
‘Where’s the file, Maria? Please, just tell me.’ She sticks on a quick smile. ‘Let’s just get this done as fast as we can, okay? I really don’t want to hurt you any more than I have to before, well … Just help me out here.’
My eyes narrow as I muster every inch of energy that is left in me, every shard of anger and fear and pain and loss, straight at her. ‘Bitch.’
Her smile and shoulders drop. She reaches into her pocket and withdraws a knife, black handle, solid. My brain fires into red alert mode, desperate to move as she slides off a leather sheath to reveal one small, sharp blade, seven centimetres long, the sleek silver of it shining in the summer sun, a gentle light dancing warm and carefree on the glide of the metal.
‘I’m sorry I have to do this, but you were supposed to die months ago.’ She kicks a piece of computer casing away. ‘You evaded our officers then, even dodged my bullet for you outside the court, but not now. I’m afraid we can’t risk the service being exposed. You understand—it’s this NSA scandal. MI5 don’t want the Project blowing up like NSA’s prism programme did. The Project was good while it lasted, but it has to end. The file I need—we’ll find it. I hear there’s been a run of break-ins and knife crime in this remote area.’ She glances to the upturned room. ‘I’m afraid this will have to look like a burglary that’s ended in a murder.’
I look at my leg, panting in air now. The limb is damaged, but the blood loss is finally halting. I can move my toes, but I don’t know if I can mobilise my body at all, but my hands are still behind my back and, for now, I need to keep them there …
I start to count.
One.
Dr Andersson takes a step forward.
Two.
She grips the knife tight in her fist, her eyes downturned.
Three.
I glance to the iron bar near on the floor.
Four.
Dr Andersson lunges forward. ‘I’m so sorry …’
Five.
I unleash my hands, tethers gone, Balthus having talked me through how to untie them, and, despite the blood loss, despite the odds stacked against me, and the chaos and the fear and the sheer sensory onslaught of the entire situation, I charge forward at Dr Andersson with every single drop of effort I’ve got.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_c2f64082-4109-5191-8880-d692ea31294e)
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 7 minutes to confinement
I ram my body hard straight into Dr Andersson.
She yells out, her torso toppling to the left, the knife slipping from her grip, clattering to the tiles. ‘Maria, stop! Please, don’t …’
She steadies and I think she is going to recover, her hand reaching to a gun behind her jacket, and so fast, without thinking, I haul my whole body up and head butt her in the face.
She reels back, a sharp crack indicating her nose breaking, blood spurting, the fall dislodging her gun and causing it to slide under a table.
I move quick, drag my body up, the bullet wound in my leg throbbing.
‘Maria,’ Balthus calls from the cell. ‘What’s happening?’
I survey the damage fast, the slump of Dr Andersson’s slight body, her twisted limbs.
‘She is alive,’ I say. ‘Injured.’
‘I don’t give a damn about her—just get the hell out of there. Get your notebook and bag and run!’
But my eyes catch sight of my ordered articles and photographs and sketches ripped on the floor pressed under Dr Andersson’s mashed up body, blood seeping from her ear. For a moment there is a quiet, macabre eeriness to it all as the summer sun glows through the windows, warm and serene over the utter devastation in my villa. I slap a hand to the wall, steady myself, everything spinning a little as I will my brain not to melt down at the chaos. One, two, three. One, two, three. I play out a waltz of numbers in my head, draw in a long breath then, looking up, acknowledge where my notebook is and, glancing at Dr Andersson’s splayed limbs, stagger towards the fallen gun.
Balthus crackles on the line. ‘Are you on the move?’
‘Yes.’
I step over a broken laptop, and stop. There is a torn photograph of my papa lying discarded amidst the mess. It is the one of him with his arm around me, except the picture now only shows me with Papa’s arm on my shoulder, and does not show his face or the rest of him, his body ripped off and in two. The sight of the photograph instantly bothers me.
‘Papa.’ I scan the floor, frantic. ‘Where is the other half?’
‘What?’
‘The photograph of Papa,’ I say to Balthus, twisting left and right, crouching down despite the searing pain in my leg, and clawing through the tattered paper that litters the floor. ‘She tore it in two. Papa is missing.’
‘Maria, you’ve no time for this.’
But I keep looking, ignoring Balthus, ignoring the sting in my leg, led on instead by the urge to stay connected to my father in any way I can. I lift up a heap of shredded newspaper then drop it, confetti pieces floating in the sun. ‘He taught me not to flinch,’ I say to myself. ‘Papa.’
‘Maria? Maria, I know this is hard for you, but you don’t have time for this. If MI5 don’t hear from Dr Andersson, they’ll come to the villa. And if they know where you live, chances are the Project do too.’
Yet it’s as if his words have no meaning. All I can obsess on is Papa’s picture.
‘Maria!’
I lift up files. I throw torn shreds of NSA articles and images around until the air becomes thick with paper and no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I tell myself to leave, I can’t, not without Papa, not without seeing his arm around me, safe, secure, knowing I’m not on my own, because I don’t want to be on my own, not really, not like this for the rest of my life. And then, as I turn, there, among the broken pieces of laptop plastic, I see him, Papa, his eyes shining bright as if he were still alive, warm, breathing next to me.
‘Maria, have you got it?’
‘Yes!’
I grab the picture, thrust it to my chest and standing, happy, so happy I have him close to me, even if it’s only like this.
‘Good. Okay, Maria. Now you need to run. Run now, yes?’
‘Yes. Yes.’
I turn, checking the room, glancing to Dr Andersson’s body on the floor, then, grabbing my notebook fast from where it lies half-hidden by a stack of half-toppled books, I go to hobble to my bedroom, to the hidden floor compartment containing my emergency bag. But, as I reach the door, there is an almighty scream that fills the room, piercing my ears.
Dr Andersson flies at me. ‘No!’
Her hand grabs me as she smacks me against the wall, the picture of Papa floating from my fingertips, notebook flying to the left. She slams me against the wall again, blood instantly spurting from my wound. Flipping me over, she digs her knee into my chest, pinning me down, but my right arm slips free and, crunching my fingers into a fist, I turn, punch her hard in the nose. There is a loud crack. Her head spins back, hand slaps to her face as blood spurts, a crimson slit sliced into her skin.
I shift faster now, heart racing, counting the entire time to focus, my body rolling away, quicker now, Balthus from the cell shouting at me over and over again to get to the door, to get out, but before I do, there is a scraping on my leg where the bullet wound throbs.
I look down. Dr Andersson has dug her nails into my skin, clawing at the injury and she is trying to reach my cell phone. ‘Just … Maria, don’t do this …’
Heat rockets up my leg and I scream out, stumbling forward, attempting to get to a stand, but my knees wobble and I tumble, my torso toppling forward, body a felled tree, slicing my scalp on the corner of a chair.
Blood splatters in my eyes, disabling my sight, the heat of it, the ooze cloaking my face. My hands flap in front of me as I frantically try to see, attempt to stagger to safety, but Dr Andersson gets to me before I can run. The blood clears and my sight kicks in, but now she has an arm locked around my neck, her hands grasping for my cell phone.
‘Who are you speaking to?’ she yells. ‘Who?’
I smack her hands away and then, spinning round, see it: her gun—under the table where it landed.
And now both our eyes are on it.
Quick, slick, she throws me to the side, lurching for the weapon, my shoulder slamming into the stone floor. She kicks me hard in the stomach and I reel back, the agony of it engulfing me, spiking into my consciousness.
‘Jesus Christ, Maria, why? Stay fucking still.’ She spits out some blood, looking round for the gun. ‘I didn’t want to fucking do it like this.’
But I can’t let her get the gun, can’t let her get to my cell and to Balthus. And then I spot my torn Papa photograph, lying lost next to ripped pictures of Mama, Ramon, Patricia and Harry, and a sudden rage courses through me, one phrase slamming into my mind—prepare, wait, engage.
I glance once more to the photographs and I fly. I fly at Dr Andersson and punch her throat, straight on the windpipe, and her whole body instantly folds, collapsing in with a strange gurgle as her hand clutches her skin. I scramble up, eyes scanning the floor. The gun. Where is the gun?
‘Stop!’ Slam. Dr Andersson’s whole body lands on me. I stagger backwards at the weight of her, smothering me almost, impossible to breath, horrified that she is on me, touching me, and I hit out, my legs kicking at her shins, but it does no good. She topples me, my cell phone almost slipping away.
‘Maria!’ Balthus yells.
My face smacks the tiles, bones crunching as she knees me in the chest. Air shoots out and it feels as if I am drowning, as if every atom of oxygen is wheezing from my thorax as now Dr Andersson’s knees pin my torso down, her legs wedged into my skin.
‘So it’s the governor you’re in touch with,’ she says, spitting to the floor. ‘I know his voice. Maria, it’s over. Don’t drag everyone into this.’
She shifts to the right, blowing air on her face where her ponytail now hangs in strings of sweat on her face, and as I try and jerk my head out of her way, I see a glint. The bar. The iron bar.
I move fast, automatic. I whip my hand forward and with one swift movement, stretch my arm, grab the bar and, using all the force I can find, smash it over Dr Andersson’s head.
Her grip immediately loosens, her fingers go slack. She slips to the side, a slow groan sliding from her mouth and I waste no time. Pushing her off me, I scramble back, crawling on all fours, my eyes darting left and right until they finally land on the gun, wedged now into the wall. I grab it, chest heaving, and, staggering to a stand, point it at her.
‘My baby—’ she says, eyes rolling in her head. ‘It’s her … birthday …’ Blood loops round her ear now, pooling in the well inside it, and she drifts in and out of consciousness.
I pause at the sight of her, my brain stuck, torn between helping and running.
‘Maria?’ Balthus. ‘Are you okay?’
‘She is injured. I should help her.’
‘What? No. No! Is she down?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then go. Go!’
Swallowing, unsure what to do, but knowing Balthus is right, I secure the cell phone, turn, then, throwing one last glance at Dr Andersson’s broken body, I hobble away as fast as I can. But as I drag myself across the room somehow, Dr Andersson crawls up, fast and unexpected, catching me slap at the ankle.
‘Give me … the gun,’ she yells.
She fells me, topples me to the ground, clambering to my chest, fingers finding my throat where they squeeze hard. I choke, gasp for air. My arms stretch out as far as they can, the gun still in my fingers, but it is slipping now, teetering on the tips. My legs flap, nails scratch at her as I try to wrench her off me, but she presses harder, her hands nearly at my fingers now where the gun seesaws, teetering between life and death.
Tears roll down her cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry. I hate doing this.’
I feel myself begin to asphyxiate and it is hard to retain a grip on anything at all, the room swaying, my eyes bulging, about to explode. I look round at the torn articles on the floor, at the images of the friends and family that, without ever telling them, I do love. I thrash, yell, but Dr Andersson just digs in harder, strength coming from somewhere, her blue eyes fixed on mine, the sun shining on us and I feel it, there, its heat, and my mind goes to Papa, to his face and eye creases and his complete and utter acceptance of me for who I am.
I have almost no oxygen reserves left.
‘Ssssh,’ Dr Andersson says to me now. ‘It will all be over soon. Sssh.’
A warmth spreads over me, trickling at first then rushing in as, one after the other, faces swim before me—Balthus, Patricia, Harry, Ramon, Mama. And seeing them, watching the contours on their expressions, the grooves and lines, I start to believe that when I die, I will no longer be lonely and awkward and hunted down, but happy and free and regarded as normal.
‘Maria? Maria, fight her!’
Balthus? His voice swims into my head.
‘Maria,’ he shouts, ‘don’t let them win! Don’t let them win!’
His voice, hearing it—it sparks something within me, something that takes hold of the last flicker of a flame inside me. My fingers wriggle. Slow then picking up speed, I find, from somewhere, a fight, a strength and, instead of letting it slip from my hand, I begin to clutch the gun until my knuckles turn white and my breath grows strong. ‘Prepare. Wait,’ words whisper in my head. ‘Engage.’
I force myself to look straight at Dr Andersson and, gripping the gun as hard as I can, I make myself focus, make myself do what I am alarmed I’ve been trained to do, what I must do to survive.
I twist my torso.
‘No!’ Dr Andersson yells, eyes wide at the sight of the gun. ‘No. No … Her …her name is Briony. She’s three today. Three. I … I can’t let you get away. I can’t let you stop me.’ And then she goes to press down harder on my mouth, squeezing out the air.
And so I grip the gun hard.
And I shoot.
Chapter 10 (#ulink_1440fee2-4074-5fa8-8c1a-a881ec17f6b6)
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
Patricia is singing again. The song drifts in and out of my head as if in a dream, the melody and lyrics soothing, rocking me into a state of peace and calm as I think about the drug in my arm, the hallucinations.
The heat in the room appears to have increased. Sweat now drips from my body and while I know I am clothed, for the first time I begin to think about what I am wearing. Can I rip any of it off to cool me down?
‘Can you see me?’ I ask Patricia. ‘I want you to tell me what I am wearing.’
She stops singing and sighs. ‘Doc, you know I can’t see you. You know, really, that that’s impossible.’
‘It is not impossible.’
‘Yep. It is.’
Unsure what she means, I look to my arm and to the needle, to my body, my clothes. I can see nothing. The weak light that was there before has now gone, leaving a dark, dripping heat in its place, and every movement of my muscles is heavy, thick with fatigue.
We remain for a while as we are. Now and then Patricia will talk about how we may have arrived here, where the Project are, if they are watching us, but each time one of us attempts to conjure any significant recollection of our journey here, our minds come up blank.
Four, perhaps five minutes of silence pass when there is a sudden sound, the first we have heard at higher volume since we awoke in this dank, foul place.
‘Hey, Doc, can you hear that?’
‘Yes.’
It is there in the air—a ticking, a soft put, put.
‘That sounds like the stand thing, you know, the drip they had me hooked up to when I was in the hospital ward at Goldmouth.’
I listen to her words. The drip. The one she was hooked up to after she tried to commit suicide in prison. Put, put. Put, put. She is right. My brain begins to tick, firing now at the possibility of the hope of some kind of answer.
‘How close do you calculate you are to the sound?’ I ask, sitting up, alert.
‘Dunno. I’m not as hot on this maths stuff as you are. Say a metre away, something like that?’
‘No. That cannot be correct. That would mean that you are closer to the sound than I am.’
‘Well, yeah. Of course.’
‘That does not make sense.’
‘Doc, nothing makes sense in here.’
Put, put.
‘There!’ Patricia says. ‘I hear it again.’
The clicking sound hovers in the air now, hanging near us.
‘Doc, do you think, like, it’s got something to do with your arm, that sound?’
‘No. It is not …’ I stop, think. She is right—of course she is right. The needle. A drip. I whip my head to the side. ‘Have you got your bracelet on?’
‘Huh? Yeah, my mam’s one. Why?’
‘Twist your wrist.’
‘Uh, okay.’
‘Are you doing it?’
‘Yes. Hold your horses.’
‘Horses?’
Patricia moves her wrist, and at first nothing happens but then, slowly, a tiny shaft of light appears.
‘There must be some small bit of light. It is now reflecting on your bracelet. Keep moving your wrist.’
The bracelet reflection affords a shred of brightness across my body and I begin to look. At first, nothing appears, only a snapshot of my limbs, my knees, legs, but then, as Patricia’s arm moves some more, it happens. Inch by inch, upwards, light slithering towards my arm.
‘Can you see anything yet, Doc?’
There is a glint where the needle pierces my vein then it fades. ‘Move your arm again.’
‘This is hurting now, Doc.’
As the weak light returns, the glint comes again, stronger this time and, gradually, like clouds parting in the sky, what lies underneath is revealed.
I gasp.
‘What, Doc? What is it?’
I shut my eyes, open them, but it is still there.
‘Huh? What? What can you see?’
Sweat slices my head, confusion, deep-rooted fear. ‘There is a drip.’ I narrow my eyes, desperate to see anything I can. ‘It is … It is hooked up to a metal medical stand.’
