Entanglement

by Michael Brooks

  What was this thing?

  Virgo's breath came in quick, shallow bursts as he plugged in the leads. He hit the power switch and watched the screen anxiously.

  Had Gierek bothered with passwords? He hadn't. It was ridiculous when you thought about it. But somehow not surprising. Virgo was no better, after all: he'd never turned on the security features of the wireless router in his spare room at home. Anyone could sit in a car outside and surf the internet at his expense. He hadn't even altered the administrator's password from its factory default setting; anyone with half a brain for computer technology could take over his home network without a thought. But there was always something more important to do – like actually use the damn thing to surf the internet or play online videogames from the comfort of his sofa.

  He watched the operating system boot up, then open a blank dialogue box. A prompt appeared on the screen.

  >Load activator

  He put the disk in. The drive whirred into action. It worked.

  >Location:

  He shrugged, typed in B-O-S-T-O-N, then hit the return key. So far so good.

  >Facility:

  What the hell did that mean? He looked around, then back in the cupboard where he had found the machine. There were a few programming manuals. And a box of data disks: most were blanks, but there were two marked Red Spot Virus Protection. Nothing else.

  Facility? He shrugged. R-E-D S-P-O-T. Return.

  >Accessing Red Spot in Boston. Please wait . . .

  Virgo stared at the screen. What the hell was this?

  The screen went blank, then blue. Then the machine displayed a failure message that stopped Virgo's breath in his throat.

  > Unable to access Red Spot in Boston. No access to remote location. Unable to link to entangled data.

  Bloody hell.

  Maybe it needed the other disk. Maybe it didn't work properly because he didn't know what to type in. Maybe this was just the prototype, and there were others. It didn't matter. Virgo knew enough now; Gierek had created a machine that appeared to use entanglement to offer remote access to data. It was too big. If this was what these deaths were all about, he was not going to be allowed to walk away from this. Whether or not Genovsky knew about the machine; whether or not it really did what it claimed. There was no question of it. He would be killed once he handed over the disk to Genovsky. No question.

  He ran through the options in his head. There was only one sequence of moves where he didn't end up dead and Katie too. And even that depended on what Alexandra Genovsky knew. Gierek's machine was to be either his death sentence or his way out.

  Virgo ejected the disk and slid it into his pocket. He looked at his watch. Time was still ticking forward. He disconnected the box from its cables, and wrapped it back up in its dust sheet. He wouldn't need the other stuff: the cables and the peripherals. But maybe some extra disks would come in handy. He picked up three of the blank disks. Taking a final look around the walls, he moved towards the door, slid back the lock, and turned the handle. He breezed out into the corridor, smiled at the two young men passing by, and pulled the door shut. He locked it, and stuffed the keys back into his trouser pocket. Two minutes later, with the box held casually under his arm, Virgo was walking back towards Kenmore Square. The numbness of the early morning seemed to have gone now. He simply felt disconnected, driven only by the dictates of the thing playing out in his head.

  Then he saw the Boston Globe in the newsrack.

  Virgo put down the box and fumbled for some change, then punched it into the box's coin slot. He stood, transfixed, and read the whole story. It wasn't the lead – he was downpage – but there was a picture. He stared out from the page like a serial killer. The photo had been taken from the Herald's website and placed under the headline 'Fugitive lands at Logan'. A British journalist wanted in connection with two murders flew into Boston last night . . . The FBI are appealing for anyone who has seen this man to get in touch directly . . . 'Do not approach him,' cautions Frank Delaney, assistant special agent in charge of the investigation . . . 'Virgo may be armed and he is certainly dangerous.' The story ended with a contact number for Delaney.

  Delaney. The interrogator in London.

  A cold drizzle began to fall. Virgo tried to think but he couldn't bring his mind into focus. The chilled rain crept under the collar of his jacket. He folded the paper and put it under his arm, then picked up the box. He moved to cross the traffic, then pulled back. A paranoia crept over him: everyone would recognise him now, surely? Thank God they had only run such a small photo. He wondered whether the Herald had authorised its release. Charles would be playing along with the authorities, assuring them that Virgo was innocent, while doing as little as possible to help find him. He certainly wouldn't call Virgo now. Charles knew Virgo would call if there was some way Charles could help him.

  Focus. He had to focus.

  Well, at least he had the FBI's number if he needed it.

  He looked at his watch again.

  Back to the hotel. He still had time to get this right.

  CHAPTER 45

  ALEXANDRA GENOVSKY STOOD IN front of the bathroom mirror and glanced over the neat row of jars and bottles. They were arranged alphabetically on the chrome shelf above the sink, Chanel to Yves Saint Laurent. She despised herself for buying the eye cream – it was an expensive indulgence, even for her – but the commercial had somehow got to her, made her think she'd been neglecting her eyes. At least she had the money to do something about it: she remembered how her mother's face had sagged, the bags under her eyes growing by the week. There were no eye creams in Bulgaria back then; she couldn't remember her mother even wearing make-up. And now, here in America, her daughter had more make-up, lotions and creams than she knew what to do with. Over-compensation, they call it.

