Mission Atomic

by Sarwat Chadda

  They didn’t have the almost telepathic empathy of Dan and Amy, but they knew danger when it was about to knock on the door.

  Cara pointed to the window. It was half open.

  Ian shook his head and mouthed, Are you insane? We’re five stories up.

  Cara stabbed her finger at the window again.

  Then they heard a slow slide and click.

  Ian paled.

  He didn’t have a huge amount of experience with firearms, but it sounded a lot like a bullet being chambered.

  Cara slid out and grabbed the upper ledge. Chest against the wall, she shuffled along to make way for him. “Come on!”

  The good thing about these grand Victorian buildings were the window ledges. The wide window ledges. And the buttresses. And the statues. So many handholds and places to hide. It was almost impossible to fall off. Except when it had been raining. The marble was as slippery as oil on ice.

  Ian stared down and went a mix of pale and sickly. Each floor was about fifteen feet high and there were five of them between him and some very hard-looking paving slabs. He did a quick calculation. Seventy-five feet.

  He stepped out with one trembling leg.

  The doorknob turned.

  Ian thrust his other leg onto the ledge. He closed his eyes and whispered a little prayer. Ian’s shoes were Church’s, with handmade leather soles designed so they wouldn’t leave prints on expensive carpets. They were not designed for scrambling around on ledges. He swallowed and shuffled out very carefully.

  The office door opened.

  Papers rustled, and they could both hear drawers being opened and closed. The searcher was taking his, or her, time.

  Ian heard the clicking of keys and the soft hum of a hard drive.

  A cell phone rang, and for an awful moment Ian thought it was his. Then, with great relief, he realized it was coming from within the office.

  “Da?”

  Cara flashed Ian a panicked look. It was Alek Spasky. He was the man in the office.

  Ian leaned in to hear more and his foot slipped away. He scrabbled with his right hand and caught nothing but air.

  But Cara grabbed him.

  Ian swung off the ledge, clasping her fingers. He dangled there, seventy-five feet up with only Cara’s slim fingers between him and a splattery death. His heart thumped high in his throat while his stomach dropped down to his toes.

  Cara had managed to hook her other arm around the neck of a statue. But Ian could see her grip failing.

  What would give first? His hold on Cara, or her hold on the statue?

  She needs to let me go, thought Ian. But she won’t.

  Ian met her gaze and opened his hand.

  “Don’t. You. Dare,” Cara hissed, locking her grip even tighter.

  “Of course the bomb is in place, Nathaniel,” continued Alek. “Now I must go to Kiev. To Natalia.”

  Kiev? What business did Alek have in Kiev?

  “Do not presume to order me, Nathaniel. I assist you, but I do not serve you.” There was no mistaking the anger in Alek’s voice. The phone clicked off.

  Ian gritted his teeth. The ground loomed beneath him.

  One look at Cara warned Ian she was hurting badly. Her face was sweaty and red with effort, and her arms were shaking.

  Hinges. A lock clicking. “He’s gone,” Cara hissed. “Climb up.”

  With a pained gasp, Cara swung him to the ledge, and Ian clambered onto her legs, then her waist, and up around her chest.

  “Watch it!” Cara yelped.

  “What?” Ian blushed as he realized. “Oh, I’m—”

  “The window, Ian. Just get in through the window.”

  Finally, the two of them reentered the office. The computer screen had been swept off the desk and lay cracked on the floor. Cara picked it up and plugged it back in.

  “I don’t admit to knowing Alek Spasky well,” she said as she rebooted. “But he seemed very angry with Nathaniel, don’t you think?”

  “Very.” Now, that was something. “Any discord between allies has to be exploited. I read that in Sun Tzu.”

  The screen, cracked as it was, flickered to life.

  “What was he looking for?” asked Ian.

  Cara inspected the computer. A few quick taps on the keyboard and her suspicions were confirmed. “He deleted some e-mails. Neat. If he’d wiped the whole disk it would have been suspicious. So he just picked the ones he needed and got rid of them.”

  “But you’ve got them, right?”

  She tapped her hip pocket. “Oh, yes. I’ve got them.”

  Dan shoved his jeans into his backpack, punching them down to the very bottom.