‘I told you.’
‘There is a tube and it is … it is linked to the drip bag.’
‘That must contain the drugs.’
‘Yes, and …’ I stop, every muscle in my body freezing rigid.
‘Doc?’
Suddenly, everything makes sense. The put, put sound. Why the hallucinations only come in phases. Why I cannot move my arms.
‘There is a timer,’ I say after a moment.
‘What?’
I look back to the device, to the stand and the drug bag. ‘The drugs are being administered through a controlled, preset timer.’
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
33 hours and 54 minutes to confinement
Dr Andersson’s body drops sideways, falling on top of me.
I push her off and choke, her body thudding to the floor, arms slapping to the tiles, and for some reason I notice for the first time that her fingernails are painted crimson, hanging now in long, sleek shapes.
I stare at them, cannot pull my eyes away, my hands rubbing at my throat over and over, skin red, sore, every atom in me screaming for oxygen. A moan escapes my lips.
‘Maria?’ Balthus yells. ‘What’s happening?’
I stare at Dr Andersson and her fingernails, and I moan again and again, rocking gently now, back and forth. There is a small round circle one centimetre in diameter in her forehead, a single line of blood trickling from it, same colour as the lacquer.
‘She is dead,’ I say to Balthus.
‘Oh, Jesus.’
A damp circle the size of a dinner plate spreads on Dr Andersson’s jacket. It drips to the tiles, painting them red, and at first, paralysed by the sight, I cannot understand why there is a hole in her head while it is her shirt that oozes. Finally, I drag my eyes away from the growing pool on her chest as, slowly, the reality of what I have done begins to sink in.
‘I shot her twice.’
‘Maria, it’s okay. Maria?’
I drop the gun, crawl over, quick, and without thinking, roll the body over. There is a deep red stain shrouding the dark T-shirt on her chest where the bullet entered, shattering her rib cage.
‘No,’ I say, a whisper at first then louder. ‘No, no, no!’ I shout as my hands grope Dr Andersson’s torso, desperate to stem the blood loss, to close up the gaping hole that has ripped open her skin, bones, heart and head.
‘Maria? Maria, talk to me.’
‘I killed her.’
‘Okay. Okay, I know, I know, but it’s okay.’
I look at her breathless body, at my hands soaked in her blood. ‘No. It is not. Killing is not okay. It was her daughter’s birthday today. Oh my God. Oh my God, oh my God.’
Then, barely realising what or why I am doing it, I find myself slapping Dr Andersson’s face, rattling her shoulders, frantic for her to open her eyes, wake up.
‘Who else has the Project trained?’ I yell at her. ‘Who was Raven? Who was she? Why did you just not refuse to come here? Then you would still be alive! You would still see your daughter! Daughters need their mothers.’ Fat tears fall down my face. ‘They need their mothers.’
‘Maria!’ Balthus yells. ‘Stop!’
But I shake Dr Andersson’s dead body again and again, an anger I don’t understand surging inside me, gripping me tight at the chest, making me pant, making my eyes blur and my head drop. I give her body another shake, her skull flopping to the side, when something falls out of the inside of her jacket.
I halt, pick it up. It is a piece of paper, pink, confidential, A4 in size. Slumping back, I wipe snot from my face and peel open the paper. What I see shocks me to the core.
‘It … it is my family.’
‘What?
I slap the paper to the floor, smoothing it out as what I see sinks in. ‘There is a file containing pictures of you, Mama, Ramon and Patricia.’
‘What? Where was it? With Dr Andersson?’
‘Yes.’ My hands shake.
‘What does it say?’
My eyes scan it all, not believing what I can see, that they would do this, say this—believe this is right. ‘There is one word next to your name and to Patricia’s name,’ I say after a moment.
‘What?’
My eyes swim, head struggles to accept it. But finally, I say it aloud. ‘Locate.’
I drop the paper to the floor as my limbs, back, legs begin to shake uncontrollably. ‘They are looking for you. They know you are both my friends. They realise you know about the Project.’
‘And MI5 want all connections to the Project eliminated.’ He exhales hard and heavy, and when he next speaks, his words are low and slow. ‘Look … Look, Maria,’ Balthus says. ‘I know this is … this is not a good situation. But … but right now, you have to focus. You heard what Dr Andersson said before—she was looking for a file. It could be the same file you remembered in your flashback.’
Slowly, I pick up the paper again, eyes glancing to the blood, to the crimson nail-polished fingers. I open it up, the paper. I open it up and force myself to look at it again. ‘They want to monitor you all.’
‘Okay. Hang on a second. Let’s look at this one step at a time. First off, we have to get you out of there. The Project will trace you any time soon. And if you go now you could find the file, figure out where it is. Maria, that file, its contents, it could stop it all.’
He halts now, his breathing only drifting on the phone line. I think about his words, look again at the images of the people I love. My jaw clenches. ‘You are all in danger because of me.’
‘No,’ Balthus says, immediately. ‘No. This is because of the Project, because of MI5. But you can help. You can do something.’ He pauses. ‘Maria, you can stop it. You find the file, you end the Project, you end MI5’s involvement in it—you end it all.’
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Nikki Owen
No matter how fast you run, the past always catches up with you
A gripping and tense thriller’ Heat
A must have’ Sunday Express
Dr Maria Martinez is out of prison and on the run.
Her mission? To get back to the safety of her family.
Little does she know that this might be the most dangerous place of all
Don’t miss the second in Nikki Owen’s electrifying Project trilogy, perfect for fans of Nicci French and Charles Cumming.
NIKKI OWEN is an award-winning writer and columnist. As part of her degree, she studied at the acclaimed University of Salamanca – the same city where her protagonist of Subject 375 and The Killing Files, Dr Maria Martinez, hails from. Born in Dublin, Nikki now lives in Gloucestershire with her family.
To Brian – this one’s for you, Mr Blue Sky.
Acknowledgements (#ulink_6d02d248-8289-5af5-9a2d-eb6794a850d2)
Thanks to everyone in getting The Killing Files out into the world. Thanks to Sally, my Editor, to Cara, Alison and all the team at HQ Harper Collins. Also thanks to Adam, my agent (cheers, A!) and all the stellar PFD team. Big up to the supportive, beautiful book bloggers and Facebookers who make this such fun. And super shout out (once again) to Kelly Duke for reading this novel when, well, it wasn’t really one, and to my mum too, for giving it the thumbs up. Hugs to Marg and Brian for being the best friends and neighbours – Bri, you will always be in our hearts. And to Barry and Wendy for being the most amazing parents in law (and gardeners …) But, as ever, my biggest thanks has to go to my beautiful little family – Dave, Abi and Hattie, whom, without, I could never, ever write. DJ – you and me against the world, babe.
And, finally, to you now, holding this book – yep, you – thank you for reading The Killing Files! Without you, this book lark simply can’t exist. I am mighty, mighty grateful.
Table of Contents
Cover (#u351ec5ac-b74c-5398-901f-985aa540c416)
About the Author (#u665ef698-d644-529e-a3f1-23667821f7a4)
Title Page (#u4d90b565-c0a5-54ef-9444-af1c3facf474)
Dedication (#u7045e411-7d09-51be-bd40-6d92beb7bee6)
Acknowledgements (#udff32729-06d6-5bd6-b1d1-b32ba07eeef2)
Chapter 1 (#ua5775ffa-3b68-50dc-8a36-1bae0085988e)
Chapter 2 (#u2095b24d-b3f9-5ddc-acc7-f998f21577dd)
Chapter 3 (#ufc17f977-eecd-5668-b4ad-e343f8fd000a)
Chapter 4 (#udd18e7c8-178a-5d45-88d2-468ce1a106a1)
Chapter 5 (#uc2b1f6b6-61d3-5049-a353-5f6c501f6a92)
Chapter 6 (#u167b8c56-88fd-5d3c-b33d-01ddbdc231a0)
Chapter 7 (#uaacc3e00-a9dc-51ba-a1ed-a4b79057c596)
Chapter 8 (#u1984cca3-1278-5921-85bc-3a2c3b5bf240)
Chapter 9 (#u74b8fcac-d72c-577f-bd0f-8000a9664dde)
Chapter 10 (#u79d6e9c6-8308-5456-b52f-ffddfe998799)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_c8738ac0-c616-56bb-be7e-2000f279a214)
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
The room is dark, damp. I cannot see properly. I have been caught, that much I know, but I am unsure by whom. The Project? MI5? Someone else? I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how I am going to escape.
I lift my head but it feels heavy, a loaded sack filled with potatoes. I inch it back. My breathing is hot, the air a woollen blanket on my face, thick and scratchy, and, as my sight begins to adjust to the dark, slowly, like a curtain being lifted on a stage, I start to see small slivers of solid items. Where am I?
A room. I think that is what this is, but I am unsure. Then what? A cell? Prison confinement again? But I was found innocent. I am free, I tell myself. I am not guilty, have not killed anyone, yet even when I say the words to myself, for some reason, they don’t seem right, instead feel out of place, a code reassembled in the middle.
One breath, two. My eyes begin to adjust to the gloom and my sight registers small globules of shapes. The corner of a wall, the shard of a window—snapshots only of a whole picture. There is a seat of some sort, a table perhaps, but beyond that, nothing. The air is too black for me to take an inventory, the atmosphere sticky tar turning all the soft daylight into hot, putrid night as adrenaline starts to spurt out into my blood creating short, sharp alerts. I am not safe here.
It is then I hear it: the rustle of movement.
‘Who is there?’ My voice clicks with a cotton bud dryness, and I wonder how long it is since I last drank water as my brain rapidly attempts to calculate timings and bearings and any scrap of geolocation memory it can cling on to.
‘Who is there?’ I repeat, yet there is no answer, only darkness. A worry rises inside me, but I press it back, not wanting to panic, not wanting to melt down here and now.
Focus. Breathing. I can hear someone breathing, there, on the whisper of the air. I inch my eyes left, sensing what exists but almost not wanting to acknowledge it. Have I put them there, whoever it is? Is that what this is—a hit? Did I try to kill them? I didn’t murder the priest, but I doubted myself then, in court, at the trial. And then a horrific thought strikes. What if I have been on an operation for the Project and this is the result? A body on the floor beside me, injured by me and waiting to die. A killing I may later have no memory of.
My torso remains as rigid as possible, not daring to move. How did I get here? I think hard, connect my cognitive thoughts, but no matter how much I try, nothing shakes, as if my memory has been erased.
As if who I am doesn’t really exist.
The person’s breathing is shallow now, gravelled and raspy. I know what bleeding out sounds like—the sharp, slicing quality of oxygen intake—but this is not it. And yet, there is an urgency to the breath, a desperation that I cannot place, but it makes no sense why. I am a doctor so should know the signs, but still I cannot place them. What is wrong with me?
I blink three times and try hard to concentrate, to return my brain to function mode, focusing again on the room for clues. The edges. They are shrouded in black, but the window above affords a slip of light that plops in a puddle to my left.
It is then I see it—an arm—and a gasp slips from my mouth.
I track the limb, milky-white skin on a long, limp wrist, different to my own arms, my muscled, tanned ones, with bitten nails and dirt in the creases. Even in this murky room, I can tell that this arm is clean, scrubbed.
I keep all my attention on the body part and attempt again asking who they are, instinctively counting the time as I wait. The numbers sooth me as seconds rack up in twos, the action slowing, at least for the moment, the anxiety that is building inside, but when I ask again who is there and no one answers, a moan slips from my lips. The urine-coloured light has all but disappeared, yet somehow I start to see something slithering into view. A long, T-shirted torso. An elegant, white neck. A skull.
A face.
A scream pierces the air and I am shocked to realise it is mine. I catch my breath, frantically slap my hands up and down, straining to thrash my body forward from the seat, but still my pulse flies. Because there is a face, a face staring back at me, a face I know. Shaven hair, sharp cheekbones, gapped teeth and pool-blue eyes, eyes that even in this tar-black air, shine. My hearts races, my chest tightens. How can she be here? How have I let this happen? We are all in danger now, all of us.
‘Doc.’ The voice comes from the head on the floor.
I slam my eyes shut, not wanting to believe what is here, reciting an algorithm in a vain attempt to calm myself.
‘Doc, it’s okay.’ The voice is a cotton sheet flapping in the breeze, a rustle of green grass. ‘Doc, I’m okay.’
My eyes open. One millimetre then two, gradually allowing my sight to do the work my brain does not want to understand. My friend is here. My only friend in the world is lying crumpled on the floor beside me.
‘Patricia?’ I say, testing out the word. ‘You are out of Goldmouth prison.’
‘Yes, I got out on parole, remember? Two months after you.’
Confusion, worry. They spin round my head fast. ‘You are here. Why are you here?’
‘Because they have us,’ she says, the Irish lilt to her voice still there as I remember, but scratched now, torn. ‘The Project have caught up with us. You can’t hide from them any more.’
The Project have found me—that’s why I have woken up here in this room. They have entrapped us and there is only one way it will end: someone will die.
‘We have to get out. Tell me your status—are you injured?’
I listen for her reply, but there is only silence.
‘Patricia?’ Yet there is no answer, no words back to me as I continue to repeat her name over and over again in the gloom. When I finally stop calling for her, I flop back, flooded with fear, fear of myself, of who I am. Because it’s me—I have done this. I have caused this to happen. I slam my head back and back again, crying out, yelling into the thick, black air. Why can’t I recall how I got here? Why don’t I recognise where I am? Why?
Why?
One solitary, fat tear slides down my cheek. ‘Do not die.’ The words slip out, silent, unbidden. ‘Please, do not die.’
My eyes search for Patricia’s body, for an arm or a head, anything that can reassure me she is okay, that my friend is okay.
‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.’
I stop, haul in oxygen, listen for signs of life, but in the ten long seconds that next pass, the only sound audible in the thick, foul air is the rasp of my own breath.
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 59 minutes to confinement
The sun is blinding me. I kick off my running shoes, prop my hand on my forehead and, squinting towards the distance, listen to the morning as the mountains wake up. Clicking cicadas, dry summer grass rustling in the breeze, pregnant lemon and orange trees groaning under the weight of fat fruit spritzing citrus into the air, the distant bleat of a mountain goat—all the sounds that are now familiar to me, part of my daily routine. The security camera lights surrounding my hidden villa glow green, six lenses in total covering every angle of the property. The Salamancan earth is slowly rising.
I pick up my coffee cup, drain it then pad inside, counting my steps where the terracotta tiles are cold on my soles. One, two, three, my feet move forward until twenty-four arrives and I halt at the sink, my eyes watching everything. I set down my cup, pick up a white cloth and dry last night’s dishes: one plate, one knife and fork and one small wine glass. Opening a metal cupboard, I slot the crockery away, all of it easily fitting in, the only occupants in the large, spotless space.
I scan the rest of the kitchen, returning everything to its place. One pan, one white jug with a scratch seven millimetres long on the inside of the handle, one metal pot, small, for milk to warm at night when the sun rests and the night blanket covers the sky where the stars switch on and glow until morning. I count them all and document them in my head and, satisfied all is correct and present, I close all the cupboards and, stretching up my arms high into the air, recite the words I have spoken now every day since I came here to hide from the Project and MI5.
‘I am Dr Maria Martinez. I am thirty-three years old.’ My fingers ripple in the warm air, a gentle wisp of a breeze drifting in through the small open window, its wooden frame cracked yet solid. ‘I am innocent of murder. I am free.’
I stretch my hands further into the void, my muscles elongating into the empty space around me as I go through my routine to remind myself who I am, because if I did not tell myself, I fear I would be lost entirely. My hands fan out and my muscles are taut and strong, and, when I twist towards the glass door of the oven, my reflection stares back, green contact lenses patched over brown eyes, black hair dyed platinum and sawn in clumps to my small skull, the flesh on my face and limbs deep and sun-brown, lines thick and grooved and ingrained into my worn skin and elbows and ankles and knees.