  Not that her looks were anything special. She was OK – and there wasn't exactly much immediate competition for Vasil's attention. She had learned to make the most of her features; learned what worked, what got a reaction, what disarmed. And her eyes were her best feature. They trailed away at the corners: Cleopatra without the make-up, Vasil once said. But the scar was always there, pulling at his gaze.

  She looked to her left. The cupboard on the powder-blue wall was stuffed with make-up bought in nervous, random forays. She wondered whether she should start putting some on now; the flight had left her looking sallow. But she was, as always, nervous to start. She seemed to put too much on. At least, it always seemed like too much. In powder rooms she saw other women putting on more, but when they finished, they always looked like they were wearing less. Was there some trick to making it disappear into the face? No one had ever told her how to do make-up. She sometimes thought about enrolling in a class. But her work made evening commitments too difficult. Every week she flicked through magazines, studying the models, trying to see how they did it. It was an addiction, a compulsion. But there were worse things to be stuck on.

  They wore a lot of foundation, the models. But the lights worked for them, made them flawless. Boston light didn't work for her. She had never been flawless, even before the scar; as a child she had been prone to spots. Now they were gone, but the scar had taken over their role. There was always something. She leaned forward towards the mirror. Crow's feet. Last month's Harper's said they worsened with laughing and smiling, and with too little sleep. Smiling certainly wasn't the problem. She narrowed her eyes, set them hard like when she was concentrating, focusing on the now, the job that had to be done. The skin folded, creasing around the eyes. That was it, that was the problem. Her jaw stiffened too, the muscles contracting to accompany, intensify the stare. The face of a killer. The magazines didn't tell you how to deal with the lines that created. Or which cleanser might wash that dirt away.

  Was there time for a bath? She liked the idea of languishing, stopping everything, just for a moment. The steam might help with the bruise on her cheek. Nothing in the magazines said anything about how to reduce bruising. Was it on
e of those things that only time could heal?

  She wondered what Vasil would say. It was a faint greenyellow now. The scar ran behind it, through it, rose up above it. She ran a finger gently over the ribbon of raised tissue, from her eye socket down to the corner of her mouth, wincing slightly at the pressure. She did it again, pressing harder so that the skin blanched around the cherry red line. Vasil would say nothing at the sight of her discoloured cheek. He had given her worse. But not lately, not now that she was doing so well. She was glad to be useful at last; it made the gratitude easier to bear. Without Vasil's kindness, at best she would be sweeping out houses in Pravets, or maybe Sofia. She owed him everything: her training, her career, even her haircut. To be part of what he did, that was surely better than cleaning houses.

  He didn't have to take her in, offer her a chance. But he was kind, and a town man, not small-minded like the villagers. A disfigured girl, a girl who couldn't keep what she saw to herself; who would want her in his house? But Vasil had offered to take her away from the shame, and her parents had eagerly consented. Or at least that's how it seemed to her. They were glad to be rid of her, glad to end the relentless rounds of gossip. There was something almost laughable about the villagers' whispered conversations: all they talked about – all there was to talk about – for three months was her opened face. The 'tell-tale cut', they called it.

  Alexandra tried not to blame her mother. It wasn't really her fault – it was just a little white lie that had spun her world out of control. But she'd felt a paralysing, numbing shock as she stood there in the darkness of the wood, a quiet fourteenyear- old with big eyes, and realised that her mother told lies: that it wasn't wolves that made the woods dangerous at night. The world was a more complicated place than her parents had ever let her know.

  When Milko ran yapping from the house in the moonlight she had decided to be brave. Her beloved pet was worth the risk of those ravenous jaws. She was almost a grown-up; she would not lie in her bed while wolves tore Milko limb from limb. She would not lie there and listen to his yowling and yelping.

  She was almost upon the women before she heard their shovels cutting at the earth. Peeking through the trees, her teenage heart ripped in two, looking at the sad faces. There were twenty of them; broken women, standing at the back of a dirty truck, digging shallow graves for two of their companions, while the men smoked and watched and stroked their guns. She had stared at the scene for a full minute and then slipped away unnoticed.

  The sound of shovelling still kept her awake at night. She suffered echoes of that scene, could feel the cold touch of moonlight, whenever she heard the peculiar scrape of steel on soft earth. The noise of the machines digging tunnels under Boston had tortured her for months.

  The tell-tale cut. Everyone in Bulgaria knew what it meant, the slash from the eye to the mouth. Her parents wept, her mother hiding her face when she visited in the gloomy rooms of the convent. She remembered looking up from the bed, and seeing the wear on the back of her mother's hands, the skin just beginning to crack and sag away from the knuckles. And the sad, broken steps as she walked away. If only she had told little Alexandra the real reason you didn't go into the woods at night. All of the villagers knew about the traffickers, that their routes to the west took them through the woods. Everyone knew better than to stray in there at night.

