Entanglement

by Michael Brooks

  Marinov drummed his fingers on the window glass. Daniel Born. Alex had tried to recruit Born for their network, but it hadn't worked out; they had nothing on him. Trafficking in minds rather than bodies was a great idea, but building up their portfolio of researchers always relied on having some kind of leverage.

  Gierek had been easy: he had pleaded for the gangs to smuggle him out of Poland. He had even cried when he first told them about the price on his head. Two years of collaboration with the communists turned out to be too high a price to pay for bread to feed his family. He betrayed his colleagues, reporting those who tried to continue their work. Some of them had never made it out of prison.

  Then Karol Wojtyla, the old Pope, came on the scene, and Jaruzelski started opening up the universities again, and emptying the prisons. Everything came out in the end, and Gierek's family disowned him. But Gierek hardened over the years: he never cried again. He told them he was fleeing Poland in shame, not fear. They didn't believe him, then or now, but he was a good business opportunity. They had taken everything Gierek owned, set him up in the US, and watched to see what might happen. Intellectual property was underrated in America back then.

  Intellectual property – quite literally. They were about to make the final killing from running Gierek. This was the big one; Marinov really had done it now. Back in Bulgaria, he'd been little more than a technician. He went out with the traffickers occasionally – he was there the night that priest had cut the scar into Alex's face – but mostly he did the planning, the logistics, getting the papers together for the shipments. Fifty women to Sofia. Thirty-five to Berlin. Fifteen across Europe into the UK. He was always going to be bigger than that, though. His little trafficking jobs on the side meant he had enough well-chosen people put by to set up on his own. And the day job, programming at the Pravets factory, didn't pay much, but it taught him what he needed to get onto NASA's books. When they came to Sofia looking for programmers, he was first in line. He was shipping out, with a viable business plan.

  And leaving things in order. The records on his hard drive – his parting gift to the Bulgarian authorities as he flew out from Sofia – were enough to break the trafficking rings into tiny pieces. It meant they couldn't track him down, of course, but that wasn't the real reason he'd done it. The gangs had provided a living, but he never liked the way the leaders treated the women. They were so small-minded; they thought sex was the only valuable commodity. Really, he was a hero, and no one ever knew it.

  Least of all Gierek. In some ways, Marinov was stunned at Gierek's ingratitude. The Pole was on borrowed time after the stunt with Radcliffe. It bothered him that he couldn't figure out what had gone on. What was it – one last attempt at redemption? Or was Gierek simply trying to pull Radcliffe in to give himself a plea bargain tool in case everything went wrong tomorrow?

  Gierek to Radcliffe to Virgo. Then back to Gierek – Alex said the disk was in Gierek's pocket. But now Virgo was with Born. Why? What had Gierek told him? Still, they had time to sort this out. He could always lie to MacIntyre, tell him everything was taken care of. He'd been lying to MacIntyre so long he had to check himself before he told him the truth these days. But Alex still had to be back for tomorrow night. It had to be perfect. There could be no loose ends when they were hooked into the White House and the planes started coming in.

  Marinov sighed and walked back to his desk. There was something crass about the plan, something entirely lacking in imagination – as the pinnacle of his career, it was almost embarrassing. At least it wasn't his idea. And innovation was hardly necessary, he had to admit. They had been hired to push buttons at the White House; using the familiar threat, picking at the still-open wound of America's day of terror, was probably the easiest way to do that.

  He picked up his phone, and stared at the picture filling the screen. She looked happy, this woman.

  The Bluetooth connection had already sent the image to his computer. He opened up the fax software, punched in the number, then yawned as he added the Cuban hotel details to the cover page. Alex was right: it would be no trouble. It was a wise precaution. Just in case the husband caused a problem.

  Gierek was dead. A couple more wouldn't make much difference.

  CHAPTER 20

  BORN DIDN'T ANSWER THE door again, despite the repeated drumming. Eventually, Virgo gave up and moved slowly down the path and through the gate. He leaned against the car in defeat, staring down at the disk in his hand.