‘I am Dr Maria Martinez. I am thirty-three years old,’ I repeat, inhaling, my back arching downwards and my arms reaching forwards so my palms flatten on the floor, the tiles cold on my skin, tiny sharp jolts reminding me I’m alive. ‘I am innocent of murder. I am free.’
The yellow morning rays shine warm on my face. I close my eyes and I breathe it all in, moving, exhaling, saluting the sun, feeling my body work as one with my mind as I repeat my chant over and over, losing my thoughts to the repetitive medicine of it, allowing my brain to soften itself of the millions of cognitive connections automatically made every second of the day and night. I bend my knees now, toughened skin touching down on the terracotta as I crease my spine upwards towards the ceiling, eyes still closed as I battle in my head with the pictures that sway before it, pictures of the loud, excrement-filled prison I was kept in, of the court trial and the beatings and the discovery of the Project entire, the shredded sordid secrecy. I breathe, try to let the thoughts pass by me as my spinal cord folds inwards now, rippling the muscles of my torso up and down, feeling them creak and stretch after the running outside, shorts riding up and itching my skin, vest top stuck to me with sweat, and even though the irritation of it is sharp, I continue focusing, letting my brain be even a little bit at ease with who I am, all the while chanting, reminding, never ever forgetting, because without conscious thought, what would we be?
Ten minutes pass in the early morning sun of my movements across the tiles and in the empty air, and, when I am ready and complete, I stand, exhale and open my eyes. The sun shines into them and I blink as my sight adjusts to the hazy film of the day that yawns out ahead of me, my mind registering with a glow of satisfaction that there are no people to attempt to converse with, no social games for me to decipher how to play. I turn to the sink. I extract one small glass from the cupboard to my left and, filling it with water, drain the contents, and mouth refreshed, rinse out the glass, and return it to its home.
When I am certain all is in its place, I wipe dry my palms on the back of my running shorts and pad towards the lounge, grateful for my daily routine, for each phase of it I have created. Every day since I left prison and came here to hide from the Project and MI5, after my morning run and yoga, I spend three hours tracking and documenting the latest news stories on the US National Security Agency prism scandal and any terrorist crimes or cyber security threats that I think the Project may be involved in.
I am just entering the lounge past the wooden crates on the floor when, today, it happens. I don’t know if it’s the thought of analysing the latest news on the NSA that has triggered it off or if it is because I slept badly last night, nightmares of prison waking me up in sweat-filled fits, but the memory arrives, fast and bright, not the hazy part of clouds that normally occurs when such recollections float to the surface, but this time quick, a taser prod, switching my mind from what is in front of me to what is inside, to a distant drug-hazed memory.
‘No!’ The sound of my solitary voice rings loud in the silence, sending the birds in the orange trees outside scattering in random directions.
I grip the kitchen sink. This process, this feeling, it is now familiar, so many times over the years has it passed, but still there is a fear as my brain is thrown into recalling something locked deep within my subconscious.
Something from my past.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_b95022d7-38f4-51d9-ae56-48b3bb0e18b2)
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 56 minutes to confinement
Suddenly I am not standing in my Salamanca kitchen, but instead am in a white clinical room, a room that now, from my dreams, from my nightmares, I know well.
I am fifteen years old, limbs long and thin, jutting out at awkward Bambi angles. I am sitting robot-straight in a metal bed and my long matted rope of thick black hair is uncut and wild and resting on a white hospital gown where freckles puncture plump sun-kissed skin, cashmere soft, no lines yet of a longer life lived. ECG probes sit glued to my small rib cage and concave abdomen, and in the background the pit-put of a heart rate monitor hums.
I turn my head and see him. The man. I intake a sharp breath, but there is no surprise in it, no immediate concern, as if I have been expecting him, as if this, here, is a routine that offers me some strange, warped comfort.
‘Your vital signs are good,’ the man says. His voice has a Scottish lilt, each word a slice of a knife, a slow turn of a screw. ‘Can you tell me who I am?’
‘Dr Carr.’ My voice is a feather, a butterfly wing. I shiver.
He smiles and when he does, his lips slice thin and it makes me think of a cut on my arm. ‘And you have a special name for me, don’t you, Maria—what is it?’
‘Black Eyes.’
I can feel my nerves rise and so I scan the room as a distraction. The walls are white and by them stand three stainless steel seats and two cream Formica tables. There are no pictures or soft materials, just brown plastic blinds and two officers guarding the doors with handguns hanging by their sides. I don’t like it and so start to jig my leg.
‘Maria, look at me. Can you look at me?’
‘No.’ Jig, jig. ‘I want to go home.’
His smile slips and, without warning, his arm whips out and slaps my leg still. ‘Stop stimming and look at me.’
A sting like one hundred needle points pricks my skin. My leg drops still. I want to scream at him, jolted by the feel of his touch, but am too scared because I know he could shout and the noise would bother me too much, and so instead I attempt to do as he says so he won’t touch me again.
He rolls his fingers into his palm and withdraws his hand to his lap. ‘I’m sorry for that,’ he says. ‘We are on a tight deadline today.’
I strain my eyelids, force my sight to stare straight at him, but it is hard, hurts, almost in an uncomfortable way, as if opening my eyes to his, to anyone’s, would allow them to see into me, see into my thoughts. In the end, I only manage to make contact for two seconds then have to look away, exhausted.
He inhales. ‘For the next few hours, I want you to practise making eye contact for half a conversation. This will help you slip more seamlessly into a regular situation if you ever go operational. Make you appear more … normal. Yes?’ He smiles and I think I see tiny eye creases crinkle out on the corners of his face, but I am unsure. ‘Yes, Maria?’
‘Yes,’ I respond on autopilot.
‘Good. Look at me.’ I do. ‘One second longer, that’s it. Two, three, four … Good. You can lower your eyes now.’
I drop my gaze, shattered, as he takes notes in green ink on a yellow page. Behind him, a woman walks over, petite, a tattoo of a cross on her brown neck, hair so closely cropped to her scalp, it appears to shine. The woman stops and whispers in Black Eyes’ ear. I cannot hear them so I bend forward a little, yet, when I look down at my thin, gowned body, the probes sticking out, it is merely crumpled, having barely moved at all. Beside me the heart rate monitor beeps faster.
My body shifts on the bed. Black Eyes is nodding now to the woman who has appeared in the room and at first, the words they whisper fade into the squashed air, but after two then three seconds, their sentences filter through as, slowly, my ears switch fully on.
‘The programme is showing her skills are improving, Dr Carr,’ the woman whispers. ‘Her handler at the church is communicating very positive results.’
‘Such as?’
‘He gave her a complex code to crack and she did it within thirteen seconds.’
‘Good. Good. What else?’
She consults her notes. ‘The subject’s IQ is exceptionally high, photographic memory sharp—she is obsessed with classical composers, tracks all their family details, their names, all their pieces—’
‘Has she learnt to play the piano yet?’
‘Yes. Self-taught, Trinity College London, Grade Eight standard within three weeks. Further information: the way in which she can sense acute sounds and scents is exceptional—I know you were concerned about that.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘And her dexterous skills, her technical assimilation—it’s getting faster. She can take apart and reassemble a radio clock, for example, within three minutes now, last time it was five. Her handler at the school recorded that.’
There is a nod from Black Eyes as he turns and provides me with a narrow stare. ‘We have been operating for twenty years now and this is our breakthrough. She’s the only one the conditioning appears to be working on.’
‘Yes.’
He looks to her. ‘MI5 will want to hear about this.’
The woman hands him a slip of white paper. ‘Done. Here are the results we sent over to our contact there.’
Black Eyes scans the data, his fingers pinching the page, each a spindled vine of pale flesh. ‘All these people we have conditioned and tested, and none of them are quite like this test child, this Maria Martinez. What is her confirmed subject number?’
‘375.’
‘Subject 375. Yes.’ He taps the paper. ‘We have some scenarios I would like to use her for, see what she can do. MI5 are pressing us to assist them with unusual security threats—cyber elements, computers etcetera. Let’s see how she can help us.’
His head dips and, without warning, his skeletal fingers creep forward so that they skim my calf. I instantly flinch, but he doesn’t appear to notice, instead seems in some kind of trance. ‘It’s okay,’ he says to me. ‘It’s okay.’ Then he turns to the woman. ‘She is strong, but not yet old enough to fight, but soon …’ He lifts his hand, knuckles and flesh hovering in the air, and the thought occurs to me that he may hit me. ‘While she is here, we will ask her what she knows.’
The woman frowns. ‘But won’t that stay in her memory, the covert details are just that—covert. What if she recites them when she is back in her normal environment?’
He shakes his head. ‘We will give her Versed as we always have, administered before she is dispatched home to Spain. It has worked well so far.’ He looks to me. ‘It will wipe her immediate mind so no secrets are divulged—she will simply believe she has visited the specialist clinic with her mother because of her Asperger’s.’ He hands the woman the paper. ‘The Versed drug means she will be unable to recall fully what she has or has not done, but enough remains in the subconscious for her to be useful until she reaches an age where she can be fully operational. It is important that you learn this.’ He folds his arms. ‘The subject may recall things, facts, but they will be hazy—like dreams. But we need that. We need this data, this training we give her, to remain stored in her brain somewhere so we can use it when the time is right.’
‘Maria?’ He is talking straight to me now. A rush of heat prickles my entire body and I don’t know what to do. My eyes search for a way out but there are no exits, here, anywhere. ‘Maria,’ he says, voice unusually soft, low, ‘where are we?’
But nerves rack me, and instead of speaking, I press my back into the bed, the cold cotton of the gown skimming my knees, goosebumps popping out.
‘I want to go home.’
‘You will. But first—that’s it, look at me, good—answer me: where are we?’
I look between the woman and Black Eyes. When I open my mouth, my voice trembles. ‘I am in a Project facility.’
‘And who are the Project?’
‘It is a covert group linked to MI5.’
‘And what do we do?’
Despite myself, despite my resistance, the words trip from my mouth, as if they are preset, robotic. ‘The Project is a covert programme formed in response to a global threat of terrorism and, specifically, cyber terrorism. It trains people with Asperger’s to use their unique, high IQ skills to combat security alerts. Only MI5 knows the organisation exists.’
‘And the UK government?’ he asks. ‘What of them—do they know who we are?’
‘Negative. They have no knowledge of the Project’s existence.’
‘Good.’ His chest puffs then deflates as his head bobs up and down, a smile snaking in to his face. ‘Good.’
The woman nods once to Black Eyes then leaves via a door that has no handles or hinges. Black Eyes waits for her to exit then turns to me, perching himself on the end of the bed. I grip the sheets tight. At first he does not speak, but then, after two seconds, he opens his mouth and a precise, metallic voice strides out.
‘You will not remember being here, Maria. You won’t recall this conversation, you won’t recollect the details of the tests we carry out on you. But know that we are always watching you, are always … here for you. We are everywhere.’ He leans to the side and, from a metal trolley, picks up a loaded syringe. My heart rate rockets.
‘You are at school now, yes?’
I swallow, confused. ‘No. I am not at school now. Now I am here.’
He pauses, one second, two, three, his teeth appearing to clench. ‘Your teacher next year,’ he says finally, exhaling, ‘he will be working for us, helping us to watch you. These people you see nearly every day—they are your handlers. Even your family priest. But of course, you won’t—’ a strange mewed laugh emits from his mouth—‘you won’t remember.’ He sighs. ‘I cannot believe I am telling you this now—you’ll only forget. But Father Reznick, your friendly Catholic priest—he’s one of us.’ My eyes go wide. The priest? But I saw him kissing Mama. ‘Oh, the big brown eyes! Maria, I am growing to know you well now. You do remind me of my own daughter …’ He drifts off, momentarily looking downwards, the needle resting in his fingers, and I glance to the door and wish I could run. ‘Anyway,’ he says after a moment, ‘do not worry. When you go on to university and work, we will have our people there, too, Project people like me and you, people who will watch over what you do, even though you won’t, at the time, know they are with us.’ He flicks the needle with a finger. Sweat beads pop out all over my face. ‘Oh, there’s no need to fret,’ he says now, leaning in, studying the sheen on my forehead. ‘We are friends, aren’t we?’
I recoil. ‘I do not have any friends.’
He halts, tilting his skull. ‘No. No I don’t suppose you do.’ He drifts off again for a second, then, checking the needle, he handcuffs my wrist with his fingers and pulls my arm towards him. ‘Your mother, Ines—lovely woman, isn’t she?’
I say nothing, instead watch his eyes narrow as they inspect the vial for air bubbles. Vomit wells in the base of my throat.
‘Shame she is on her own now after your father, Alarico, died. Loneliness is a terrible thing. Car crash, wasn’t it?’
Alarico, my papa. Hearing his name makes my head spin a little, my heart ache. The vomit rumbles.
‘Still,’ Black Eyes says now, his Scottish lilt dancing on the cold air, ‘she’s a strong woman, your mother, a lawyer like your father, but, well, more forthright. She’ll make a good politician when she hits the Spanish parliament after she’s got over her little … illness. Your brother, too—Ramon, isn’t it? Seems like he’s following in their legal footsteps what with his fondness for debate club. Quite the family. And family, Maria, it’s important, keeps us together …’
Black Eyes is leaning in to me so close now, I can see the faint shadow of stubble on his chin, feel the hot garlic and tobacco of his breath on my neck. I want to scream. I want to run a million miles away, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot bring myself to move, and even if I did run, where would I go? Where would I ever go?
‘You though, Maria—my … our test child,’ Black Eyes says now, ‘for you we have plans. We would like you to become … a doctor. Try and press that into your subconscious, hmmm? Even though this will make all of today fade away. A plastic surgeon, specifically. We need to test your dexterous skills, hone them so they can one day be of use to us. Study in Madrid at the University Hospital there—that’s where one of our handlers resides.’ He smiles, a flash of crooked, tombstone teeth. ‘Do you understand?’
I nod.
‘With words.’
‘I understand.’
‘Good. Because you are the one our conditioning is working on and we wouldn’t want all these trips your mother takes you on to be wasted now, would we?’
‘Mama believes she is taking me to an autism clinic,’ I say, an unexpected flash of defiance streaking through me. ‘She does not know what you really do. You are lying to her.’
He stares at me. He levels his black, bottomless eyes at me and delivers a look so chilling that, even with my emotionally challenged brain, I get a shiver of fright.
‘We have a bit of terrorism to fight out there,’ he continues now as if I had never spoken. ‘Pesky little terrorists trying to break into our computer networks, into our global infrastructures. But now—’ Black Eyes taps my arm, lowers the needle to my skin ‘—now, my dear, sweet Maria—now you will forget …’
Chapter 3 (#ulink_a3464e01-1605-5524-81d0-c719e1839727)
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 53 minutes to confinement
I come to. I tumble into the present day, gasping in a sharp gulp of oxygen, falling against the kitchen table in my Salamancan villa, sweat pouring from my brow and arms and bare, wobbly legs. I go to haul myself up, blinking furiously, desperate for water, but almost instantly another subconscious recollection arrives, dragging me back into a deeper, stronger dream. More lucid and glaring.
This time I see myself sitting at a desk in a Project tech lab. The walls are regulation white, and around the bottom are long strips of brushed steel, all bases for junction boxes that contain red and green bulbs that flash on and off by a control panel to the left. Computers sit in pre-allocated slots, controlled acoustics used to minimise background sounds for the subjects, subjects like me who inhabit the zone. There is spatial sequencing and lights and levels that are all compartmentalised to define their use, everything routine, expected.
My fingers tap a keyboard and I notice they are older now, not fifteen this time, but tanned, longer, the fingers of my stronger twenty-year-old self. I am writing detailed notes from memory into an online file, classified Top Secret, scores of data and times and geolocations going directly from my brain to the computer. There is a photograph on the screen of a woman with caramel skin wearing a hijab draped under pink-rose cheeks. She has a prominent, aquiline nose and her eyes are so brown they look as if they are constructed of pure liquid. Her picture is superimposed on the file and as I type, I record details of her, of this woman who I have known for two years but who has now caused problems for the Project. My informant, my asset in the field, code named by me as Raven, a bird symbolising good omens, yet the keeper of deception, of tragedy.
