‘Like you.’ Noah winced as the cut on his lip widened. ‘Talk to Devi yourself – we’re getting out of this soon.’
He had no idea how.
Khan lifted his head with difficulty and looked at him squarely. ‘No, I’m not. I’ve been dying a long time. I’ve seen more death in my life than life. I know when it’s near.’
‘Don’t be so optimistic, Dr Khan,’ The president replied. ‘I want the new vaccine you’ve developed.’
‘You can have it – the samples are all in the lab. My research is there too. Some virologists could recreate and improve it just using the sample. It needs refinement but I think you can manage that.’ Khan smiled at Noah.
The general spoke. ‘I think you’ve served your purpose, Noah.’ He waved his hands at the soldiers and they unbuckled his chest restraints.
‘No, let me stay with him.’ Noah struggled.
‘You don’t want to see this,’ the general replied.
‘I’ve done worse.’
‘Perhaps,’ he dropped his voice. ‘But it’s always different when it’s someone you love.’
Noah looked up at the camera in the corner of the room.
‘Do what you have to do – but let me stay with him,’ he said. ‘I don’t want him to be alone.’
‘Noah, don’t you realise yet?’ Khan said. ‘We are never alone. I have never been alone – I feel it everywhere. If you could let go a little, you would feel it again too.’
The soldiers lifted Noah up by the shoulders.
‘Wait, let me say goodbye.’ He pulled away from them. A young soldier looked at the general questioningly. The general looked at the camera in the ceiling and nodded.
‘You should check with them first,’ the president warned.
The general shrugged. ‘Sri Lanka is a sovereign nation. Do it – leave his cuffs on.’
The soldiers lifted Khan and dragged him closer to Noah. He reached forward and straightened the old man’s clothing. He kissed Khan on the cheek, smelling blood and sweat. He kissed him again on the other side, and bent down, resting his head on the man’s shoulder.
Khan leaned into him. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered.
Noah nodded. He stepped away a little, giving himself enough room. He took that particular breath in. Then he flicked his head back and forward, hard into the bridge of Khan’s nose, smashing it. Thousands of synapses fired and tears blurred his eyes.
His brain registered the impact and pain in his forehead instantaneously. The soldiers took longer. Before they realised what he was doing, he straightened his body, raised his cuffed hands, fingers back, palm forward, and slammed it into Khan’s broken nose cartilage, driving it hard like a blade into his brain. The older man slumped on him, ribbons of blood winding around them both.
Chapter 33
There was silence for a moment, and then shouting. Soldiers pulled him away. Khan fell to the floor heavily, slipping on the blood that pooled at their feet. He was gone. Noah didn’t doubt it.
A soldier raised the butt of his gun. Noah dropped his left shoulder and charged forward, knocking the man off his feet and over Noah’s shoulder. Another soldier swung at him. Noah ducked, sliding in the blood. He steadied himself, brought his knee into the man’s stomach and then barrelled him out of the way. He heard a rifle cock.
‘Don’t kill him, just stop him,’ General Rajasuriya shouted.
Noah took a step forward. There was nowhere to go. Even if he made it to the door, he didn’t know what was behind it. But steps forward were always better than steps back.
There were three men on him now, punching and kicking. He kept standing and swept the legs of one man from under him, plunging a heavy foot into his face as he hit the ground.
‘Enough – Noah!’ A voice he recognised was shouting at him. She sounded afraid. He’d never heard that in her before.
‘I said enough!’ the voice repeated, more authoritatively this time. ‘Mr President, General – you’ve had the opportunity you asked for. He got your confession, we expect you to honour your agreement.’
He looked up to see a woman in a grey military bodysuit. Her hair was pulled back in a tight braid. She wore her shoulder holster in plain sight, and Bio credentials around her neck.
‘Sahara . . .’ She looked so different. Her eyes coldly assessed the room. Two Bio agents stood behind her, their faces impassive. She motioned to them and they moved towards him, as the soldiers retreated into a wide circle.
