by Nikki Owen
My eyes stay on the screen. My palms are clammy. I rub them up and down on my trousers. I cannot get this wrong. Not now. There must be something hidden here, in Dr Andersson’s website. It is a cover. It must be.
‘Maria,’ Harry says, ‘I don’t think you should be doing this.’
But, before he can finish his sentence, a list appears on the screen.
Balthus leans in. ‘What are those?’
Stored passwords pop up. I peer at the laptop, amazed at what I have done. How? How did I know all this? My hands shake now, but I manage to scan the list. How do I know which password to choose? I search the notebook again and find an encrypted pattern seven pages in. Could that be it? Or is it all just made up? Stalling one last time, I follow the password-locate method and press enter.
The whole screen goes black.
‘I think that’s it now,’ Balthus says.
‘No.’
‘Maria, it’s crashed.’
‘No, it can’t. Just wait.’ My heart races, my mind pleads for something to happen, yet deep inside, I know it is futile. They think I am crazy.
Harry moves forward. ‘Come on, Maria. Let’s get a cup of tea, hmm?’ And he walks over to a kettle that sits by the window, pours himself a glass of water.
‘Harry!’
Harry stops, turns, looks at Balthus. I look at him then at the computer screen, rigid, barely able to register what is in front of me.
Because a document has flashed up. A confidential report containing hundreds of names and numbers and test case allocation codes and secure file names. And at the bottom is an intelligence officer number next to a picture of the report’s author: Dr Andersson. I do not move, too scared to admit what I have done, what I have accessed without knowing how.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Balthus says.
Harry comes over, peers at the screen. He drops his water glass.
Because there, at the bottom of the file is an address: Thames House, London.
The headquarters of the UK Security Services.
MI5.
Chapter 23
Kurt takes a sip of coffee then announces that he needs to use the bathroom. He gets up and leaves, and it all happens so fast, it is all so unusual, that I don’t have time to tell him that he has left his cell behind.
When the door shuts, I immediately stand and grab the phone. I don’t think, just do. The dream, the nightmare is fresh in my mind, and as every second passes it feels more real, more like it actually happened. I glance to the coffee. I wonder…I bend down, pick up the flask. Uncapping it, I sniff. Normal. No aroma other than the usual. I am tempted to sip it but something tells me to stop, yells at me that it is not safe, but I don’t know why I should think that. All the same, I re-screw it and set it down.
Knowing time is short, I gulp some water for my dry, nervous mouth and turn my attention to the mobile. If Kurt is my handler, working for the Project, this could tell me, may provide some information. Having seen him use his phone often, I tap the screen. Closing my eyes, I search my memory for an image of Kurt inputting his passcode…There! My eyes fly open and I tap it in. Denied. What? There is a clattering from outside. I freeze, not daring to move. When no one comes, with my hands wobbling slightly, I try again, closing my eyes. A picture pops up after three seconds: Kurt entering the room just after I awoke. He had his phone in his hand. I think hard, flicking through the images until…That one! I open my eyes, tap in the code…I am in.
Pausing to take a breath, to steady myself, I then begin to methodically scan his emails, his texts. Nothing of interest. I shake my head, check again, but still no real facts, no crucial information, and then, just as I think I was wrong, that I have flown to a crazy conclusion and that Kurt is just what he says he is—a therapist—I see something. Voicemail. He has a voicemail message. Should I listen to it? Pausing to check for anyone returning, I gulp and tap the icon before I can change my mind. I put the phone to my ear.
‘Daniel?’ a woman says. I freeze. I recognise the voice: a punnet of plums, a bunch of black grapes. Kurt’s girlfriend, the one with the coffee. Except, she is not calling him Kurt. So does that mean…? I press the phone harder against my ear, listen.
‘I’m at Callidus now,’ she is saying. ‘Dr Carr wants you to cut it now. We’ve got enough recording material. Tests are all confirmed and neutral. The geese are on our trail now. NSA is blown. We need her out and on our side. It’s time. See you at the Project.’