A beep sounds and I stand, quick, lithe, the colt now a thoroughbred as, turning to the right, I march out of the door and to the main corridor warren of the covert Project facility. Scanning the area, I proceed straight to Room Six, where I enter through the thick metal door, shut it and turn.
Raven lies on the floor. She is splattered in blood and on her head, her black veil lies splayed out, torn down to her neck, exposing cut, charred skin and deep, gaunt eyes. Gone is the rose of her cheeks, replaced now by two worn-out hollows, and when I look at her I know she is the enemy, yet for some reason, a lump forms in the base of my throat and I have to swallow it away.
A Project officer, younger, files over to me. He wears a grey shirt made with soft cotton fabric and beneath the front of the right hand shoulder is the letter H followed by a three-digit number.
‘I was called here,’ I say. ‘What do you require?’
He turns to me but makes no eye contact. ‘You need to guard the detainee. I have been asked to go to the control centre. I will be back in three minutes and thirty seconds.’
He turns, exits, and I do not move. My eyes stay ahead, my body now defined, muscles strong, hands skilled and slim from the medical school training.
‘M-Maria?’
The woman lifts her head from her slump on the floor. Her gaze is raised to me but I do not look at her. The lump in my throat tightens.
‘Detainees are not permitted to talk,’ I say, eyes front.
‘It is you, isn’t it? Maria? You … you cut your hair.’ She coughs. Blood speckles the white tiles, and her eyes dart left and right then settle back on me. ‘I know you think I am the enemy, but I am not. That’s just what they made you believe.’ She heaves in oxygen. ‘They set me up, Maria—you have to believe me. They’ll do it to you, too, if they have to. I’m not a terrorist …’ She coughs again, wipes her mouth. ‘They’ll be back soon, so you must listen. There … there is a file. It’s encrypted.’ She licks her cracked lips. ‘It’s on a file within a computer that’s not … that’s not attached to anything, a standalone device. No server is linked to it, but it contains a file that you created, a hidden file, away from the Project. Do you understand? Do you understand what that means?’
‘Detainees are not permitted to talk.’ I strain not to look at her. She is the enemy, and yet her words, her injured presence—they bother me.
‘It has details, the file,’ she continues, ‘ones they cannot track. It will give you what you need—confidential data, who the Project has tested on, the files and names of who they’ve killed. What they’re doing is wrong, Maria. They can’t treat people like this, they can’t act like gods of the world, and yet that’s what they do. Give man power and I give you an eternity of pain.’ She spits out some blood and I fight the urge to wipe it away because, for some reason, I feel connected to this woman but I don’t know why.
‘Maria?’
‘Detainees are not permitted to …’ I trail off, confused, unsure which side she is really on.
‘You are struggling, I know,’ she says now, low, laboured, ‘struggling with who I am … but we were in the field together. Maria, I helped you and you helped me. They’ll mess with your memory after they’ve done with me, like they always do. The file will give you what you need, tell you what you’ve done—the truth! Find out who you really are, Maria! I know you, I do. We were … we were friends.’
My eyes briefly flicker to her then, snapping back into position, I look away. ‘I have no friends.’
The door bolts open and the officer with the H on his shirt returns accompanied by two other, higher ranking officers. They stride to Raven, haul her up, but as they pull her away, she digs in her feet. ‘The file,’ she whispers. ‘Find it!’
They yank her forwards and as they do she shouts, ‘They will make you complete it, Maria! Prepare, they told us. Wait. Engage! Eliminate the threat. They will make you kill me! You know this, Maria, I know you do. Fight it,’ she says, her feet leaving trails of blood in their wake, ‘fight the Project! Help!’
But I do nothing, instead watch her go and as she does, as she is dragged screaming away past the cold, pale doors of the Project walkways, what bothers me about her so much comes to me, slapping me hard on the face.
‘I never knew your name,’ I say aloud to the now empty room, the words echoing in a void that can never be filled. ‘I never knew your name.’
The image begins to swirl away, soft at first then faster downwards as a noise vibrates in my ears and I realise it’s the radio alarm clock clicking on, blasting a newscaster’s voice into the kitchen.
I intake a sharp breath and my eyes fly open taking in a woozy, hazy view of my warm, sun-drenched kitchen. I touch my head with a shaking hand then, falling forward, grab a glass, fill it from the tap and drain the water until it is sliding down my chin, fangs of liquid on my shocked skin. I slap the glass down, slam back into the wall, smear my lips with the back of my hand and try to steady my breath. The memory, the subconscious dream still fresh in my mind—these have happened before, but not this strong, not with her so vividly in them. I throw my hand to the side, feel my way forward, the image of the hijab throwing me off centre. What she said about the files—was that true? Did she store a data file at the Project? Did that actually happen? I spin round, brain firing left and right. My notebook. I need my notebook, need to write it all down, record it so I can track it and try to make sense of what is hidden in my head.
The news piece on the radio is talking about the American national security agency, how Edward Snowden has revealed more information and is in hiding now. I try to pay attention. I try to press it all to my mind so I can lose myself and record it all on my wall, but the words are too much, the noise all too loud and I can’t think straight, the dream of the woman and her screams still lingering in my mind even in the bright glare of the summer sun. A dull moan slips from my mouth and I slap my hand down on the radio, silencing it as I count the steps that I now stumble into the lounge.
My eyes automatically scan the solitary armchair, the old brown piano with its back against the wall, the towers of books that sky-scrape their way across the room, the thousands of newspaper articles plastered to the wall, covered in scrawled notes of black pen and pin tacks and sketches of blank faces of people I don’t remember. I look at it all, my sight hazy, struggling to focus until, finally, I spot my notebook on the cabinet island by the far wall.
I immediately go to it, flip past the pages of algorithms and codes and sketches of Project facility buildings, all vague memories of events and details, and scratch out what I have just seen. Done, I slam the book shut. I stare at the cracked brown leather cover that curls at the corners. My memories, my nightmares are in there, the ones I don’t know about, the details and facts I cannot even recall occurring and yet, somehow they are in my head. Somehow, despite the drugs, I recall them. But why?
I think of Raven. What if there is a file? What if I have just recalled something that happened a decade ago despite the drugs Black Eyes gave me? If the file the woman stowed away is at the Project, does that mean it is still there, now, after all these years? I hold out my hands, look at my fingers, long slim trained doctor hands, a plastic surgeon’s, helping to reconstruct faces and injuries and a mix of disgust and sadness hits me. The Project made me become a doctor. It was not my choice or conscious will, instead it was a foregone conclusion, a fait accompli. But what are we when we are not in control of our own choices and life? What does that eventually do to us? And what do we eventually do as a result?
I stare again at my fingers and skin and cut-to-the-quick nails. I am Dr Maria Martinez. Raven said they would make me kill her.
Did I?
They have made me believe I have killed before, they got me convicted of the murder of a priest because they—MI5—wanted me hidden and out of the way when the NSA prism scandal broke out, just so the Project would not be uncovered. They framed me, despite my innocence, to suit their own ends, but even then I doubted myself, because if who I am and what I do in life has been decided and directed by the Project, if they have drugged me all along, how will I know with any certainty what really happened?
And who it has happened to?
I reopen my notebook. Perhaps if I scan the pages again, if I link my thoughts here to the wall and the research and the faces and facts, I can make some connections between what I know and what I have just seen. I can lose myself in my thoughts and record everything that swims to the surface of my memory, linking it, if I can, to the NSA, to MI5 and the Project, find some comfort purely in the challenge and routine and order of it all, safe in the knowledge that I won’t take it any further, that I don’t ever want to leave here and the sanctuary it provides, and if they don’t find me, I can remain hidden in my villa forever.
I look up at my wall. I study the multiple news articles and anonymous faces and facts and arrowed figures, and just as I am about to reach forward and readjust a pinned article so that it sits neat and straight and in order next to the others, the emergency cell phone shrills into the calm morning silence.
And everything stops.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_dcd7220e-b692-56e5-a123-d4563829d98a)
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 46 minutes to confinement
I pick up the cell, slamming down the button so the shrill will stop hammering into my head. ‘Who is this?’
‘Maria, it’s Balthus.’
‘You are speaking on the emergency cell,’ I say, fast. ‘Is there an urgent situation?’
‘What? No.’
‘Then why are you calling me?’
‘You haven’t contacted me for three days and I was worried.’
The ring of the cell still bangs in my head. I shake it. ‘Four days.’
‘What?’
‘I have not called you for four days.’ My eyes catch the sunshine dancing a waltz along the curves of the glass panes. I focus on it and, gradually, my head calms down. ‘You said three.’
There’s a pause. ‘Maria, we agreed when we spilt up in London—you’d stay in touch, contact me every day. I got worried when you didn’t call.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I care for you. Because I promised your father before he died I’d look out for you.’
‘Oh. Okay.’ The glass panes twinkle in the daylight. ‘I had another memory today.’
‘What? When?’
‘At 0612 hours this morning.’
I pick up my notebook and proceed to tell him what happened. He listens. This is what he does, Balthus Ochoa—I talk and he listens. When he was the governor at Goldmouth prison in London where I was incarcerated; him listening led me to find an encrypted file that uncovered the Project and my subsequent involvement in it. He has always told me how he promised my papa that he would be there for me, tells me he cares for me, and I catch myself feeling what must be gratitude towards him, but I never know how to express it, do not understand how people say what they feel inside.
‘That’s odd,’ Balthus says now, his voice a layer of gravel, a boulder on a mountain.
‘What is odd?’
‘Well … Okay, so it may be nothing, but there’s something bugging me about the standalone computer the woman in your flash mentioned, but I can’t figure out why it bothers me. Maria—the memory with the woman, with Raven—do you remember which Project facility that was at?’
‘No. I only recall the facility with Black Eyes when I was younger. That was in Scotland. That is the facility Kurt brought me to. Do you not remember this?’
‘Jesus, how could I forget? I bloody well suggested you see that therapist after you were acquitted—and he turned out to be working for MI5.’
‘He was working for the Project.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘No. You said MI5. Kurt—although his real name is Daniel, a Hebrew name meaning God is my judge—when he was meeting with me he was only working for the Project. By then—’
‘By then the NSA prism scandal had been exposed and MI5 wanted to ditch the whole Project because they were scared of a similar blow-up.’
My eyes rest on the wall, on my drawings and newspaper articles and lines of connections and notes.
Balthus sighs. ‘I don’t know, I just … What they did. I still can’t believe the Project framed you for the murder of that priest just to get you in prison and out of the way, so they could then get rid of you.’
‘So they could kill me to eradicate any connection to the Project.’
‘Yes.’ He pauses. ‘Yes.’
The window in the lounge is open, and in the breeze the muslin curtain drifts in and out, the white cotton veil of it brushing the tiled floor as it passes quietly through the room.
‘Anyway, look, Maria,’ Balthus says after a while, clearing his throat, ‘the other reason I wanted to call was just to let you know that there’s been no sighting or word from the MI5 officer who posed as our prison psychiatrist—Dr Andersson. You were asking about her.’
Dr Andersson. Her face instantly springs into my mind. Swedish blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, freckled pale skin. A vision of her making me take apart laptops, timing me to complete a Rubik’s cube—all the tasks she was doing to monitor me without my knowledge. I shiver. ‘She has not approached you or any of Harry’s family?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so. But Maria, listen—how are you about Harry now, since his death? It’s been six months since Dr Andersson shot him on the court steps when she was aiming to kill you. Harry wasn’t just your barrister or even simply your papa’s old friend—I know you had a soft spot for him.’ He pauses, three silent seconds passing. ‘I just worry about you. It’s a lot for any of us to process, never mind for you.’
I am momentarily stuck for words as a strange tightness presses against my chest. ‘The Kubler-Ross grief model says I should be at acceptance stage now.’
‘And are you at that stage, Maria? Do you accept Harry’s death? He cared for you a lot.’ I can hear him swallow. ‘We both did—do.’
I swallow and clench my jaw as conflicting feelings of anger and sadness wash through me. A tear escapes. I reach up, smear my cheek dry.
‘Dr Andersson killed Harry. MI5 killed Harry.’
‘Yes.’
Over on the window ledge, a small bird with golden-brown feathers lands on the white wood. It dips its head once, then going very still, it looks up, free, and flies away. For a few seconds, I watch the now empty, open space where the bird stood then, inhaling, I look back to the cell phone.
‘Did Patricia get parole?’
‘Yes,’ Balthus replies. There is a rustle of paper on the line. ‘I told her you were okay, in hiding from the Project, let her know what you did—sending the texts to MI5 and the Project on Kurt’s phone in London so they both thought you were dead. She understands you’re hiding, that you can’t contact her.’
‘And Dr Andersson has not been trailing her?’
‘No. I’m in touch with Patricia—all seems well. You two struck up a good friendship in Goldmouth. I’m glad, I’m …’ He stops. ‘You need friends, Maria. I hate the thought of you being on your own.’
My eyes catch the room. The solitary chair, the bare, whitewashed walls, the cell phone lying on the upturned crate with Balthus’s voice trapped inside.
‘Look, Maria,’ Balthus says after two seconds, ‘I don’t know why, but something about this Raven memory of yours … Well, I know I mentioned it just before, but it … well, there’s something about it that rings a bell, but I don’t know what.’
‘Is it a recent recollection?’
‘I don’t know. I …’ He trails off. ‘It’s just, well, something Ines told me when she called me when you were in prison. I don’t know if it even means anything, but it was weird.’
‘The word ‘weird’ means a suggestion of something supernatural.’
‘What? No, no, I didn’t …’
‘Weird can also mean connected to fate, to a person’s destiny.’
‘Okay. Well, anyway, she was specific, Ines, about talking to me, about calling me and telling me what she did.’
‘When exactly was this?’
‘It was before the retrial.’
‘What date?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why not?’
‘Maria, my memory’s not as accurate as yours. But, look, it was strange. We hadn’t spoken for years—since Alarico’s death, in fact—and then, after her visit to you in Goldmouth, she calls out of the blue talking about … God, what was it …? Something about secrets … Damn it. I can’t remember. I just know she was acting odd.’ He breathes out. ‘It’s probably irrelevant anyway.’
‘How did you know she was acting odd?’
‘What? Oh, I don’t know, her tone of voice, perhaps? It was like she was under pressure or something, as if there was someone there, maybe. In danger? I really couldn’t say for sure.’
I go quiet, not understanding how a simple tone in a voice can lead to so many unconfirmed conclusions.
I pick up a book, one of many on computer coding and language, a routine, orderly subject, and place it on a tower of other research, and turn to my board. The faces containing different expressions, different photographs of people who I know, sketches of those I vaguely recall from hazy, drug-filled dreams. Ines, my mama, sits there, a photo taken from her Spanish parliament file, her face sculptured and clean, coiffured black hair, gold jewellery, shoulder pads and rouge. Next to her my brother, Ramon, thirty-five now, tanned, lean, a slick of tar-black hair on top of defined cheekbones, the black suit he wears to his legal firm tailored in place. And then my papa, an aged, more lined photograph, yet still I can see very visibly his eye creases, his lined skin, his crisp white linen shirt, and by his side is me, my hair long and dark, and Papa’s arm is over my shoulder, holding me, the only person, back then, I would allow to touch me without instantly jumping or yelling. I close my eyes. I can still smell him—the spice cologne, the ink from his quill where he used to write in his study. I open my eyes and look at an image pinned to the right—a fading picture of Balthus, Harry and me taken just after we won the retrial, after I was acquitted. My fingers trace Harry’s face. His skin is plump and black, and when he smiles, he too, like my papa, has eye creases that crinkle outwards, his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles perched on the tip of his rounded, shiny nose. Next to him is Balthus. Balthazar Ochoa. Name meaning lone wolf. In his picture he is tall, athletic even for his fifty-plus years, his skin washed with the Mediterranean sun, his black hair silver at the tips, his face consumed by two brown pools of eyes. But while Harry and Balthus’s bodies are relaxed and smiling, mine, in contrast, is rigid and tight, flinching at close group contact, my olive skin pale from months of incarceration, hair dark and sawn into a jagged cut that grazes my temple and neck, eyes sunken into razor cheeks. I touch my neck. The Salamancan sun has drenched my skin now into a deep golden hue, my dark pixie cut is bleached blonde and my once-brown eyes are replaced by green contacts. A fake look for a fake world.