  The Sisters had been kind, especially on the night they found her, before they discovered the priest hanging in the church. Afterwards, they tried to keep his death from her, but she heard the rumours after a few days when her schoolfriends visited. Her dreams were haunted by a swinging body, blown by the draughts that seeped in under the door by the chancel; he swung back and forth, flashing across the figure on the cross.

  Her friends soon told her what happened. They found out from eavesdropping on their parents' late-night conversations: surely, the adults whispered, even a fourteen-year-old girl knew better than to trust the priests? Everyone knew the Catholics were still afraid. The persecution was meant to be over, but the priests would still do whatever it took to keep the churches open. Their protection came at an unholy price: the priests told the trafficking gangs everything they heard from the confessionals.

  She had long made peace with Father Anastas, and in her dreams she sometimes couldn't distinguish his face from that of Our Lord in his Suffering. It was twenty-two years since her last confession. She would have a lot to say, but eternity would be long enough.

  There was no time for a bath now. She had to get to the office to wait for Virgo. He would come; he might even be there already. She wondered about his wife. Rachel Virgo looked OK in the photograph. They seemed happy, him kissing her as she smiled for the camera. Well, she was dead now. Simply because Alexandra Genovsky couldn't think of a reason to keep her alive. When Vasil called and asked if there was any reason to keep two hostages rather than one, she had no answer for him. There was a strange kind of beauty in this casual power over life and death. Virgo would be devastated. But he would be focused, at least. She needed that disk back, whatever it was. The disk she had pulled from Gierek's body was blank – or at least that's how it seemed. Now she had to get Radcliffe's disk. She needed to clear up all the loose ends before this afternoon. Vasil demanded it.

  Alex owed Vasil everything; she knew it as well as he did. He had been her salvation, got her out of the village. He had seen her through the end of high school, paid for college, even helped her learn the more difficult programming languages. He had brought her to America when NASA called on his skills, and got her a job in the same building. Together they even helped get one of the shuttles into space; it still sent a shiver down her back remembering the noise of the launch. People said it was like thunder, but it wasn't. It was like the Earth roaring to heaven.

  Virgo was nothing to her.

  CHAPTER 46

  THROUGH THE GAP IN the hedging, Virgo could just make out the number on the building across the road. 1629. He had spent the cab journey trying to subtly hide his face in case the driver recognised him. In the end, he had asked the driver to let him out some way down the road. It wasn't just paranoia; he was early. Besides, he wanted to feel in control of this. He was going to do this on his terms.

  The traffic was loud and noxious, but the dull scent of vegetation and the salt tang of the ocean held up against the fumes. Behind him, he could hear the tinny percussion of halyards flicking against their masts in the harbour's gentle swell.

  He shivered, and turned to survey the path surrounding the green that stretched to the ocean. Joggers, rollerbladers, dog-walkers, mothers pushing those huge buggies – everyone seemed to be moving towards the cafe glowing warmly at the entrance to the Long Wharf. Children were climbing on steel pyramids, or swinging on suspended tyres. Busy with its leisure time, Boston ignored him.

  Genovsky's building was peppered with glass and arches. Rachel had taught him to recognise the traits of postmodern architecture, its columns and pretensions, and ostentatious rooflines. He glanced up and down the Avenue again, and beyond to the steel and glass towers; corporate America.

  Rachel. The thought of her made his heart jump in his chest. He took a deep breath, then looked at his watch: 11.58. Fifty metres and four lanes of traffic held him back. He had what he needed; all he had to do was pull this thing off, and it would all be over.

  Time to go.

  There was a gap in the traffic, and he stepped out in front of a bus. Its horn blared a deep warning, and its flat front came at him like a battering ram. He ran, and made it to the median. The traffic here was hell – downtown Boston seemed to be nothing but smoke and fire, pouring asphalt and melting tar, digging and scraping like a scene from Dante. Another gap, another sprint, and he was there.

  Genovsky's voice was tinny through the small speaker at the door.

  'Nathaniel. At last,' she said when he announced himself. 'First floor.'

  The white painted door shifted slightly as the lock released. The buzzer was still sounding wh
en he slammed the door shut behind him.

  He was standing in a wide, carpeted lobby. The walls were painted cream, and broken up by six Warhol prints. Under each one was an armchair covered in tan suede, and beside each chair stood a glass table. Fresh white lilies sat in crystal vases on the tabletops. A polished brass handrail disappeared up a flight of stairs that rose from the far right corner of the lobby. Genovsky paid a lot in rent.

  Hesitant, he moved towards the stairs, then jumped back as a figure wearing a dark, well-cut suit appeared at the bottom step. The man didn't notice him; he skipped quickly past without a glance or a nod. Calm down. He could do this. Slowly, calmly, he went up the stairs.

  The door from the stairwell opened into a cavernous space.

  The room was stuffed with antiques – even the wallpaper looked aged and distinguished. But nothing quite worked; it was unconvincing. He had done interviews in homes like this on occasion, where people had money but didn't quite know how to spend it. Like the city skyline, this place was striving for something, showing off, unable to exercise restraint in the face of unfettered resources.

  He glanced around from the doorway, but could see no one. He was about to step further into the room when a lacquered door opened in the side wall.