The message ends. I lower the cell, my whole body suddenly numb, immobile. The woman who brought the coffee, Kurt’s girlfriend—she works for Callidus. Which means…I throw the phone down as if it’s red-hot, as if it’s scorching my skin, because the truth burns me, sears my mind. Kurt is not a therapist. He is from Callidus, and he has been here messing with my head, implying that I am going crazy when I am not. I pace the room, thoughts spinning, hands wringing themselves over and over again at what it all means, at why they are doing all this, at the gut-ripping reality of it all. Balthus and Harry and I—we found out, we discovered the eyes-only document that day in the office, the conditioning, the tests, the, the…I have to stop, overwhelmed, leaning against Kurt’s chair, gulping in air, but it doesn’t work. My heart still pounds in my chest, my blood still bangs in my veins.
Daniel. The woman on the message said his name was Daniel. Daniel means ‘God is my judge’. God? God? I almost laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. Where is God in all this? How can a God condone what is happening in the world? The lies, the corruption—nowhere is free from it, not even the inner sanctum of religion itself, rife as countries all over the world are with violence and hate and greed and deception. All of them—Spain, Iran, Iraq, England, America, Israel, Palestine—justifying their actions in the name of their God. And so is that what God is? Cruel? Lying? Prepared to go to any means to succeed in his aim, to get what he wants? Is that what Father Reznik was, what Daniel—Kurt—is?
It is too much. I bang my head hard on the chair, my forehead, the taut bone hitting the leather. But then something happens, as if the blow dislodges a reality inside me, one I knew was there, but for some reason could not reach: Kurt took me to Callidus. I halt, skull resting on the seat. I wasn’t asleep at all, not in the chair. What I thought was a dream actually happened—they took me in a van and plane so they could test me, drugging me for the journey back to London. Why?
I flip up straight and, ignoring the head-throb, stride across to the picture of the mountains and moorland on the wall, utterly lucid now, knowing exactly what I need to do. His girlfriend said they had been recording me, so let’s see.
I study the moorland picture. The frame is wooden, the paint is oil. I trace my finger along the edge and analyse the painting strokes. Each one of them appears just the same, each a deep green of the moor or a brown of the mountain. Mountains and moorland—the two are not normally found side by side. By the bottom right-hand corner there is a tear. It is only one millimetre in diameter, but I see it.
I reach out and, slowly, touch the canvas. Bit by bit, I poke my finger into the painting and, gradually, the tear becomes bigger until, when I stop, it is two centimetres long. I pause, listen to the rise and fall of my breathing. I look at the carpet, at the door, at the bars on the window. A soup of faces stir in front of me: Kurt, Father Reznik, university professors, colleagues at St James’s, Dr Andersson, Michaela Croft. Each of them blending into one swirling stew of blood and tissue. All of them liars. All of them part of the Project, the covert conditioning experiment.
I face the painting and begin to rip it apart.
Harry and Balthus stare at the computer screen. No one moves. No one speaks. The rain outside has been replaced by a sudden howling wind.
Harry steps back, shakes his head. ‘How can Dr Andersson’s website link to MI5?’
They both look at me, but I avoid their gaze, my whole body spent, exhausted with what I have tried to do. ‘She was right,’ I say after a moment, voice quiet, shattered. ‘
Bobbie was right.’
Harry stares at the screen again. ‘MI5?’ He shakes his head. ‘My God.’
Balthus reaches over, picks up the phone. ‘I’m getting Dr Andersson, or whatever her fucking name is, out of here now. This is not okay. This is not fucking okay.’
‘Maria, I am so sorry,’ Harry says now. ‘I…’ He stops, breathes out. ‘I am so sorry we doubted you.’
I look at him now and sway. It feels as if I am hanging off the edge of a cliff, teetering, staring into the sea below. Bobbie has been telling the truth. I roll the word in my head; it almost feels like a stranger to me.
‘She took my blood,’ I hear myself say now aloud.
‘What?’ Balthus says, holding out the phone receiver.
‘In our therapy sessions, Dr Andersson took several blood samples from me for tests.’
Harry looks to Balthus. ‘Is she permitted to do that?’
‘No,’ he says, slamming the phone back to his ear. ‘No she’s bloody well not.’