‘Maria? Are you still there? Look—I was thinking. The flashback you had, the one with that woman—I think you need to understand where that facility is and get to it—I can help you. If there is information there, it could mean we could put a stop to it all, to all this madness. Maria, it could end the Project.’
Heat rushes to my head accompanied by a clear, frosted image of Black Eyes and his tombstone smile. My eyes go to my villa, safe and hidden. ‘No.’
‘What?’
‘I said no. I do not want to understand where the facility is.’
‘But Maria, why track all the NSA stuff in connection to MI5, the explosion of it all, if not to get at the Project?’ He pauses. ‘Look, you’re not on your own. I know you think you are, but you’re not. You have me. You have Patricia. Jesus, you even have your mother and brother. Maybe they can even help? Ines knows a lot of people high up in the Spanish government—she’s Minister for Justice now.’
Black Eyes. Raven. My tortured, sweat-drenched nightmares that keep me awake in the middle of the night when there is no one to soothe me. I glance to their scratched sketches on the wall. ‘No.’
He sighs. ‘Please. Just consider it. Say if you could connect what I can hopefully remember from a conversation with Ines to what you have told me about this woman—Raven? It may help you know where the memory is coming from. If you know the facility, it will lead you to the file.’
I open my mouth to tell him no then hesitate, but I do not understand why.
‘This woman,’ Balthus says now, pressing on, ‘she said the file she loaded up will give you what you need to know, tells you what you’ve done, that it will help you know who you really are. Why note down all the dreams you recall, Maria, want to know how it’s all connected, if you don’t want to find out how to put an end to it all?’
I look down, confused. I thought the answer was obvious. ‘I have my notebook. I like to record information. That is why I require the details. I just record the data, all of it.’ I glance to my coding books, to the structure and the formality of them.
‘But this woman said the files could help you. Don’t you want to know who she is, find the file? Don’t—’ there is a pause and when he speaks again, his voice is oddly lower, more quiet ‘—don’t you want to know who you really are?’
I look at Balthus’s photo on the board, stare at all the unframed images and notes and encryptions and news articles, and, after a second, they all start to blur into one solid image of colour. I switch, glance to the turrets of books in neat, multiple piles, to the solitary seat, the makeshift wooden crates for tables, to the single toothbrush that lies on the shelf. I walk three steps to the worn piano by the wall, gently press my finger down on a key, the smooth ivory cold beneath my skin. E sharp tolls out.
‘I know who I am,’ I say after a moment. ‘I am Dr Maria Martinez, a plastic surgeon, born in Salamanca, Spain. I want to remain hidden. I do not want to go back to the Project or to their files or to anyone from there. It is too chaotic. I will record what memories appear, but no more. I do not want to endanger my family.’ I glance to the image of Harry. ‘I do not want to endanger you and Patricia.’
‘I understand that, I do. I really do,’ he says. ‘But they’ll find you, Maria. You know that, I know you do. I worry about you there on your own with no one. You need answers. I can help you. I have a contact. I sent you an email about him. He’s called Chris. He’s a hacker, used to be in Goldmouth. He can—’
An alarm sounds, high, war-siren sharp. My head jerks up.
‘Maria? Maria, what’s wrong?’
I sprint to the laptop, head dipped at the noise, but my feet are so sweaty, I slip on the tiles, toppling into the crate, knocking the computer clean off the upturned box.
‘Maria?’
I shake myself off, wincing at the scream of the siren, dragging the laptop over to me, scanning it fast.
‘Maria? Shit. Can you hear me? Maria? What’s happening?’
Leaning forward, keeping my fingers strong, steady, I click the icon flashing on the screen.
‘Someone is on my property.’
Chapter 5 (#ulink_2297b177-fda1-538d-b45d-671e7defe363)
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
I don’t know how much time has passed. I blacked out, only coming to now as somewhere in the room a noise clicks high in the air, one, two, three, four.
My body instinctively bends forward, brain attempts to gauge the level of danger and then I remember: Patricia.
I call her name, yell into the abyss of black. There is a click, another trip of light mixed with darkness and then, finally, a voice, singular, pure.
‘Doc? Doc? Are you there?’
She’s okay! ‘Patricia?’
‘Doc!’
‘What is your status? Are you injured?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so, but … my leg—it hurts. Help me, Doc.’
I open my mouth to ask her specific diagnostics, but the air is so black and hot, so suddenly suffocating that it feels as if a palm is being pressed into my nose and mouth, an acrid taste of metal poisoning my lips. I struggle hard against it. I have to know where we are, and yet nothing here seems to make sense, but I do it. My conditioning, my training, despite my horror at it, kicks in and I begin to function on cognitive thought.
‘Doc! Doc, where are we?’
Click. The sound, there again on the surface of the room—it makes me halt.
‘Doc—what was that?’
Tap, tap, tap. My heart rate rockets. ‘Patricia, stay still.’
I listen. It’s like the beak of a robin on a window pane.
‘Who is there?’ I ask to the thick stench of the room. Click, tap. Click, tap. My breathing becomes fast, shallow. ‘Who is there?’
But no answer comes back. I slap away the fear and strain my neck, try to catch sight of something, anything, but just as my eyes clear, just as they begin to see through the haze, the click sounds again and something happens inside me.
A heat, a surge of liquid in my veins burns its way through me, scalding one second then freezing the next, and an ice-blade of pain stabs me. I cry out.
‘Doc! Doc, what is it?’
My mouth opens to yell, but I am mute, a primal fear taking over, a tsunami of fight or flight, the words, ‘You are in danger! You are in danger!’ screaming over and over in my head, and I must be moaning, groaning, because I can hear Patricia shouting at me to stay awake.
My eyelids vibrate, brain attempts to calibrate a connection, find an answer to what is happening to me, but the codes, numbers, solutions that instinctively inhabit my head are all jumbled up, as if I have been shaken like some unwanted toy then discarded on the ground and kicked under a bed to gather dust and wither.
‘Patricia,’ I gasp, my chest ready to explode. ‘Escape. I need you to escape.’
‘I don’t … My leg aches, Doc, but I think I can …’ A grunt, a scrape. ‘My hand—it’s free.’
‘Does that mean …’ The searing pain is so hot in my chest now, it burns and I have to force myself to concentrate once more on my eyes. ‘Does that mean, if your hand is free you can be mobile?’ And then I spot something: a lick of light. There! In the corner …
‘Doc, it won’t … I don’t know. Oh, God. My leg feels numb.’
The single sliver of light disappears and I try to reach out, grab where it was but nothing moves. A hazy, grey film is slowly bleeding over my lenses.
‘Something is happening to me …’ I swallow. ‘Drugged,’ I slur. ‘I must be drugged.’
‘Are we …’ Patricia’s words waver. ‘Does that mean we’re at the Project? At their facility?’ There is a shake in her voice, a tremble.
And then I hear it: water. A trickle of water, a rush of liquid. I shake as a terrifying thought tears into me: we are drowning. We are not actually in a room or a cell or in a locked-away facility, but we are drowning, almost dead already and this haze, this grey film, this distant cry of Patricia’s Irish voice that I can only just detect is the last twisted haemorrhage of my lie of a life. The Project have found me, are to kill me and now this is it, here: death.
‘Can you feel any water around you?’
‘What? I … Wait.’ A scream, a gurgled cry. ‘Doc, I’m hurt!’
Panic swells. ‘Drag yourself free. Quick!’
‘I don’t want to die!’
‘Stay awake!’
‘I … I can’t breathe.’
I struggle to cough, try anything—a lick of my lips, a last gulp of oxygen—anything to dismantle the rolling tide as, to my side, Patricia groans.
‘Pull your arms up!’ I shout. ‘See if there is anything you can grip on to.’
‘There’s nothing! Only a … Oh, Jesus, help! It hurts! Doc, help, please …’
Her voice stops, abrupt, a TV being switched off. ‘Patricia?’
Nothing.
‘Patricia! Patricia, shout to me that you are …’
I stop breathing.
My hands form two fists, knuckles white, chest bursting, ribs ready to crack, as my mind prepares, because this is it. The final seconds of me, of my life. Dr Maria Martinez.
Gone.
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 32 minutes to confinement
I shut down the alarm and haul in a breath.
‘What’s going on, Maria?’
‘Wait.’ My eyes remain locked on the computer screen, but my vest has become sweaty and it itches my skin. I scratch my stomach, up down, unable to stop as the nerves seep out.
‘Maria, for God’s sake, what’s happening?’
‘The red icon is flashing.’
My skin flushes, feels as if it’s burning, nerve endings so sensitive to the change in the fabric. It is too much to bear. I rip off my vest, throw it to the floor. The relief is almost overwhelming.
‘Anyone on the cameras?’ Balthus says now.
I flip open the surveillance programme then pause. The reality of what could happen slams me in the face and I recount Abel’s binomial theorem to focus my mind.
No matter how many times I scan the CCTV film, it comes back blank, eight square, grey, live pictures of the fields and walls around the villa. No trespassers, no intelligence officers, just everything as it was before I stepped inside the house.
‘The cameras are displaying no signs of intruders.’
My body leans back as my mind attempts to get a handle on what is happening, already planning ahead on what I may need to do. As I think, a whip of wind lashes at a funnel of cypress trees outside, sending a swarm of starlings scurrying into the sky, and it is so sudden, so fast and loud that I jump, slapping my hand to my chest.
‘Maria, is everything all right? Talk to me.’
The starlings rush away, their swarm temporarily blackening the sky.
‘Birds,’ I say.
‘What?
The last remaining starling flies into a candy floss cloud. ‘I was frightened by a murmuration of birds.’
‘A mumur-what …?’
I stare at the now empty branches outside, wiping the sweat from my face. The air is static. For a moment, I swear a shadow glides over the sand-coloured earth, its hazy contours rippling over the deep green cypress tree giants that guard the perimeter of the villa, but when I blink and rub my eyes it is instead the tall, scorched grass reeds I see, their long, stretched shadows swaying innocently in the morning air, but each movement of the reeds vibrates in my eardrums. I take the heels of my palms, bang them to the sides of my head to try and dislodge the sound.
‘Maria?’
One more hit and the reed rush will be gone …
‘Maria? Maria, answer me.’
Bang. Done. ‘What?’
‘Did you install the tripwire system I told you about?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it’s not flagging anything up?’
‘Negative.’
‘Then what could have triggered the surveillance? Could there have been a system error?’
I consider this but am unconvinced. The CCTV shows no trespass entry, so why the alarm? My mind scans through every tiny detail, yet still concludes that all is as before—the fields are empty for several kilometres, the long gravel drive is free of foreign vehicles and the only car is an old black truck I use on the rare occasions I need to drive into the village in the fading evening sunlight for supplies. So why did the alarm sound? A colony of nerves collects in the depths of my stomach and my thumb taps my forefinger.
‘Maria, do you think you are in danger?’
My eyes flicker to the window then return to the red icon that still flashes on the laptop. ‘I cannot say with certainty until I run a complete check. But …’
Another shadow creeps across the cypresses again, this time more distinct, more clear.
More human.
A bolt of electricity shoots down my spine. ‘Someone is here.’
‘What?’
I grab my notebook, hide it behind a stack of books and run to the window, adrenaline immediately spiking as I slam my back against the wall and count to three.
‘Maria, have you seen someone?’ Balthus calls out, but I ignore him because if I shout now, if I utter one single word, whoever is out there will know my location.
Another shadow passes by. I track it. Breath heavy, heart rate way beyond acceptable, I count my steps as I drop to the ground, crawling to the opposite side of the window then standing again, acutely aware that I am unarmed, and yet instinctively knowing what to do. It scares me, always has. It scares me that if someone came in now, I am trained to not even need a gun to kill them.
Slowly, I inch my head up to the window ledge, one millimetre, two, three, until I reach the edge where the citrus scent from the groves beyond drifts in. If someone is standing by the outside of the wall, then, if I move one centimetre further, they will detect my presence. My cortisol peaks. Taking one bare foot forward, I raise my hands and step to the left, manoeuvring my body so it slips almost invisibly to the side, my brain instructing me, from some hidden training tactics manual, what to do. Prepare, wait, engage. For some reason, the phrase flicks into my mind. Prepare, wait, engage, and I realise, with revulsion, that I am recalling something the Project must have trained me on.
But, despite my disgust, I do it. I track the area, I pause, listen to every minute sound, to each tweet, rustle, bleat, creak, creating a full itinerary, a complete map of the exact scene before me until I am ready. Ready to engage.
I exhale, long, deep into my diaphragm as the sunlight dances across my eyelids, cheeks, onto my forehead, my neck, onto my bare sweat-drenched shoulders as, gradually, one millimetre after the other, I peer over the edge to the glazed window.
There is a face staring right back at me.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_31839db3-0896-5798-b0f5-cb74d332d71b)
Salamanca, Spain.
34 hours and 28 minutes to confinement
Dr Andersson stares straight back at me.
I yell out her name, alerting Balthus, still on the cell, as Dr Andersson ducks out of sight, running towards the far entrance where the kitchen yawns wide open, exposed to the fields and beyond.
‘Maria,’ Balthus whispers, ‘where is she?’
Panic. Sheer panic and chaos rise now as I look to the cell phone. I need it, cannot have any noise give away my location. Checking left and right, I count to three then, fast, drop down and crawl on all fours, scurrying forward, snatch the cell then scamper back, slamming my body into a corner, hidden by a tower of books and by the lost, cracked crates that scatter the room.
I catch my breath, try to think.
‘Maria? Talk to me.’
I gulp down saliva. ‘She is here,’ I whisper. ‘Dr Andersson.’
‘Oh shit. Oh shit. She’s with MI5 and MI5 want the Project gone. That can mean only one thing, right?’
‘She is here to kill me.’ The words hang in the air, a foul stench jarring against the fresh, fragrant green grass burst from the fields beyond. For a moment, I freeze, not wanting to acknowledge that my peaceful retreat, my quiet hideaway has been shattered.
‘MI5 want all connections to the Project to disappear,’ Balthus says. ‘Kurt—Daniel—he said that to you, right? That’s why he wanted you to stay with him. The Project did not want to disappear, they broke away and wanted you with them; MI5 wanted you gone. Maria, you’re right. Oh Jesus. She’ll kill you—she’s a trained officer.’
I scan the kitchen door—nothing. Yet. ‘I am trained also.’
‘Yes, but she, well, she’s not like you. She won’t hesitate to do what she’s been told.’
I open my mouth to respond to Balthus when I stop. The image of Raven floats to my mind. They will make you kill me. I have no recollection of what I actually did to her, no tangible evidence of whether I ever hurt the woman or not—no real idea of who I am, of what I am, in truth, capable of.
I glance to the window. It is open. Another bird sits there now on the wooden ledge, head jerking right and left. I can see its feathers soft and shining even from here, a brown and black sheen shimmering in the morning sun.
‘There is no sign of her,’ I say, turning to the phone. ‘She may have a map of the dwelling.’
‘How did they find you?’
‘What?’
‘MI5,’ Balthus whispers. ‘How the hell did they find you? You’ve been off radar.’
I think for a moment, uncomfortable. Have I made a mistake in my encrypted file tracking? In my proxy ISP emails? ‘It is possible they may have infiltrated some files if they have the right technical people to carry out the hack.’ My eyes glance to the laptop open on the crate. ‘I need to hide my notebook.’