‘Keys?’ Sahara raised her hand. One of the soldiers looked at the president who nodded. He threw the keys at her.
‘You can’t be all that expendable, Noah.’ He smoothed his moustache and then his clothing. ‘Hackman’s instructions were specific. You were to do your job and then you were to go home. He thought I should just let you loose on Khan. Give you back the tools of your trade and see how long before the old man disintegrated. But I think our approach worked better, don’t you?’
When Noah didn’t answer, the president continued. ‘He was right about you – you are his best. You took longer than I expected but you got there in the end.’
He moved closer to Noah but ensured there were two soldiers between them. ‘A joint covert operation between the Eastern and Western Alliance uncovers plot by traitorous scientist to breach the Immunity Shield in the East.’ He spoke as if quoting a headline. ‘The investigation into the degree of shield violation is ongoing.’ He paused and smiled. ‘It has an exciting ring to it. Maybe they’ll make a movie in years to come. Tell Hackman I’m sorry if we ruined your pretty face.’
‘Not my face, just my manicure.’
Rajasuriya laughed. ‘I like you, Noah. I have work for you here if you ever decide to go freelance.’
‘Come on, sir,’ one of the Bio agents prompted firmly. Together they dragged and guided him out of the room until he could walk by himself. They followed Sahara in silence as she swiped her pass card and punched in codes at every door. Noah realised where they were – in Colombo General Hospital, the basement floors.
‘Take me to his lab.’ He pushed past the agents and grabbed her arm. ‘They’ll be pulling Devi out of the wall any moment now. I want to see her.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous – I need to get you to the airport. There’s a chartered flight leaving in an hour. Special delivery, courtesy of Hackman.’
‘Then we have time – quickly.’ He stood, hunched over her. Pain radiated from his fingertips to his shoulder, like barbed wire threaded through his veins.
She touched his face gently. ‘What did they do to you?’
‘What I deserved. You know about my team – Crawford and Garner.’ It wasn’t a question.
She nodded.
‘Could you have stopped it?’
‘No – my orders were to protect you. I’m always a safe distance behind you, not them. I’m sorry, Noah. It’s hard, losing your people.’
‘It has to be for something. Take me to his lab. Please.’
She turned to the others. ‘Wait for me in the lobby but take your time getting there. Take the stairs – two flights up. Your credentials will work in this part of the hospital.’ They were unwilling to leave Noah’s side.
‘I’ll be fine – I’ll meet you at the airport,’ he reassured them. ‘Go,’ he ordered. ‘No, wait,’ he called out. ‘Lychees – I promised Neeson I’d get him lychees. Could you?’
Sahara shook her head. ‘I’m sure they can. Anything else – something more useful like a flak jacket and a side-arm perhaps? Let’s go, quickly,’ she repeated, dragging him into the nearest lift and pressing the button to Khan’s floor.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘A friend.’
‘I don’t have any friends.’
‘So you keep saying.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘Does it matter which country, which allegiance? People only ever work for themselves.’
‘They’ve all seen your face now. If you don’t work for them,
they know who you are.’
‘Maybe it’s time I went home too.’ The lift came to a halt and the doors opened. ‘I don’t know – I still prefer it here.’
‘It’s not safe for you here.’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Nowhere is truly safe. I’ll take my chances a while longer. I think things will get more interesting in this part of the world.’
‘More interesting?’ He shook his head. ‘I need boring. I need a rest. I need . . .’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know – something other than this. More life, less death,’ he said, thinking of Khan.
‘Life is killing all of us. Your security passes have been revoked so we’ll have to use mine.’
‘You have passes for this section?’ he asked.
‘Sometimes, it depends – today I have a pass.’
She guided him quickly through the doors that took them to Khan’s lab. Devi was still there. He walked around the room, trying to work out what it was that Khan had left for him.
‘Good afternoon, Dr Williams,’ Devi’s voice echoed around the room.