I hang my head, my notebook still open to my left. MI5. It is real, the connection to it is real. My mind fogs up and it’s only when I hear Balthus shout down the phone do I come to, my sight focusing on the scrawled pages beside me. Why? Why are MI5 involved? How can I ever have had a part in any of what may be going on? Why was Dr Andersson taking my blood? Why? Why?
I dig my fingernails into the notebook, hold on, claw into it, desperate for more answers. What is Project Callidus? Why are they using me? If Papa were here now he would make me investigate more, make me keep going, tell me not to give up, but I don’t know if I can. It has taken all my energy to convince Balthus and Harry of it all. To delve further may wipe me out.
I let out a breath and allow my eyes to flicker shut. A breeze glides in from the window. When I open them, the notebook is still there, but now it is on a different page, the wind having lifted it up and over. I stop, look at it. A thought begins to whirr inside me. Inching out my hand, I pull the pad over and scan the details on the page. Two codes stand out among all the others. They mean something, don’t they? They have to.
I stay on the page, blink at the numbers again, glance to the computer screen. What if the codes are a key? What if they can help me get to the information I need on unlocking Callidus? ‘I have to access these security-service file names,’ I say aloud.
‘What?’ Harry says. ‘Maria, MI5 will have the highest security levels. Access is impossible. Along with the CIA, the Pentagon, GCHQ, it’s one of the most enclosed sites in the world. You just have to accept this is as far as we can go.’
I stare at him then look back to my notebook. He is right. About the security, he is right. But why do these codes spark something in me, unlodge a distant recollection, a glimmer of a procedure I have previously performed.
I divert my eyes back to the laptop, block out the sound of Balthus now yelling on the phone and look. I don’t know what I am searching for, don’t even know what to do, but still I examine everything. It is on my third search, leaning so close that my nose almost touches the screen, that I see it. On the top left of the page is a scroll icon. My head jerks back. Was that there before? I rub my eyes, lean in again. It is still there. Very slowly, I put my hand on the finger pad and move the cursor. I take in a breath and hold it. One second, two. On three I click on the icon. Immediately, a tiny image of a black bomb springs up.
I move the chair back, suddenly frightened. I am delving into something way above my head. I glance around. Balthus is still on the phone, Harry is now making tea. I set my eyes back to the screen. The bomb is still there, shimmering like a mirage in the desert. The voice in my head whispers: Codes. Check the codes. Hesitating, nervous, I examine my notebook. They are complex calculations, mapped full of equations and encrypted messages, but still…I take a picture of them with my mind and then go quiet. Think. What can I see there? What is the common pattern?
Bit by bit, as if unravelling a gift, the codes begin to decrypt themselves. I sit and work it out, connecting, undoing, re-establishing. When I lose the trail, I kick back my seat, swear, move back, carry on. Once I am finally done, I look down at myself and realise I am shaking.
Harry returns with tea. He sets a cup down in front of me, steam rising to my face, stinging it. ‘Are you all right? You’ve gone pale.’
I cannot speak. The codes whisper in my head, the decryption. I could do it. Not much at first but then faster, quicker, as if I have always been able to manage it, like a fish that just knows how to swim. I put my hands to my sides, grip the seat rest. ‘I think I can access the secure site files.’
Harry pauses. ‘How?’ He slowly lowers into his seat.
I swallow, inhale, count, anything to make me feel normal, normal for me, at least. ‘My notebook.’
I hover my fingers over the keyboard and begin. I cross-reference everything I do on the laptop with my notes, stopping when I hit a problem, rerouting, using a new code. Balthus comes over—I hear him, hear Harry telling him what is happening, but I barely register their voices, so consumed am I with the process. When I reach the last code, I expect it all to unravel, but nothing happens. I have hit a wall. I shake my head. How can it stop there? I have followed the entire method. I leaf through the writing pad fast, scanning every single page, but still nothing. I look up, drained. If I can’t access this, then what? How can I prove what is happening to me?