‘What? Maria, get out of there!’
A clatter of crates rings from outside, followed by a shatter of glass. Every single part of me drops still.
‘What was that?’ Balthus whispers.
My eyes dart to the side, unable to answer Balthus as I focus, every part of me on fire, desperately pressing back the guttural fear that surges upwards. I need to move now, get to the laptop then leave, but if I go to the right, I’ll have to open the door to the bedroom where my bag is stored, yet if I turn to the left and head past the kitchen where Dr Andersson may be, then I have no chance of grabbing the laptop and notebook.
My instinct is to go into meltdown, to curl up into a ball and slam shut my eyes and plead for this all to go away, so hard is it for me to cope. Yet even as my brain shouts at me to run, gradually, like a rainbow appearing on a stormy day, something happens—a change, a simmering, butter-coloured difference: I become calm. A coolness crackles over me as, in my head, an instinctive knowledge takes control, and over and over in my mind one phrase shoots across the shadows of my thoughts: prepare, wait, engage.
Up ahead, the kitchen door, before closed, is now swinging open.
My hairs stand on end. ‘She’s here.’
‘What? Get … you …she …’ The phone crackles, Balthus’s voice dipping in and out of audio.
I grip the cell tight, telling myself that if I do so, maybe, somehow, I won’t be on my own.
Every muscle in me becomes rigid, ready, suddenly not caring about the illegal means in which I was trained by the Project, because, right now, I want to know it all, want desperately to remember every tiny detail of what I was taught, because it could save me. My eyes land on the lone toothbrush on the shelf by the wall.
The phone flickers again.
‘Maria? Maria, are you okay? Are you there?’
Balthus. The sound of his voice, the familiar curve of it floods me, for some reason, with relief.
‘I am here.’ I keep my volume low—there are sounds creaking from the kitchen.
Prepare.
I do a rapid assessment. I am wearing my running gear. I am fast, fit, but even when I calculate the time and trajectory at which I can sprint, I know that if Dr Andersson has a gun and surveillance of her own, I will never escape unless I can get to the bedroom.
‘Can you get out?’ Balthus says.
‘The bedroom door opens onto the shed where the truck is parked—it is my only safe route out.’
‘Good! Can you get to the door?’
I look to the kitchen, calculate the angles and trajectory. ‘I cannot determine if I can be seen.’
‘Well, is there another way?’
I think fast when my eyes, scanning the area for Dr Andersson’s face, see something, something long, thick, rusty—solid.
An iron bar by the cabinet, one I use for the fire pit outside, now sits discarded, tossed to one side after I got distracted from obsessing over tracking every tiny detail about the NSA scandal.
The kitchen door suddenly sways, a waltz, one, two, three, one, two, three, dancing in and out of the room. Is she here? I look to the iron bar then back to the door, and even though it screeches when it swings, too loud for my ears, for my senses, I slap the aggravation it causes aside because it offers me something, that unbearable noise: it offers me cover.
I drop like a stone. Flat to the floor, I scurry along the tiles so fast, so quick that by the time the second creak sounds, my fingers are handcuffed to the iron bar and, on the third creak, I am hauling it up and crawling back to where the window sits.
The cell phone crinkles and Balthus’s voice trickles in. ‘Where are you?’
‘Home.’
‘No, I mean … Oh, it doesn’t matter. Have you got the laptop and book?’
‘No.’
‘But you can get them?’
‘Yes.’ I glance to where they still sit. Right now, it is all a matter of timing.
Wait …
I rest my back for a moment against the cool wash of the wall and listen. My hands squeeze the iron bar as I assess where the danger source is, scanning my memory, determining what I should do next. For some reason, after two, three seconds pass, I find myself slowly coming to a stand. It surprises me, the move, makes my pulse rocket, but still I do it, slipping the cell phone into the band pocket of my shorts, watching as my feet, ghost-like, become taut, engaged, and before I can stop myself, before I can order my body to halt its course, I am holding the iron bar aloft and preparing to stride straight through the kitchen door.
Eliminate the threat.
‘Maria,’ Balthus says, ‘have you left yet?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘I can eliminate the threat.’
‘What? No. Just get the laptop and notebook and run.’
‘Negative. The best course of action is to—’ I see her. There, in the solitary cabinet, a waterfall of blonde hair reflecting in the glass panes in the wood. My chest tightens as panic shoots up. ‘She is here.’
‘What? Christ, Maria. Move!’
I go to run, to dart out of the way, but before I do, before my feet flip fast enough, the window behind me shatters, a clap of thunder in the silence. Shards of glass rain down onto my bare neck, shoulders, arms and legs, scissor splinters tearing apart the warm, suede air of the summer sun.
A bag is thrust over my head, plunging me into a sudden frightening, claustrophobic darkness. I thrash about, frantic to get out, and, as I lift my arms to try to rip the bag off my head, the iron bar slips from my grip and clatters to the tiles.
‘Maria? Maria?!’
The bag becomes tighter and tighter, and Balthus’s voice echoes from the phone, the sound of him reduced to just lost, helpless words drifting alone into the ripped, fractured room.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_6fd9f438-82a8-5ad7-9c90-617368e45585)
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
I wake up once more to find myself still alive.
Woozy, weary, my eyelids flicker as my sight takes in a panoramic view of the room, of the black, the stench. My muscles ache and throb, and in my head is a searing pain that shoots down my neck to the base of my back and stays there, pulsating, a globe of pins pricking my skin and bones. I curl my fingers into fists. The hallucination, the memory of it all floods back, the water, the feeling of drowning all fresh in my mind as if the shore were still at my feet.
‘Patricia?’ I croak. ‘Can you hear me?’
There is a cough. ‘D … Doc?’
‘Patricia?’ Hearing her voice makes me happy for one solitary, exquisite second and I let out a small whoop. ‘What is your status?’
A laugh ripples out, weak, vanilla, but there. ‘I love how—’ she halts, hacks up something from her throat— ‘I love how even in a shithole like this, you’re still so formal.’ She gags then hauls in a shoal of breath. ‘My leg’s killing me.’
‘Your leg is killing you?’ I panic, confused. ‘How can your leg kill you?’
‘No, no it’s not …’ She laughs again, but it does not sound like her, as if were altered somehow, down an octave. ‘Doc, it’s a phrase. Remember those? I taught you about them in prison. My leg’s not actually killing me—it just means it really hurts.’
‘Oh.’
Some time passes, but I don’t know how much. I drift in and out of consciousness, the blackness of the room throwing a blanket over everything, rendering each line of vision I try to establish useless. Slowly, though, after a while, an element of lucidity begins to return. It is small, the tide of it, the clarity that trickles back towards the shore, towards the solid certainty of the land in my mind, but nonetheless it is there and, for the first time since I awoke in this room, there is a grip of strength inside me.
‘Doc, where are we?’
I let out a breath, one controlled exhalation, then think. Location, logistics. How did we get here? If there are drugs in my system, then how were they administered and why? To transport me? But from where? And if so, does that mean Patricia has been drugged too?
For the next few moments, we remain silent. Patricia, lying on the floor at whichever side she is, sings some type of Irish lullaby, a song about the sea, and for ten seconds, I become calm, listen only to her melody, all whipped vanilla cream and light chocolate soufflé. I know it is wrong. I know that for her to be here means danger, being in this room trapped with me, yet still, as she sings, as her voice dances through the air, gliding through the gloom, I feel a slice of gratitude, of selfish thankfulness that my friend is near to me.
‘Hey, Doc,’ Patricia says after a while, after the serene song has faded into the dark air, ‘do you remember when we first met?’
‘Oh. Yes. It was a Tuesday.’
‘Was it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cool. And do you remember what you said to me?’
The image of the scene flashes in my mind. Patricia, tattoos of the Virgin Mary and a blackbird on her arm, me bending forward to analyse them without saying anything at all to Patricia until she spoke again to me, telling me I was ‘getting a little close.’
‘The first words I spoke to you were about your name,’ I say. ‘“Patricia. It is the female form of Patrick. Patrick means—”’
‘Means nobleman.’ She laughs, joining in the end of my sentence. There is a sigh, small, mewed, and I find myself breathing more easy at the sound. ‘Your face was all bruised, Doc, do you remember?’
‘Yes.’ A flash comes to me, an image of a fist to the face. I swallow.
‘Doc, I’m so sorry I brought it up. Are you … are you okay?’
‘Why do people think I am a freak?’
‘Huh?’
‘Why do they call me weird?’
She wheezes into the air. ‘I don’t know, Doc. People are idiots. They don’t always see that it’s okay just to be who we are. Last time I looked, we were all, by, well, our very human nature, I guess, different to each other. At what point does different turn into weird? Who the hell knows? My answer? It doesn’t. We just are who we are, and the quicker the world accepts that, the better a place it will be.’
I sit and think about what my friend’s words mean and how, when I am confused, she seems to cut through the bewilderment, and the clouds in my head part a little quicker and the cage that surrounds makes me feel just a little less isolated.
After a few moments Patricia coughs. ‘She worked for MI5, right, that Michaela?’
‘Yes. She did.’
‘Jesus, it’s fucked up shit.’ She pauses, the blackness of the room pressing down on us. ‘I’m glad I met you, Doc, even though we’re locked up now in God knows where—I’m glad I met you. Without you, I … I wouldn’t have got out on parole so fast—that Harry lawyer of yours helped me, before he … well, you know.’ She inhales. ‘I still think about my mum, how she was in pain. It was the right thing to do to, you know … to end her life. I’d do the prison sentence all over again if I had to, just so she wouldn’t have to suffer.’
‘Euthanasia. That is what you did.’
‘Yep.’ A sniff. ‘Yep.’
‘I am sorry you are sad,’ I say after a moment. ‘Thanks, Doc. Thanks.’
We sit, the two of us, in silence and thoughts where the blackness of the room covers us almost totally. My muscles ache. I try to roll my shoulders to move the blood in them, but when I do, each bone creaks and my neck at the back goes rigid.
‘Er, Doc, you there?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘I can see something.’
I forget my sore neck and jerk forwards. ‘What?’
‘On your hand, there—some light.’
I look down. She’s right. I can see my hand for the first time, illuminated by a globule of buttered light. Adrenaline shoots through my bloodstream as inch by inch, a rash of light spreads from my hand, to my wrist, shining on the rope tying me down, then it continues up my arm to the well on my inside elbow, until it shows me something that I did not at all register until now.
‘Doc, what is it?’
I blink, check once more, but there is no denying it, because I am a doctor—I have seen thousands of them.
‘Doc! What?’
I start to shake. ‘The drugs are in my cubital vein.’
‘The cubital … Wait, what?’
‘The cubital vein resides in the ante cubital area.’
‘What? Doc, you’ll have to explain in words I can understand, because you—’
The light shines bright. My panic hits a high. ‘There is a needle in my arm!’
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 20 minutes to confinement
The bag on my head has blacked everything out and all I can see through the pin-prick gaps of fabric are shards of sunlight and shadows of shapes. I try to get a handle on where Dr Andersson is, but the bag is so scratchy on my face that it is becoming distracting, and the urge to yank it off, claw at my face over and over until the heat subsides, is almost overwhelming, but when I reach up one free hand to pull, it is snapped back.
‘Move.’
I gulp in buckets of breath, sucking on the bag as she pushes me forward, my bare feet flopping over the tiles. Then, we stop. For a moment, there is complete quiet. I jerk left and right, disorientated as I try to pinpoint where Dr Andersson is, willing her to utter one more clipped accent of a word, but all I can hear is the sound of my own breath rushing in my ears as if a sea shell were being held to my head. I don’t move. My muscles scream out at me, itching in agony where Dr Andersson pinches my wrists and shoulders. And all the while my cell phone sits hidden in the band of my shorts.
There is a click of a phone, but it is not mine.
‘It’s me,’ Dr Andersson says now, her voice a punnet of plums, a rich slate board of cured meats.
Another voice speaks from what must be her cell. ‘Is it her?’ A male, speaking in pebbled English. Who is he?
‘Yes. It’s her.’ There is a tug on my wrist. ‘Stay still!’ I wince. ‘Her hair’s blonde now, she’s skinnier, but it’s still Martinez.’
‘Good. Good. Well, you know what to do. We have to put an end to the Project. And she’s it.’
My mind races. She’s it. She’s it. Nerves rise in me, immediate, urgent, but the will to survive, to forge something that will get me out of this situation is stronger than even my urge to curl up in a ball, moan and hide.
‘You cannot kill me,’ I say, spitting out fluff and fibres.
She slides a plastic tie around my wrists, pulls it tight then walks away, her boots slapping the tiles. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and then there is utter silence as she seems to go into another room. Where? The kitchen? I slam my head left and right to determine where Dr Andersson is, stagger back a little and count in my head, the numbers not only soothing me, but allowing me to analyse the time frame and give me a slice of clarity. I reach thirty, listen. Nothing. Just the starlings on the cypress trees in the fields and the light tidal rush of grass in the wind. My body relaxes a little, shoulders softening—and then I remember: my cell.
‘Balthus,’ I whisper.
There is a scratch of static and then one word. ‘Maria?’
His voice is low, quiet, but hearing it, knowing he is there makes the heat of the bag, the confusing disorientation of it all more easy to bear.
‘Maria, are you okay? My God, she’s going to kill you, you have to get out. Can you?’
‘I do not know.’ I blink, try to gauge any shapes from behind the fabric. I sniff the air. ‘Chanel No. 5.’
‘What?’
‘It is Dr Andersson’s scent and I can smell it. The scent was strong before, but now is less so. Judging by the distance now of the perfume, it means she is not in the room, yet she still remains on the property.’
‘Well get to another room then! Move out of there.’
He is right. It is a risk, but if I can get to the bedroom, I can run.
I begin to raise my arms, slow at first, the plastic ties digging in, then fast, projecting the direction in the dark my body will need to crawl when the scent of perfume suddenly becomes so strong it feels as if my head will explode at the sensory assault.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
She’s here! I go to grab the bag with my tied hands, desperate to run, but Dr Andersson hauls me back, slams my arms down.
‘No!’ I yell.
‘Just stop fighting. God, Maria.’
I kick out, but Dr Andersson’s grip on me is tight and she jerks her elbow into my ribs. My torso folds in like a pack of cards, my eyes watering, lungs burning as I heave the bag so hard into my mouth to claw some oxygen that I begin to suffocate. There is a fierce kick to my shin. It catches me on the bone, ripping a fire up my leg, expelling the fabric momentarily from my mouth allowing air to slip in. I lash out my tied fists, but she knocks my head, pinning me against the wall.
‘How long have you been tracking the NSA?’
‘Let me go.’
She exhales hard and shakes her head. ‘I’m tired,’ she says. ‘I’ve come a long way and my family are at home and I’m missing my daughter’s third birthday for you, for this, so just do—’ she shoves me hard against the wall then loosens her grip ‘—as I say, Maria. Jesus.’
I hear her stride away, and I catch short sprints of breath, listening, a wild animal caught in a trap. There is a rustling of paper, tearing.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Finishing what I was supposed to do when you were in Goldmouth.’
The tearing restarts and I realise: she is at my wall where my news articles and images sit, tearing them off from the plaster, tracking the data I have traced. I toss my head left and right, shout out, but another kick hits my shin, harder this time, felling me, knocking me clean to the floor where a punch reaches my stomach, a balled fist sinking into my abdomen. I yell, curl up as a stab of heat shoots through my whole body and amidst it all the cell phone slips further down and all I can think about is not the pain that roars through me but the cell phone, Balthus, and whether Dr Andersson has seen it.
I have to do something quick. Taking in a fractured breath, I roll what I think is to the left then hit something. What? The wall? A crate? I go rigid, adrenaline mixing into a lethal cocktail inside me.
‘She has everything here—news articles, the lot.’