‘You really should call me Noah, Devi. It’s time we were friends.’
‘We are friends.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t have any friends,’ Sahara remarked, stepping over torn papers.
‘Dr Khan says Dr Williams always underestimates himself,’ Devi replied.
‘Dr Khan says you think I’m a lazy scientist,’ Noah retorted.
‘You are a lazy scientist. Did Dr Khan have any other messages for me?’
Noah’s throat tightened. He opened his mouth but the words wouldn’t come out. He sat on Khan’s stool and pulled it close to the old man’s gamma counter, touching the re-calibration switch.
‘Don’t play with his stuff,’ Devi said kindly.
‘Sorry. I just –’ he paused. ‘Amir said to tell you goodbye. He said he learnt a lot from you. He was grateful.’
‘Thank you for that message, Noah. You were with him at the end?’
‘Yes.’
‘He wanted me to show you something. Take the control pad and watch the screen.’
Devi’s arm slid down from behind the scope and moved gracefully towards him, holding Khan’s control pad. As he made contact with her, he felt a small but deep prick on his palm. He winced and nearly dropped the pad. He was about to inspect his hand, when he stopped.
‘Careful, it’s delicate,’ she said.
He looked at her and then at Sahara who hadn’t noticed anything. Underneath the pad, he rubbed his palm gently, feeling blood and the uneven graze of broken and punctured skin.
Suddenly, the screen on the wall illuminated. It flashed and was then filled with photographs of a younger Khan with his wife. Noah leaned back in the seat as Devi flicked through the slide show. Khan and Aisha in London, at a conference in Atlanta, at a church in Geneva.
‘He said it’s important to remember the happy times we were given,’ Devi said. ‘Some things, some memories, can’t be eradicated.’
‘She was very beautiful, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes. I think he grieves – grieved – every day but he also remembered and laughed. He suggested you do the same after your morning exercise and swim.’
‘After my morning exercise and swim?’
‘Yes. He said you should swim more. It relaxes the mind.’
Noah laughed, the pain almost obscuring the things his eyes would normally notice immediately: the detail of their lives on the enormous screen. The smile, the hands held, the way their bodies turned towards each other, the sunlight glinting off the gold medallion she wore in every photograph, a gold circle with fine geometric shapes inside it. The perfect mandala.
‘It’s time to go, Noah,’ Devi said. The photographs disappeared, leaving the screen empty, save for Devi’s last command to herself.
‘We need to get out of here now,’ Noah pulled himself to his feet.
‘You’ve only just worked that out? I can’t believe you’re Hackman’s best. Let’s go.’ Sahara led the way, back out the three doors and down the corridor to the stairs. An alarm rang behind them. The elevator door opened. He heard the pounding of boots: soldiers.
‘Against the wall, quickly.’ She pushed him away from the stairwell. ‘Here,’ she opened the first door and ran through, her hand on her gun. He was right behind her. She skidded short, seeing the soldiers coming towards them. He nearly knocked her over. They turned simultaneously and ran. She stopped halfway down the corridor, turned back to the soldiers and shot at a trolley of oxygen tanks. They collapsed in a landslide of metal.
He grabbed her hand, crying out as the raw and torn nerve endings in his nail beds touched her skin.
‘This way,’ he shouted. Heavy feet running behind him and screams as staff and patients hit the floor. She stopped in a doorway and bent down to pull out her second weapon from her ankle holster.
‘Can you use it?’
‘I’m fine.’ He pushed his bloodied finger through the trigger guard, gasping when he made contact with the metal. He pulled back the slide. ‘I’m fine,’ he repeated.
‘This way, try to keep up.’ She bolted down the corridor and through large doors into an operating room. Doctors and nurses stood over a patient, retractors and clamps in place, scalpels poised, open skin revealing the fleshy mass of a distended bowel.
Some people raised their hands, others hovered protectively over the patient. A few whimpered.