  Jonah raised an eyebrow. “What’s that pair of Levi’s ever done to you?”

  Dan glowered at him. He was too angry to speak so he grabbed his hoodie, rolled it up, and rammed that in, too.

  Jonah returned to scanning his tablet.

  “This sucks,” Dan declared.

  “Yup,” said Jonah, his gaze still locked on the screen.

  “You’re not helping.” Dan threw a shoe at Jonah. Anything to stop him from looking at the tablet.

  Ham snatched it out of the air inches from Jonah’s head.

  Jonah fist-bumped Ham. “You’re the man.”

  Ham tossed the shoe seamlessly into Dan’s open backpack. “You know it.”

  Dan scowled. “How would you two like it? Being pushed off the team?”

  Jonah put the tablet down and swung his feet off the chair. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, to get a good, hard look at Dan. “Amy and our boy in pink cashmere are right. Nathaniel wants you, Dan. Or at least what’s locked in your head.”

  The formula for the serum.

  Dan’s photographic memory trapped in his brain the process of combining the thirty-nine ingredients to create the serum. He couldn’t get rid of it if he tried. And he had.

  Amy stood at the door with her arms crossed in her “big sister” mode. “Hey, Dan.” She’d probably send him to live in a monastery in Tibet if it kept him safe.

  Jonah nudged Ham. “Oh, yeah, I suddenly remembered. We’ve got to do that … thing.”

  Ham blinked. “What thing?”

  Jonah grabbed Ham’s arm “That thing, Ham.”

  Amy closed the door behind them. “Could they be any more obvious?” She looked around at the scattered clothes. “You okay?”

  “I’m about a million miles from okay.”

  “Nellie and Sammy are back. They’ve agreed to the plan. The three of you are going to Madrid. Nellie has family there; it’ll be safe.”

  “What about you? And the rest of the guys?” Deep down, he knew his sister was right. He was a liability to the entire team. They couldn’t work if they were constantly looking over their shoulders, worrying about him. But all he’d do was spend his days worrying about them.

  “One team will deal with the threat to the Ekats, once we figure out what it is. The other will head off to the Black Forest. Grace was terrified about what had happened there. We have to find out if Nathaniel’s picked up from where he left off.”

  “You think he’d still be using this research facility?”

  Amy shook her head. “No, not after all this time. But whatever his plan is, it’s connected with what he was doing there back in the nineteen sixties. There’s a big piece of the puzzle missing, Dan. A secret Grace herself said would destroy Nathaniel. And we’ll find it in the Black Forest.”

  Ian stopped at the door to Cara’s room. “This is the door to your room.”

  Cara replied, “Yes … ?”

  “Why don’t we work downstairs? The dining table’s large enough for your laptop.”

  Cara frowned. She did that a lot with him. “But my laptop’s in here and it’s plugged in and has a hard drive and booster and it’s next to the cookie jar? The one with the lilies painted on it?”

  “That’s not a cookie jar. That’s a seventeenth-century Ming dynasty—”

  “Whatever
, Kabra. Just get in here.” Cara huffed and pushed him in. “Find yourself a chair. And grab yourself a cookie.”

  Cara had settled in, that was for sure. Clothes lay in messy piles on the carpet and various backs of chairs. Laundry hung off clothes hangers from doorways, and there, screen glowing and right next to the antique porcelain Ming dynasty cookie jar, was her laptop.

  Ian stopped as he saw the bed. “And what are those?”

  “My … er, trolls.”

  He stared at the neon-haired plastic monstrosities. “What are these abominations doing in my apartment?”

  “I like them. I take them everywhere. It makes anyplace a home. Even a place like this.”

  Ian almost choked until he saw her smirk. She tossed the data stick from one hand to another. “Enough about decorating, Ian. Let’s get to work.”

  The data stick went in, and a few seconds later the e-mail box was up and open. “Tsk. Hardly any security at all. What’s the fun in that?” Cara clicked, clicked, and clicked away. “Nope. Nope. Nope. Definitely not.” The screen cast its glow over her sculpted features, added deeper shadows under her cheeks and an electric shine to her eyes. “It’s mostly just assignments from students. Schedules. Lab results. Oh, and an invitation to the dean’s summer party.”