She’s talking somewhere on her cell again. My eyes blink at lightning rate as I listen out for a clue, for anything. Is Balthus listening, too?
‘There is CCTV all over the place,’ Dr Andersson continues.
‘You’ll have to destroy all evidence,’ the man replies, voice breaking up, ‘erase any trace of her presence. We are at the agreed rendezvous point. Surveillance is pulled back so no ops can be tracked. It’s down to you now.’
A rendezvous point—does that mean her team are near? I try to think it through, but my brain is so overloaded by the bag and the adrenaline that it is almost impossible to be coherent, and if I—
There is a crash. The breaking of items, the pulling of drawers, throwing of books to the tiles—she is tearing apart my villa. I try to think fast and what to do and then I remember: my notebook.
Some time passes. I try to count the seconds, track the minutes, but pain from the kicks comes in waves, swelling then rolling back. After a while, crashing over, I hear her stride into what I think again is the kitchen and I take my chance.
‘Balthus?’
A second, two then: ‘Oh, thank God. What’s happening?’
I tell him fast then blink, try to see.
‘Maria, have you slipped the ties from your wrists?’
‘What? No. I have tried but it is secured with some type of—’ A smash. I wait, swallow, ‘—with some type of hard plastic that I am unfamiliar with.’
‘Hang on. Can you feel it, the plastic?’
I touch the tether with my fingertips. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘How small are the groves on the tether?’
I feel. ‘One millimetre depth.’
‘I think I know which type it is. If it’s just one millimetre, sounds like it’s the new restraints we sometimes used at the prison.’
A flicker of hope begins to burn. ‘Do you know how I can untie it?’
‘Yes … I think so.’
There is another smash from the kitchen. ‘Then tell me. Fast.’
After three, perhaps four minutes, Dr Andersson returns. Her boots sound lighter now on the tiles as if she has changed shoes and when she walks, the drift of her perfume is softer, more weak. She marches up to me and halts. The bag, cemented still to my head, scratches at my face but I try hard to ignore it, bite my lip, keep my back steady and wait.
For a moment, there is no movement. She is crouching in front of me, I think—I can just make out the outline of her body in front of me. But more than that, more than simply her presence, is the heat of her, of another person that catches me off guard and, oddly, the thought strikes me that this, now, is the first time in six months that I have encountered, with such geographical closeness, another human being.
‘Right,’ she says finally, ‘let’s do this, shall we? The day is getting on and so is time.’
The bag is whipped from my head and my skin, slapped by sunlight, stings as, for the first time, my eyes blinking over and over, I get a complete look at Dr Andersson as she looms now in front of me. Her blonde hair is tied up into a ponytail that slides down her back and rests down her spine all the way to her hip bones. Her forehead is high and sharp and peppered with freckles, and on either side of her straight nose sit two rose crescents for cheeks, each propped up by defined, prominent bone structure. I choke, spitting out the fibres of fabric from my mouth and throat.
‘What do you want?’
She offers me a smile, the one I remember from Goldmouth, with white teeth and scarlet, plumped lips. ‘I want to do my job and get home. I understand you’re on the harsh end of this, I really do, but MI5 wants the Project to end, which means I have to deal with you, end you.’ She takes out a gun. ‘I’m really very sorry, Maria. I always rather liked you.’
And then, with one bullet, she shoots me in the leg.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_687645b6-11b4-566b-bb44-16edf7b11e2a)
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
‘Doc, are you sure there’s a needle? Can you see it?’
‘Yes. But the light is fading again.’
The blackness has reclaimed the air, but, now I know the needle is there, I will my arm to move as much as it can, wriggling my fingers in an attempt to feel the point of the metal inserted into my veins. At first, nothing shifts and I feel so thirsty, am so desperately weak and tired that my mind begins to think it has imagined the entire thing.
And then it moves, there, the needle, in the crease of my elbow. Just one pull at my skin and veins.
‘Can you see it now?’ Patricia says.
‘No. I can feel it.’
‘Doc, you know what this means, right?’
I go to speak the words they are drugging me again but instead clam up, an instinct to yell out, to cry as loud and deep as possible welling up inside of me. This was not supposed to happen again. No, no, no, no.
‘Doc, are you still there?’
‘I ran away from them,’ I say after a moment, catching my short, shallow breath. ‘I hid. The Project and MI5 thought I was dead after prison. I thought I had escaped it all.’
‘Oh, Doc. Doc, I’m so sorry.’
For a moment, in the blackness, it feels as if everything has stopped, as if, here, now, all I have is collapsing on me, folding inwards never to push out again. It feels hopeless. I sit there, silent, scared, until, on the murky moisture of the air there is a rush of something.
‘Doc? Doc, you’re groaning. What’s the matter?’
I squint as hard as I can, frantically forcing my eyes to see something, anything in the dank, suffocating space as to my direct side, the rush sounds again, distinct now, a click licking the air as what must be a liquid begins its gentle whoosh. It is only when I hear again that my groggy brain engages in the intricacies of the noises around me and I realise with a stabbing clarity what is actually happening and what it means to me—what it means to us both.
‘What if they are drugging me, so they can transport me to another facility somewhere? If they do that, what will happen to you?’
‘I’ll be okay, Doc.’
‘What if they are intending to kill you? That is what the Project does—it kills those I love.’ My breathing begins to speed up in short, rapid intakes of oxygen as the worry inside me escalates.
‘Doc, Doc I can’t get to you, so look, it’s going to happen either way, so try to breathe through it. There, that’s it …’
I try so hard to focus on her voice, slam my arms against the rope on my wrists, desperate to escape, to run, hide, because what is charging forward now like a pack of hungry wolves makes my heart stop, makes every sweat gland on my skin scream out in fear. A hallucination.
‘Breathe, Doc. Keep breathing. Keep listening to me …’
A body with multiple heads, each one of them spinning 360 degrees, hurtles towards me. I scream. My nails scratch into the wood of the chair, legs kick out, but it does no good, and I know it must be the drug, be the liquid shooting inside my veins, but there is nothing I can do. I am trapped.
The monster is on me now, here in this room. I yell out my friend’s name, hear the distant scream of her voice, but I can’t reach her. The heads in the image sway, thorns in the breeze, and I hear a voice screech and realise it’s mine, because the heads, the faces on them—they are Mama and Ramon. My mother and brother.
‘Patricia, where are you?’ I yell.
‘I’m here, Doc. It’ll be over soon. Keep calm, okay? Keep breathing …’
I try to scramble back, tell myself that none of this is real, but still they come, the heads grotesque, twisted out of shape, all images in a fairground mirror, their mouths and eyes huge, each of them laughing over and over like two sick clowns. ‘Freak! She doesn’t understand,’ they sing. ‘She doesn’t understand, the freak.’ The children run beside them, children I recall from my school days, and they skip and they chant, Weirdo, weirdo, stinky nerdy weirdo. And I ask them what they mean, scream at them to tell me what is happening, but the heads, all of them, family, children, they simply look at me, at each other, and then, just as I think they’re going to disappear, they let out one roar of a laugh and, merging together, morph into a gun as tall as a car and shoot me, point blank, in the head.
My eyes fly open. I choke, claw for air, chest ripping, struggling as I look down at myself, at the black room, shaky, scared at what just happened.
‘Patricia, the drugs …’
‘Sssh. Sssh.’
I stutter, voice cracked and it takes a full minute for my body to settle, for the nightmare of the image of my mama and brother to slowly subside.
‘Doc, I’m here. It’s okay. It’s over. It’s over.’
I hear my friend, cling onto her voice as if I was sinking and she were my life raft in the sea. My brain recalibrates itself, but it is taking time and each movement of my eyes and hands and limbs makes the room sway and soar and whip up a pile of nausea in my stomach.
After a moment, after the heat has subsided, Patricia checks on me then asks me a question.
‘Doc, you know these hallucinations, right?’
‘Y-yes.’
‘Well, why’s it only happened now?’
My head throbs, throat runs red raw. Everything in the room still fades into black. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, if this needle, yeah, this drug is permanently in your vein, why’s it not causing you to trip all the time?’
I begin to think. What she is saying, what she talks about—my brain finally starts to shrug off the drug effects and engage, calculate.
‘Doc, I guess what I mean is,’ she says now, ‘what’s making the drug only come out in doses?’
And in the dark, in the foul mouldy odour, I sit and I think and I try to understand what is happening.
And how to make it all stop.
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 11 minutes to confinement
A searing heat instantly explodes in my thigh.
The room begins to sway, the white sun from the window blinding me, mixing with the pain to create a lethal cocktail, slow at first then faster, and when I look at Dr Andersson her smile appears distorted, as if someone has taken an axe to her head and sliced it clean down the middle. Nausea balloons as blood begins to spew from the wound.
I force myself to keep my hands were they are, fixed in the position behind my back, despite the instinctive compulsion to throw my arms forward and tend to the wound.
As the pain rips into me, I focus on the cell phone, still hidden behind me, knowing that Balthus has listened to everything that has happened. Sweat drains down my face. Ahead Dr Andersson proceeds to tear apart my laptop, pocketing my USB sticks, disabling every part of my surveillance system, all that I have been unable to hide now being destroyed, and it hurts me, every smash, every rip and pilfer—what she is doing feels as if it is physically hurting me, the way in which she is creating pure chaos out of my routine and order.
If she is destroying evidence, it will soon come to the point where she will find my notebook.
I have to stall for time. ‘I need to stem the blood flow from my leg,’ I say. ‘I need to press my hands into it. Untie me.’
She throws me a glance, hesitating for a moment, her eyes on my wound, and I think she may come to assist me, but then she checks her watch, shakes her head and returns to pulling apart my data.
My body is getting weaker. The blood from the wound is slowing a little, but still oozing and if I don’t get pressure on it soon, I may bleed out entirely and lose consciousness. My eyes spot the iron bar—it is still on the floor where it fell.
Dr Andersson comes over and crouches by me. ‘Maria? Can you hear me? I need you to tell me something—is the Project still functioning?’
‘You are MI5,’ I say, winching at a stab of pain, ‘you should have the intelligence for that answer.’
She sighs. ‘I’m looking for a file.’
My ears prick up. ‘What file?’
She glances around at the mess. My teeth clench at the chaotic sight. ‘There is a file hidden by a woman, a woman you knew, an asset in the field some time ago when the Project was more … useful. Do you know where the file is?’
Sweat trickles past my eyes. Raven, the dream. Does she know? ‘What is the woman’s name?’
‘Ah, now wouldn’t that be easy, if I had a name?’ She wipes her cheek dry of sweat. ‘I’m afraid that’s what I was rather hoping you could provide.’ I shift, careful not to dislodge the cell phone. ‘Do you know where the file is, Maria?’
‘No.’
She stands. ‘Then I’m sorry, but …’ She administers one swift kick to my injured leg. I cry out in agony.
‘B … B …’ My speech slurs. I must be losing more blood than I thought.
‘Where’s the file, Maria? Please, just tell me.’ She sticks on a quick smile. ‘Let’s just get this done as fast as we can, okay? I really don’t want to hurt you any more than I have to before, well … Just help me out here.’
My eyes narrow as I muster every inch of energy that is left in me, every shard of anger and fear and pain and loss, straight at her. ‘Bitch.’
Her smile and shoulders drop. She reaches into her pocket and withdraws a knife, black handle, solid. My brain fires into red alert mode, desperate to move as she slides off a leather sheath to reveal one small, sharp blade, seven centimetres long, the sleek silver of it shining in the summer sun, a gentle light dancing warm and carefree on the glide of the metal.
‘I’m sorry I have to do this, but you were supposed to die months ago.’ She kicks a piece of computer casing away. ‘You evaded our officers then, even dodged my bullet for you outside the court, but not now. I’m afraid we can’t risk the service being exposed. You understand—it’s this NSA scandal. MI5 don’t want the Project blowing up like NSA’s prism programme did. The Project was good while it lasted, but it has to end. The file I need—we’ll find it. I hear there’s been a run of break-ins and knife crime in this remote area.’ She glances to the upturned room. ‘I’m afraid this will have to look like a burglary that’s ended in a murder.’
I look at my leg, panting in air now. The limb is damaged, but the blood loss is finally halting. I can move my toes, but I don’t know if I can mobilise my body at all, but my hands are still behind my back and, for now, I need to keep them there …
I start to count.
One.
Dr Andersson takes a step forward.
Two.
She grips the knife tight in her fist, her eyes downturned.
Three.
I glance to the iron bar near on the floor.
Four.
Dr Andersson lunges forward. ‘I’m so sorry …’
Five.
I unleash my hands, tethers gone, Balthus having talked me through how to untie them, and, despite the blood loss, despite the odds stacked against me, and the chaos and the fear and the sheer sensory onslaught of the entire situation, I charge forward at Dr Andersson with every single drop of effort I’ve got.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_c2f64082-4109-5191-8880-d692ea31294e)
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 7 minutes to confinement
I ram my body hard straight into Dr Andersson.
She yells out, her torso toppling to the left, the knife slipping from her grip, clattering to the tiles. ‘Maria, stop! Please, don’t …’
She steadies and I think she is going to recover, her hand reaching to a gun behind her jacket, and so fast, without thinking, I haul my whole body up and head butt her in the face.
She reels back, a sharp crack indicating her nose breaking, blood spurting, the fall dislodging her gun and causing it to slide under a table.
I move quick, drag my body up, the bullet wound in my leg throbbing.
‘Maria,’ Balthus calls from the cell. ‘What’s happening?’
I survey the damage fast, the slump of Dr Andersson’s slight body, her twisted limbs.
‘She is alive,’ I say. ‘Injured.’
‘I don’t give a damn about her—just get the hell out of there. Get your notebook and bag and run!’
But my eyes catch sight of my ordered articles and photographs and sketches ripped on the floor pressed under Dr Andersson’s mashed up body, blood seeping from her ear. For a moment there is a quiet, macabre eeriness to it all as the summer sun glows through the windows, warm and serene over the utter devastation in my villa. I slap a hand to the wall, steady myself, everything spinning a little as I will my brain not to melt down at the chaos. One, two, three. One, two, three. I play out a waltz of numbers in my head, draw in a long breath then, looking up, acknowledge where my notebook is and, glancing at Dr Andersson’s splayed limbs, stagger towards the fallen gun.
Balthus crackles on the line. ‘Are you on the move?’
‘Yes.’
I step over a broken laptop, and stop. There is a torn photograph of my papa lying discarded amidst the mess. It is the one of him with his arm around me, except the picture now only shows me with Papa’s arm on my shoulder, and does not show his face or the rest of him, his body ripped off and in two. The sight of the photograph instantly bothers me.
‘Papa.’ I scan the floor, frantic. ‘Where is the other half?’
‘What?’
‘The photograph of Papa,’ I say to Balthus, twisting left and right, crouching down despite the searing pain in my leg, and clawing through the tattered paper that litters the floor. ‘She tore it in two. Papa is missing.’
‘Maria, you’ve no time for this.’
But I keep looking, ignoring Balthus, ignoring the sting in my leg, led on instead by the urge to stay connected to my father in any way I can. I lift up a heap of shredded newspaper then drop it, confetti pieces floating in the sun. ‘He taught me not to flinch,’ I say to myself. ‘Papa.’
‘Maria? Maria, I know this is hard for you, but you don’t have time for this. If MI5 don’t hear from Dr Andersson, they’ll come to the villa. And if they know where you live, chances are the Project do too.’
Yet it’s as if his words have no meaning. All I can obsess on is Papa’s picture.
‘Maria!’
I lift up files. I throw torn shreds of NSA articles and images around until the air becomes thick with paper and no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I tell myself to leave, I can’t, not without Papa, not without seeing his arm around me, safe, secure, knowing I’m not on my own, because I don’t want to be on my own, not really, not like this for the rest of my life. And then, as I turn, there, among the broken pieces of laptop plastic, I see him, Papa, his eyes shining bright as if he were still alive, warm, breathing next to me.
‘Maria, have you got it?’