  'What have we got here?' He spoke at the plastic, as if the answer might be written into the case. He tried to think himself to an answer, but got nowhere. He was stuck with the disk, and a killer on his trail.

  Maybe he should check his voicemail, find out if Charles had got the police involved or something. No, he wouldn't have. Not until he'd spoken to him. Maybe he should return his call now. Maybe he should go to the police now. Maybe . . .

  Virgo looked up as he heard the cottage door open again. Born bundled out, and ran in a rapid, untidy shuffle down the path.

  'Show me your phone,' he shouted, his eyes wide and intense. He flicked strands of hair from his face. 'You made a call from here, didn't you? Show it to me.'

  Virgo pulled the phone from his pocket, and Born snatched it from his hand. He gave it a cursory inspection.

  'It doesn't have location masking, does it?'

  Virgo stared at him, blank. There were beads of sweat on Born's forehead.

  'You made a phone call from right outside my house. You might as well have placed a "We are here" sign for Genovsky at the front gate.' He waved a hand wildly through the air.

  'Get in the car. I've got to pack some things – I'll be two minutes.'

  Born scurried back into the cottage, leaving the front door half-open. After a few seconds, Virgo could see his shadow flitting around one of the upstairs rooms.

  What the hell had got into Born now?

  Virgo headed up the path again, and pushed the front door wide open. He couldn't hear any sound.

  'Hello?' he called. 'Born?' Cautiously, he climbed the stairs.

  The front bedroom was a shock. It was tidy, neatly arranged. There was a dressing table, with make-up and a hairbrush sitting, waiting to be used. The double bed was faultlessly dressed with pink floral cushions and a white waffle bedspread. On the far side of the bed, a woman's dressing gown was draped over a rattan chair. And everything in the room was covered in a layer of fine dust. There had been a woman in Born's life. But not for a while.

  Virgo was about to move across the landing to the room opposite when he heard the harsh crunch of tyres skidding to a halt on gravel.

  He ran to the window.

  A silver Mercedes, one of its front wings dented and scratched, had pulled up in front of his Ford. A tall rose bush obscured his view of the driver, but he didn't need to see. Virgo drew himself back behind the curtain, his heart drumming against his chest.

  He heard a car door open, and leaned forward again. Through a gap in the leaves and thorns and flowers, he could just make out a hand on the garden gate. The air burned his lungs. His legs would not shift. It was all he could do to remain standing. He tried to imagine the scene downstairs, straining to remember the layout of the ground floor. He had left the front door wide open. If Gierek's killer came far enough into the house, he could slip out.

  Where was Born?

  Ten, maybe twenty seconds passed in silence.

  There was a clatter of metal, the tumult of saucepans kicked across a floor.

  The kitchen. Virgo's strength returned. He might be able to make it to the car. He checked for the miniature penknife he carried on his keyring. It was a cliché left over from his climbing days at university: always carry a blade – one day you'll have to cut the line.

  That day was here. A slash to the Mercedes' tyres and he would be away. He didn't need to plan beyond that.

  He edged towards the landing. He could see through the balustrade, down the stairs to the living room.

&
nbsp; All clear. He was coiled, adrenaline keeping him on the edge.

  He tested each step for a treacherous creak.

  Almost there.

  The door was still wide open. He could hear a quiet whimper now, punctuated by the occasional whispered threat. From the bottom of the stairs, craning his neck, Virgo could see into the kitchen. The killer was stooped over a hunched form. Born was kneeling on the linoleum floor, crying quietly. The pair were surrounded by cast iron kitchen pans; some had even spilled out into the living room.

  A pistol barrel hovered over Born's head. The killer was whispering something, but Virgo couldn't make out the words. He crouched behind the balustrade and turned his head to the front door. He'd be able to get away unnoticed.

  Born was shrewd; he had probably struck a deal already. He turned to look at the door, then towards the kitchen. That was when he saw it. There it was, lying on the floor between him and Gierek's murderer. It called to him.

  He calculated the number of steps, the number of heartbeats between breaking cover and crashing that heavy pan against the killer's head. Three steps, a quiet pick-up and all the strength he could pull together.