I slam the book shut, tossing it to the side, cross with it, the pad landing backside up. I close my eyes, open them, defeated. And then I see it. A tiny scrawl the width of a millimetre running along the back cover at the bottom. Heart rate shooting up, I grab the book, thrust it in front of my eyes. The writing—it is not mine. I study it and begin to realise it is a scrawl, something I do not recall writing: an algorithm. A complex algorithm.
And only one person could have put it there: Bobbie Reynolds.
Chapter 24
With an anger surging up from my stomach, I force my fingers to hack a safe site. And Bobbie’s algorithm is the key. Just as she said all along, there, in my notebook has been the one thing I have been looking for: the answer.
I have to glance to my notebook, but it shocks me how fast it comes back. Balthus and Harry watch, but remain mute, their breathing deep, their bodies stone still. I input the algorithm following the pattern tracked in my notepad and when it happens, when the access is unlocked, the effect is instant, deadly.
A document. A classified document appears on the screen.
Balthus stares at it. ‘This is an eyes-only briefing paper from 1973. We shouldn’t be reading this.’
I try to examine it but falter, my mind bombarded with the data, with the awful possibilities this new information brings. I am frozen to the seat, my hands fixed mid-air, poised to type but refusing to move, refusing to acknowledge what they have just uncovered.
Harry studies the document on the screen, reads aloud from it, his voice, at times, wavering, shaking.
‘“We are proposing an experimental training programme, code-named Project Callidus. It will be tasked with developing and conditioning high-functioning, high IQ people with Asperger’s who can operate covertly within a new cyber-terrorism era. It will be based at the safe MI5 facility in Scotland”.’ He looks up. ‘The rest has been redacted. This is from decades ago.’
I stay still, scared, sick. The Project is a conditioning programme, a covert-conditioning programme in Scotland. Papa all that time ago, the memory I finally found in my rubble of grief: medical documents from a hospital in Scotland. The codes and dates he found, the reason he was scared. He said something was being done to me; he was right.
I rub my eyes. All these years—has this conditioning been happening my whole life? And what sort of conditioning? My eyes flutter open, pulse pounds in my wrist, hammering through my veins, against my skin.
‘This,’ Balthus says, pointing, ‘here.’
We make ourselves look. In between the blacked-out paragraphs there are words, clear,
legible words. There is a new section, fresh, dated from 1980. My year of birth. My fingers remain hovering over the keys, frightened to move. It is a new section, updated. It details that a new subject—subject number 375—has been presented to them, one that must be kept at home, unknown, in a controlled, natural environment, as opposed to the clinical surroundings of the Scottish facility full-time.
‘No,’ I say, quietly at first then louder still. ‘No.’
Balthus crouches down to me. ‘Maria, it’s okay.’ But I shake him away, because I need to look, need to see the truth with my own eyes. This child, the document states, will be tracked and tested. The conditioning plan, including frequent physical and mental tests, will continue without the subject’s knowledge until a specified age, using covert handlers for designated operations. Thereafter, the subject will be indoctrinated into the programme full-time, scanned for any adverse neurological changes due to age. They will, once tested, be activated for service.
I begin to wretch. Harry comes to me, but I shake my head, scared to be touched or comforted by anyone. My breath is short, laboured, but I force myself to scan the last two lines, not wanting to read on, but knowing I have to, knowing the answers lie there, in black and white.
‘Oh my God,’ Harry says. ‘Oh my God.’
The penultimate line states: non-licenced drugs are to be used for the Project. Test child subject has shown no signs of physical or mental deterioration to date. Subject has been conditioned on complex mathematical calculus, code training, technical assimilation, non-verbal reasoning and advanced physical training. Regular handler reports to be given, as arranged, every six months.
And, as I reach the end, a lone shriek flies out of my mouth.
Because everything else is blacked out except one name. The test child. Subject number 375.
‘Maria Martinez,’ Balthus says.
My chest is heaving. The painting now hangs from the wall, shredded, ripped open, the canvas irreparable, the frame fractured. I stay as still as I can and listen, blood rushing around my ears. The street below—the cars, the buses, the pedestrians—they are all there. They all exist. But Kurt? Daniel? Where is he in all this?