‘Yes!’
I grab the picture, thrust it to my chest and standing, happy, so happy I have him close to me, even if it’s only like this.
‘Good. Okay, Maria. Now you need to run. Run now, yes?’
‘Yes. Yes.’
I turn, checking the room, glancing to Dr Andersson’s body on the floor, then, grabbing my notebook fast from where it lies half-hidden by a stack of half-toppled books, I go to hobble to my bedroom, to the hidden floor compartment containing my emergency bag. But, as I reach the door, there is an almighty scream that fills the room, piercing my ears.
Dr Andersson flies at me. ‘No!’
Her hand grabs me as she smacks me against the wall, the picture of Papa floating from my fingertips, notebook flying to the left. She slams me against the wall again, blood instantly spurting from my wound. Flipping me over, she digs her knee into my chest, pinning me down, but my right arm slips free and, crunching my fingers into a fist, I turn, punch her hard in the nose. There is a loud crack. Her head spins back, hand slaps to her face as blood spurts, a crimson slit sliced into her skin.
I shift faster now, heart racing, counting the entire time to focus, my body rolling away, quicker now, Balthus from the cell shouting at me over and over again to get to the door, to get out, but before I do, there is a scraping on my leg where the bullet wound throbs.
I look down. Dr Andersson has dug her nails into my skin, clawing at the injury and she is trying to reach my cell phone. ‘Just … Maria, don’t do this …’
Heat rockets up my leg and I scream out, stumbling forward, attempting to get to a stand, but my knees wobble and I tumble, my torso toppling forward, body a felled tree, slicing my scalp on the corner of a chair.
Blood splatters in my eyes, disabling my sight, the heat of it, the ooze cloaking my face. My hands flap in front of me as I frantically try to see, attempt to stagger to safety, but Dr Andersson gets to me before I can run. The blood clears and my sight kicks in, but now she has an arm locked around my neck, her hands grasping for my cell phone.
‘Who are you speaking to?’ she yells. ‘Who?’
I smack her hands away and then, spinning round, see it: her gun—under the table where it landed.
And now both our eyes are on it.
Quick, slick, she throws me to the side, lurching for the weapon, my shoulder slamming into the stone floor. She kicks me hard in the stomach and I reel back, the agony of it engulfing me, spiking into my consciousness.
‘Jesus Christ, Maria, why? Stay fucking still.’ She spits out some blood, looking round for the gun. ‘I didn’t want to fucking do it like this.’
But I can’t let her get the gun, can’t let her get to my cell and to Balthus. And then I spot my torn Papa photograph, lying lost next to ripped pictures of Mama, Ramon, Patricia and Harry, and a sudden rage courses through me, one phrase slamming into my mind—prepare, wait, engage.
I glance once more to the photographs and I fly. I fly at Dr Andersson and punch her throat, straight on the windpipe, and her whole body instantly folds, collapsing in with a strange gurgle as her hand clutches her skin. I scramble up, eyes scanning the floor. The gun. Where is the gun?
‘Stop!’ Slam. Dr Andersson’s whole body lands on me. I stagger backwards at the weight of her, smothering me almost, impossible to breath, horrified that she is on me, touching me, and I hit out, my legs kicking at her shins, but it does no good. She topples me, my cell phone almost slipping away.
‘Maria!’ Balthus yells.
My face smacks the tiles, bones crunching as she knees me in the chest. Air shoots out and it feels as if I am drowning, as if every atom of oxygen is wheezing from my thorax as now Dr Andersson’s knees pin my torso down, her legs wedged into my skin.
‘So it’s the governor you’re in touch with,’ she says, spitting to the floor. ‘I know his voice. Maria, it’s over. Don’t drag everyone into this.’
She shifts to the right, blowing air on her face where her ponytail now hangs in strings of sweat on her face, and as I try and jerk my head out of her way, I see a glint. The bar. The iron bar.
I move fast, automatic. I whip my hand forward and with one swift movement, stretch my arm, grab the bar and, using all the force I can find, smash it over Dr Andersson’s head.
Her grip immediately loosens, her fingers go slack. She slips to the side, a slow groan sliding from her mouth and I waste no time. Pushing her off me, I scramble back, crawling on all fours, my eyes darting left and right until they finally land on the gun, wedged now into the wall. I grab it, chest heaving, and, staggering to a stand, point it at her.
‘My baby—’ she says, eyes rolling in her head. ‘It’s her … birthday …’ Blood loops round her ear now, pooling in the well inside it, and she drifts in and out of consciousness.
I pause at the sight of her, my brain stuck, torn between helping and running.
‘Maria?’ Balthus. ‘Are you okay?’
‘She is injured. I should help her.’
‘What? No. No! Is she down?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then go. Go!’
Swallowing, unsure what to do, but knowing Balthus is right, I secure the cell phone, turn, then, throwing one last glance at Dr Andersson’s broken body, I hobble away as fast as I can. But as I drag myself across the room somehow, Dr Andersson crawls up, fast and unexpected, catching me slap at the ankle.
‘Give me … the gun,’ she yells.
She fells me, topples me to the ground, clambering to my chest, fingers finding my throat where they squeeze hard. I choke, gasp for air. My arms stretch out as far as they can, the gun still in my fingers, but it is slipping now, teetering on the tips. My legs flap, nails scratch at her as I try to wrench her off me, but she presses harder, her hands nearly at my fingers now where the gun seesaws, teetering between life and death.
Tears roll down her cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry. I hate doing this.’
I feel myself begin to asphyxiate and it is hard to retain a grip on anything at all, the room swaying, my eyes bulging, about to explode. I look round at the torn articles on the floor, at the images of the friends and family that, without ever telling them, I do love. I thrash, yell, but Dr Andersson just digs in harder, strength coming from somewhere, her blue eyes fixed on mine, the sun shining on us and I feel it, there, its heat, and my mind goes to Papa, to his face and eye creases and his complete and utter acceptance of me for who I am.
I have almost no oxygen reserves left.
‘Ssssh,’ Dr Andersson says to me now. ‘It will all be over soon. Sssh.’
A warmth spreads over me, trickling at first then rushing in as, one after the other, faces swim before me—Balthus, Patricia, Harry, Ramon, Mama. And seeing them, watching the contours on their expressions, the grooves and lines, I start to believe that when I die, I will no longer be lonely and awkward and hunted down, but happy and free and regarded as normal.
‘Maria? Maria, fight her!’
Balthus? His voice swims into my head.
‘Maria,’ he shouts, ‘don’t let them win! Don’t let them win!’
His voice, hearing it—it sparks something within me, something that takes hold of the last flicker of a flame inside me. My fingers wriggle. Slow then picking up speed, I find, from somewhere, a fight, a strength and, instead of letting it slip from my hand, I begin to clutch the gun until my knuckles turn white and my breath grows strong. ‘Prepare. Wait,’ words whisper in my head. ‘Engage.’
I force myself to look straight at Dr Andersson and, gripping the gun as hard as I can, I make myself focus, make myself do what I am alarmed I’ve been trained to do, what I must do to survive.
I twist my torso.
‘No!’ Dr Andersson yells, eyes wide at the sight of the gun. ‘No. No … Her …her name is Briony. She’s three today. Three. I … I can’t let you get away. I can’t let you stop me.’ And then she goes to press down harder on my mouth, squeezing out the air.
And so I grip the gun hard.
And I shoot.
Chapter 10 (#ulink_1440fee2-4074-5fa8-8c1a-a881ec17f6b6)
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
Patricia is singing again. The song drifts in and out of my head as if in a dream, the melody and lyrics soothing, rocking me into a state of peace and calm as I think about the drug in my arm, the hallucinations.
The heat in the room appears to have increased. Sweat now drips from my body and while I know I am clothed, for the first time I begin to think about what I am wearing. Can I rip any of it off to cool me down?
‘Can you see me?’ I ask Patricia. ‘I want you to tell me what I am wearing.’
She stops singing and sighs. ‘Doc, you know I can’t see you. You know, really, that that’s impossible.’
‘It is not impossible.’
‘Yep. It is.’
Unsure what she means, I look to my arm and to the needle, to my body, my clothes. I can see nothing. The weak light that was there before has now gone, leaving a dark, dripping heat in its place, and every movement of my muscles is heavy, thick with fatigue.
We remain for a while as we are. Now and then Patricia will talk about how we may have arrived here, where the Project are, if they are watching us, but each time one of us attempts to conjure any significant recollection of our journey here, our minds come up blank.
Four, perhaps five minutes of silence pass when there is a sudden sound, the first we have heard at higher volume since we awoke in this dank, foul place.
‘Hey, Doc, can you hear that?’
‘Yes.’
It is there in the air—a ticking, a soft put, put.
‘That sounds like the stand thing, you know, the drip they had me hooked up to when I was in the hospital ward at Goldmouth.’
I listen to her words. The drip. The one she was hooked up to after she tried to commit suicide in prison. Put, put. Put, put. She is right. My brain begins to tick, firing now at the possibility of the hope of some kind of answer.
‘How close do you calculate you are to the sound?’ I ask, sitting up, alert.
‘Dunno. I’m not as hot on this maths stuff as you are. Say a metre away, something like that?’
‘No. That cannot be correct. That would mean that you are closer to the sound than I am.’
‘Well, yeah. Of course.’
‘That does not make sense.’
‘Doc, nothing makes sense in here.’
Put, put.
‘There!’ Patricia says. ‘I hear it again.’
The clicking sound hovers in the air now, hanging near us.
‘Doc, do you think, like, it’s got something to do with your arm, that sound?’
‘No. It is not …’ I stop, think. She is right—of course she is right. The needle. A drip. I whip my head to the side. ‘Have you got your bracelet on?’
‘Huh? Yeah, my mam’s one. Why?’
‘Twist your wrist.’
‘Uh, okay.’
‘Are you doing it?’
‘Yes. Hold your horses.’
‘Horses?’
Patricia moves her wrist, and at first nothing happens but then, slowly, a tiny shaft of light appears.
‘There must be some small bit of light. It is now reflecting on your bracelet. Keep moving your wrist.’
The bracelet reflection affords a shred of brightness across my body and I begin to look. At first, nothing appears, only a snapshot of my limbs, my knees, legs, but then, as Patricia’s arm moves some more, it happens. Inch by inch, upwards, light slithering towards my arm.
‘Can you see anything yet, Doc?’
There is a glint where the needle pierces my vein then it fades. ‘Move your arm again.’
‘This is hurting now, Doc.’
As the weak light returns, the glint comes again, stronger this time and, gradually, like clouds parting in the sky, what lies underneath is revealed.
I gasp.
‘What, Doc? What is it?’
I shut my eyes, open them, but it is still there.
‘Huh? What? What can you see?’
Sweat slices my head, confusion, deep-rooted fear. ‘There is a drip.’ I narrow my eyes, desperate to see anything I can. ‘It is … It is hooked up to a metal medical stand.’
‘I told you.’
‘There is a tube and it is … it is linked to the drip bag.’
‘That must contain the drugs.’
‘Yes, and …’ I stop, every muscle in my body freezing rigid.
‘Doc?’
Suddenly, everything makes sense. The put, put sound. Why the hallucinations only come in phases. Why I cannot move my arms.
‘There is a timer,’ I say after a moment.
‘What?’
I look back to the device, to the stand and the drug bag. ‘The drugs are being administered through a controlled, preset timer.’
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
33 hours and 54 minutes to confinement
Dr Andersson’s body drops sideways, falling on top of me.
I push her off and choke, her body thudding to the floor, arms slapping to the tiles, and for some reason I notice for the first time that her fingernails are painted crimson, hanging now in long, sleek shapes.
I stare at them, cannot pull my eyes away, my hands rubbing at my throat over and over, skin red, sore, every atom in me screaming for oxygen. A moan escapes my lips.
‘Maria?’ Balthus yells. ‘What’s happening?’
I stare at Dr Andersson and her fingernails, and I moan again and again, rocking gently now, back and forth. There is a small round circle one centimetre in diameter in her forehead, a single line of blood trickling from it, same colour as the lacquer.
‘She is dead,’ I say to Balthus.
‘Oh, Jesus.’
A damp circle the size of a dinner plate spreads on Dr Andersson’s jacket. It drips to the tiles, painting them red, and at first, paralysed by the sight, I cannot understand why there is a hole in her head while it is her shirt that oozes. Finally, I drag my eyes away from the growing pool on her chest as, slowly, the reality of what I have done begins to sink in.
‘I shot her twice.’
‘Maria, it’s okay. Maria?’
I drop the gun, crawl over, quick, and without thinking, roll the body over. There is a deep red stain shrouding the dark T-shirt on her chest where the bullet entered, shattering her rib cage.
‘No,’ I say, a whisper at first then louder. ‘No, no, no!’ I shout as my hands grope Dr Andersson’s torso, desperate to stem the blood loss, to close up the gaping hole that has ripped open her skin, bones, heart and head.
‘Maria? Maria, talk to me.’
‘I killed her.’
‘Okay. Okay, I know, I know, but it’s okay.’
I look at her breathless body, at my hands soaked in her blood. ‘No. It is not. Killing is not okay. It was her daughter’s birthday today. Oh my God. Oh my God, oh my God.’
Then, barely realising what or why I am doing it, I find myself slapping Dr Andersson’s face, rattling her shoulders, frantic for her to open her eyes, wake up.
‘Who else has the Project trained?’ I yell at her. ‘Who was Raven? Who was she? Why did you just not refuse to come here? Then you would still be alive! You would still see your daughter! Daughters need their mothers.’ Fat tears fall down my face. ‘They need their mothers.’
‘Maria!’ Balthus yells. ‘Stop!’
But I shake Dr Andersson’s dead body again and again, an anger I don’t understand surging inside me, gripping me tight at the chest, making me pant, making my eyes blur and my head drop. I give her body another shake, her skull flopping to the side, when something falls out of the inside of her jacket.
I halt, pick it up. It is a piece of paper, pink, confidential, A4 in size. Slumping back, I wipe snot from my face and peel open the paper. What I see shocks me to the core.
‘It … it is my family.’
‘What?
I slap the paper to the floor, smoothing it out as what I see sinks in. ‘There is a file containing pictures of you, Mama, Ramon and Patricia.’
‘What? Where was it? With Dr Andersson?’
‘Yes.’ My hands shake.
‘What does it say?’
My eyes scan it all, not believing what I can see, that they would do this, say this—believe this is right. ‘There is one word next to your name and to Patricia’s name,’ I say after a moment.
‘What?’
My eyes swim, head struggles to accept it. But finally, I say it aloud. ‘Locate.’
I drop the paper to the floor as my limbs, back, legs begin to shake uncontrollably. ‘They are looking for you. They know you are both my friends. They realise you know about the Project.’
‘And MI5 want all connections to the Project eliminated.’ He exhales hard and heavy, and when he next speaks, his words are low and slow. ‘Look … Look, Maria,’ Balthus says. ‘I know this is … this is not a good situation. But … but right now, you have to focus. You heard what Dr Andersson said before—she was looking for a file. It could be the same file you remembered in your flashback.’
Slowly, I pick up the paper again, eyes glancing to the blood, to the crimson nail-polished fingers. I open it up, the paper. I open it up and force myself to look at it again. ‘They want to monitor you all.’
‘Okay. Hang on a second. Let’s look at this one step at a time. First off, we have to get you out of there. The Project will trace you any time soon. And if you go now you could find the file, figure out where it is. Maria, that file, its contents, it could stop it all.’
He halts now, his breathing only drifting on the phone line. I think about his words, look again at the images of the people I love. My jaw clenches. ‘You are all in danger because of me.’
‘No,’ Balthus says, immediately. ‘No. This is because of the Project, because of MI5. But you can help. You can do something.’ He pauses. ‘Maria, you can stop it. You find the file, you end the Project, you end MI5’s involvement in it—you end it all.’
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Nikki Owen
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Шпионские детективы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: No matter how fast you run, the past always catches up with you