  He could do it.

  Or he could run.

  Virgo looked back at the sunlight creeping through the opening of the front door. The same three steps and he'd be on the path, heading for the gate.

  He was hardly breathing, and his heart marked every halfsecond with a painful thump. Born was crying still. The whispers grew more intense. He heard the click of a safety catch. A glimpse of Laszlo Gierek, crashed out in his front room, flashed across his mind. What could he do?

  Virgo tensed his jaw, and took fast, silent steps, crouching low.

  Almost there.

  He should have fled.

  With a dull clink, his wedding ring clipped against the iron of the pan. He swung anyway.

  The face was half-turned by the time the pan made contact. As he saw it, Virgo's brain screamed at him to pull back on the blow. But too late: he heard a loud crack as it registered in his consciousness that he was smashing a piece of heavy iron against a woman's skull. What was the sound? The splintering of her cheekbone? Or a shattered earring? She crumpled onto Born's upturned face, and Virgo followed her down, his momentum throwing him into the confusion of limbs and startled faces.

  CHAPTER 21

  ONLY TWO OF THE bodies got up. Virgo was first, eyes still wide with adrenaline. Then, two seconds later, the woman's body stirred. Born pushed it off from on top of him, and slowly, stiffly, rose to his feet. He wiped his tearstreaked face with a sleeve and pushed back his hair.

  'Thank you, Nathaniel,' Born muttered. He looked down at the prone body. 'Is she dead?'

  Virgo knelt down and felt for a pulse. His fingers were still trembling, but there was no missing the faint beat at her neck. 'No. Got any rope?'

  Born moved through the kitchen and into the lean-to at the back of the house. He returned with a ball of thin cord.

  'All I've got is garden twine.'

  Virgo shrugged in response, took the twine and set about tying up the body. He felt a twist of awkwardness, a vague notion that he was violating her as they worked. She wore black, head to toe: a cashmere sweater, trousers and polished boots. He kept his eyes away from the violent bruise already flowering on her cheek. A long black leather coat trailed as they laid her out flat on her front. The label said Armani. He bound her hands behind her back and tied her feet together. The twine would be strong enough: he knew how to tie a knot. Born stood immobile above him, still snivelling every now and then.

  'Help me move her,' Virgo said, standing up.

  Together, they dragged her into the centre of the living room.

  Virgo picked up the silver handgun from where it had fallen in the kitchen. He held it out to Born.

  'Hold this. Carefully.'

  Hurriedly, Virgo crouched down and searched her pockets while Born stood over them, the gun shaking in his hands. In the coat, Virgo found two ammunition clips, a phone with a built-in camera, a brown leather purse and a Mercedes key ring. The trousers contained some change and another key.

  'What are you looking for?' Born said.

  'The other disk.' Virgo sat back, away from the body. 'It's not here.'

  They jumped as her phone began to ring. Transfixed by the low buzz, neither of them breathed. After three rings, the buzzing stopped.

  'Look in the purse,' Born whispered, the gun still raised towards the prone body. 'See if there's any ID.'

  It contained a thick wad of fifty- and twenty-pound notes. But nothing else.

  They jumped again as the phone emitted a double tone. Whoever had called had left a message. Virgo grabbed it, inspected the screen, and hit a couple of buttons. He held it in front of his face so that Born could hear.

  A robotic female voice announced that there was one new message. After a beep and a slight pause, it began. Virgo felt his heart stop.

  'It's Vasil. I'm back in the office. Hope you're busy – Wheelan just asked me how things were going. I told him it's all being taken care of. I forwarded the photo and the details. That shouldn't be a problem. Gupta is being dealt with.'

  There was another beep. Virgo hung up.

  What the hell did all that mean?

  He opened the phone again, hoping to find more information somewhere, anywhere. Numbers, directories. Nothing in the sent messages. Stored photos, calendar . . . he fumbled; he'd accidentally accessed the photos.

  He nearly dropped the phone.

  On the screen, slightly blurred, Rachel smiled out at him. It was the photo on her chest of drawers in the bedroom. In the original, he was kissing her cheek, but he had been cut out: Rachel was dead centre and filled the screen.