  “Maybe that’s it! Alek mentioned a bomb. Perhaps he’s planning to do it then? Kill the faculty staff?”

  “Hardly the Outcast’s style. He’d want something bigger, don’t you think?”

  “Yes. Nathaniel does seem to have a taste for the dramatic.”

  Cara froze. “How about a trip to China?”

  “Well, perhaps when this is all over a week or two—”

  “No! Peerless was invited to China. Shanghai, to be specific. A symposium on future technology. It’s called Saving the World through Science.” Cara clicked open the attachment. “Whoa. First-class flight. Five-star hotel. Talks on … pretty much everything. It’s Ekat bait. Solar power. Biofuels. Wind technology and … animal conservation. Monitoring the tiger population in Siberia. Dolphin communication and … ha! Saving the bee! Bet someone thought long and hard about that one!”

  “Which hotel?” asked Ian.

  “The Hilton Shanghai.”

  Ian checked his cell phone. “Shanghai it is. When does the symposium start?”

  “Three days’ time.”

  “I’ll go tell the others. You start packing your bags. And trolls.” Ian faltered. “Though … only if you want to come. I’m not saying you have to.”

  Cara looked at him as if trying to read his mind. “Only if you want me to come. You could take … you know, one of the others.… ”

  “You want me to go with someone else?” Ian asked, frowning. “I suppose Amy would be interested. Keep her distracted from missing Dan.”

  Cara set her lips in a thin line. “Yes. That’s a great idea. Take Amy.”

  Somehow the conversation had taken an unexpected detour and Ian couldn’t quite figure out where. “You don’t want to go?”

  “You’re taking Amy. You just said so.” Cara hit the mouse hard to close the screen. “I don’t care.”

  “Fine,” said Ian. “I will.”

  “Fine,” replied Cara, slamming the laptop shut. “Go ahead.”

  Ian stood up. “And by the way, that’s a chamber pot, not a cookie jar.”

  “You think Nathaniel is planning to bomb the symposium?” asked Amy. “Something that simple?”

  They were all back in the living room. Nellie and Sammy on the sofa together; Ham by the fridge, hoovering up whatever was left of breakfast, Dan helping him; and Jonah glued to the television. Cara and Ian were at totally opposite sides of the room. Ian shifted uncomfortably, and Cara was staring daggers at him.

  Whatever it is, Amy thought, I don’t want to know.

  “I doubt it will be simple,” said Ian. “But Alek went to an extraordinary amount of trouble to hide all the Shanghai details from us, and that included tossing a Nobel Prize–winning scientist off a tall tower, so I’m certain Shanghai is the target.”

  “I’ve looked through the list of invitees,” Cara added. “Three-quarters of them are Ekats.”

  Amy agreed. “Shanghai it is. But a bomb? It doesn’t match Nathaniel’s theme. If he plans to take out the Ekats he’d want to re-create some historical disaster, like he did with the three others.”

  Ham held up three fingers. “Titanic. Hindenburg. Katrina. Check.”

  “So what’ll be the fourth?” asked Dan.

  Jonah raised the remote. “Maybe he’ll tell us. Alek Spasky is on the news.”

  “What?” exclaimed Amy.

  Jonah raised the volume on the news report on Dr. Peerless’s death.

  The TV crew was interviewing some students while an ambulance and police worked in the background. A picture of the Queen’s Tower was inserted in the top left of the screen with the banner TRAGIC ACCIDENT ROBS BRITAIN OF NOBEL PRIZE–WINNING SCIENTIST. There was a crowd watching the action on the lawn at the foot of the tower.

  Jonah leaned forward. “Don’t you see him? At the back?” He paused the clip. “Look.”

  Everyone was looking toward the lawn, except one man. He was looking at the screen, at the viewer.

  At us.

  Alek Spasky.

  “For a spy he’s not trying very hard to stay hidden,” suggested Ham. “Don’t they teach that at spy school?”

  Amy shook her head. “No, he wanted us to see him. But why?”

  Jonah furrowed his brow. “Behind him … ”

  “A wall?” said Ham.

  “What’s on the wall?”

  Amy stared at Ham, who looked back equally confused.

  Jonah walked up to the screen. “See that poster? What’s it say?”