Sahara raised her finger to her lips, her gun trained on the main surgeon. ‘No noise,’ she shook her head. People pushed themselves back into the walls as they passed, as though they were contagious. They almost made it to the back of the OR when the front door burst open and two soldiers charged in. People screamed. Sahara shot both men in their brachial nerve. They dropped their guns. One tried to grab his with his other hand.
‘Don’t,’ she warned. ‘Just don’t.’ She shot the lights of the OR, showering them in broken glass and darkness.
‘This way,’ Noah shouted again, dragging her behind him. They ran through an empty room and into another corridor. ‘Your pass, your pass,’ he held out a hand. She threw it to him. He recognised the face on the card.
He swiped one door after another. She shut each one behind them. Soldiers slammed into the last locked door, shooting at it. He ducked, then clenching a fist around his weapon, he raised it.
He could feel Sahara’s breath on his back, her arm around his waist, helping him. He fired at the glass panel, exploding it into the face of a soldier.
‘We have to keep going,’ she whispered.
He dropped his arm. She took the gun from him. He reached for her and pulled her left.
‘No, this way –’ she turned right and started sprinting. He saw her press into her earpiece as she ran. Right and then left, towards a heavy metal door. It was an exit. There was a meta-scanner in front of it. The security guard grabbed his weapon but she shot him in the thigh with one gun and then raised both, higher, firing rapidly and precisely at the scanner. Its frame crackled and sparked and ignited. She didn’t stop – running straight through the halo of fire. She pushed the door into the sunlight of a side alley.
Vijay’s SUV braked a few feet away, the door flung open. He threw a backpack at Sahara.
‘As you requested, madam. Come, sir, our last tour of the city. No need to apologise about the car.’
Sahara kissed Noah briefly and tucked one of her guns into his belt. She grabbed his hand and reclaimed the general’s pass card.
‘Don’t fuck this up,’ she whispered.
Noah’s palm was swollen and red. She traced and then pressed down hard on the wound inflicted by Devi.
‘Get it right – fix it – for both of us.’ She kissed him again and then ran down the alley behind the hospital, pulling her backpack on as she picked up speed.
Chapter 34
Noah lay strapped to a bed. He tried to remember
the words his father had taught him. He closed his eyes but all he could see was Khan’s dark blood spilling over them. He cried out and angrily pulled against his restraints. The edges of his vision blurred: people and machines in muted colours, drifting in and out. The room was burning hot, his skin wet.
‘Water,’ he whispered. ‘Water.’ Maybe they couldn’t hear him. Maybe they weren’t there.
He lay back and turned his head. There was a book on the side-table. He couldn’t touch it. It was his old edition of the Bhagavad Gita.
The first page had an inscription:
To my dearest son, may these words comfort and guide you.
Your loving Papa.
‘It is a pathway, son.’ His father reached for the book.
Noah stood poised at the fireplace of their home. Papa stood up from his armchair and stumbled. Noah moved forward to catch him.
‘Don’t. Don’t touch me.’ His father put one hand out. With the other, he balanced himself against the chair and fixed his face mask.
‘You’re still well. Please don’t touch me.’
Noah ignored him. He put his arms around his father and lowered him easily back into the chair. He was as light as a child. The muscle had wasted on the bone and even the bone seemed empty of marrow. Noah thought he could crumple him like the papers he threw into the fire.
‘Please don’t burn it.’ Papa reached for the Bhagavad Gita again. ‘I’d rather be cold.’ Noah placed the book in his father’s lap.
‘I bought this edition for you when you were in your mother’s womb. She read to you from the English canon, all those consumptive fops she swoons over. I read you the Gita and the Baseball Almanac of 2000.’
‘I’m just relieved it wasn’t Pure Mathematics, by GH Hardy.’
His father laughed behind the mask. His saliva blotched against it, small blooms of red he couldn’t see. Noah sat at his father’s feet. They were fat with three layers of socks. He unwrapped them every couple of hours to check for signs of the necrosis they knew was coming.
The Barrier Page 25