  'Who's that?' Born was looking over his shoulder.

  'Rachel,' Virgo said. 'My wife.' His voice was flat, disconnected from his racing mind.

  Born handed Virgo the gun, picked up the Mercedes keys and moved across the living room towards the front door.

  Virgo snapped back into the room. 'Where are you going?'

  'To check the car,' Born said. 'We need that second disk.'

  He stood over the motionless body and waited. It seemed like Born was outside for hours. He half-expected to hear a car start up, and Born never to return.

  Why would this woman want a photograph of Rachel?

  It wasn't hard to figure out. Vasil – whoever he was – had forwarded a photo to someone. They weren't just chasing him now. They were looking for Rachel too.

  'It's not there.' Born was framed by the doorway, backlit so that Virgo couldn't see his face. Virgo felt nothing at the news.

  'Maybe she got rid of it already,' Born said.

  They stood in silence. He didn't care about the disk. The photo filled his thoughts. Everything was at stake now. If Rachel was a target, if Katie . . . everything had changed. There was a part of him that didn't mind being shot at for chasing a story. But Rachel and Katie – that was different. He couldn't let anything hurt them.

  He pointed to the motionless body on the floor in front of him.

  'So,' he said. 'What have we got here? Who is this?' He threw the question into the air, let it hover. Maybe it would come down, help him make the next move. Maybe it wouldn't.

  Born shrugged. 'I'm not sure,' he said, clearing some papers from a chair by the fireplace. He sat down.

  'But I'd say that it's Alexandra Genovsky.'

  CHAPTER 22

  BORN EYED THE PRONE body on his kitchen floor. 'I got a call a few years ago, from someone calling herself Alex Genovsky,' he said. 'She asked if I'd be interested in a private venture. Two days later, before I'd made up my mind, Laszlo called me and told me to turn it down. He wouldn't say why, but he seemed to know something. I trust – I trusted – Laszlo. I never got back to her.'

  Virgo stared down at Alexandra Genovsky, trying to put the pieces together.

  'Gupta?' he said eventually.

  'Akshay Gupta. I'
ve never met him, but he's a professor at Cambridge.'

  'What about Wheelan?'

  'Never heard of him.'

  Virgo handed Born the gun. 'I'm going to Cambridge,' he said. 'I don't know what that message meant, but I need to find out what Gupta knows about all this. Maybe he can help. I'll be back in a couple of hours.'

  He stepped towards the front door.

  'I'd be amazed if Gupta knows anything about this,' Born said.

  Virgo turned himself around slowly. 'What do you mean?'

  'The entanglement. Between the disks.'

  What the hell was he talking about?

  'You said the data was quantum-sized. Think about it, Nathaniel. Gierek hands his friend what he calls an activator disk. It's unreadable. And then he's so desperate to get it back he gets himself killed in the process. And it turns out he's got another disk in his pocket all along. My guess is that neither disk works without the other. Maybe it's a way of hiding data.'

  'But how could the disks activate each other?'

  'If it's really quantum computing we're talking about, the disks activate each other by entanglement. Fragile connections between quantum particles. Surely you've heard of entanglement? Jesus, I thought you were a science reporter?'

  Virgo ignored the insult. 'Einstein hated the idea, said it was impossible.'

  'But it's not: it's written into the equations of quantum theory.' Born hesitated. 'Maybe the data on the activator disk is entangled with the data on the other disk. Maybe it allows you to read it. If we had them both, we might be able to tell.'

  'There are easier ways of hiding data, surely?'

  'Maybe. But what's your explanation for this whole situation?'

  Born seemed fidgety, suddenly alive. 'Does Alex know there are two disks?' he said.

  Virgo shrugged. Was Born taking too many leaps? He certainly seemed to have thought this through. But there were lots of maybes in there.

  'It all just seems too far-fetched to me. You just said yourself that entanglement is fragile. If it's so fragile, how come Gierek got it to work between these disks?' Virgo hesitated before pronouncing the next thought. He didn't want to say it. But it had to be said.