  Amy leaned forward. Alek was leaning up against the wall, right next to the poster, smiling.

  “It’s a concert. Scheduled for three days from now. The Cities in Dust tour.” She looked at Jonah. “So?”

  Jonah sighed. “ ‘Cities in Dust’ is a song by Siouxsie and the Banshees.” Jonah drew a circle around the image of a dark-haired woman. “The poster is a fake. Siouxsie retired years ago.”

  Cara peered at the glowing picture. “It’s another challenge from the Outcast.”

  Amy bit her lip. Of course it was. Alek was standing there for a reason. He’d wanted the camera to catch him. “ ‘Cities in Dust’ doesn’t sound very good,” she said.

  Jonah spoke. “It’s about Pompeii, the Roman city destroyed by a volcanic eruption two thousand years ago.”

  Cara nodded. “Mount Vesuvius. Still active, in case you were wondering.”

  Amy was afraid. “You think the Outcast is planning a volcanic eruption? How?”

  Cara shrugged. “Maybe you could throw a nuke down the crater?”

  “The chap’s from the Cold War era,” suggested Ian. “That sort of thing is his MO.”

  Amy wasn’t convinced. “Jonah, when did the song get released?”

  “April 1986. It was from their Tinderbox album. I have a first pressing back home.”

  “Jonah, dig up events during April 1986.”

  Jonah’s thumb danced over his cell. “What am I looking for?”

  “ ‘Cities in Dust.’ The Outcast had picked that song for a very good reason.… ”

  Jonah stopped. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  He looked up at them, pale. “If this is what he’s planning … ”

  “Tell us, Jonah.”

  “I’m sending it to the TV.” Jonah pointed at the big flat-screen. “You’d better see for yourselves.”

  The image was of a blown-up building. Flames and smoke consumed the sky and the fire trucks and ambulances surrounding it looked small and pathetic compared to the explosion.

  “ ‘April 26, 1986,’ ” said Jonah, reading off the screen. “ ‘Chernobyl, Ukraine. The world’s biggest nuclear disaster.’ ”

  They sat silently, staring at the wreckage.

&
nbsp; The Outcast had saved the worst for last.

  Amy couldn’t take her eyes off the screen. The implications of Nathaniel’s plan were horrifying.

  How could Nathaniel be so consumed with revenge? She saw the looks of horror frozen on the others, all hypnotized by the scale of the disaster.

  “He’s going to re-create a nuclear meltdown?” asked Ham, eyes huge and fixed on the TV screen. “Can he do that?”

  Amy sank back into the sofa. “Of course he can.”

  Jan looked at Cara. “Find us the nuclear power station nearest to Shanghai.”

  “On it.” Cara flipped open her laptop.

  Amy scanned through the report on the screen. She knew about Chernobyl, but it felt like ancient history to her. “One of the reactors overheated and exploded. Covered much of Europe with radioactive dust. Not a major death toll to begin with—staff from the initial explosion and the engineers who sacrificed themselves to shut it down—but the repercussions are with us today. High cancer rates among locals. Mutations in the wildlife. A whole city abandoned.”

  “What are the chances that Nathaniel will be aiming at something bigger?” Jonah shook his head.

  Ian sat down on the coffee table, elbows resting on his knees. “We’ve got one advantage. Nathaniel expected us to pick up on the Chernobyl hint. He wants us to panic, and nothing generates bigger panic than a nuclear meltdown. He expected us to waste days running around wildly, looking for his target. He doesn’t know we know it’s Shanghai.”

  Amy agreed. “So what do we do? Tell everyone? Get the symposium canceled?”

  “It would stop Nathaniel’s plans for now, but he’d only set it up again and next time we may not be warned.”

  “We’re risking millions of lives,” said Amy. “Letting the whole city of Shanghai sit on a nuclear time bomb.”

  Ian’s brown eyes hardened. “Your call, Amy.”

  She wanted to take out a full-page ad in every newspaper, warning the world of Nathaniel’s plan. She wanted to have it on every news channel in every language. She looked over at her superstar cousin. All it would take was a single press announcement from Jonah and the world would know of the Outcast.

  But they’d tried that in the Netherlands, and no one had believed them.