'Ramón, where did you learn English?'
He looked at her, suspicious. 'From the radio. And from working in hotels. Tourists teach you many things.' He raised his eyebrows. 'I taught the tourist ladies many things too.'
The leery grin returned. He really was a stomach-turner, like the worst of the boys she knew. She feigned an embarrassed giggle. It almost hurt.
'You speak very well. I –' Vicente burst back into the room. 'Time to go,' he said. 'Now.'
She felt immediately sick. The last time Vicente got a call he marched them out to her mother's execution. It was all starting up again. Something inside her had got used to the calm of sitting, captive, in this dirty room. Her left leg was hurting badly now – she'd had the prosthetic on for way too long. But she still wasn't going to betray its presence. Not quite yet. With a skill born of desire not to stand out, Katie forced her body forward and stood up, her weight resting entirely, but imperceptibly, on her right leg.
Miguel appeared at the door and watched as Vicente bound her hands viciously tight behind her back again. Was that something that would stick with him forever? It was nothing compared with the scar she was planning to inflict on him.
Vicente pushed her out into the brightness of the day, and opened the car door. He had transformed again: the man who'd gently stroked Miguel's head was gone. Where did he go? How did Vicente crush that side of him down so far? And how did it ever come back?
She looked up and down the street; it was empty save an old woman walking slowly away from them along the cobbles, her back bent over and her frame leaning heavily on a crooked stick.
Vicente shoved her into the back seat of the car and the jellied springs sagged underneath her. Through the dirty window, Katie could see Miguel watching from the doorway. He continued to stare at her – they stared, wide-eyed, at each other – as the car pulled away.
'Where are you taking me?' Katie said. Her voice came out flat, lifeless.
Ramón turned and leered; he was back on form. 'You want me to take you?' He raised his eyebrows and laughed. Vicente turned his head and scowled at him.
'Varadero,' he said. 'The airport.'
They were out of town within minutes, driving along a flat, smooth highway. Though Katie caught a glimpse of the sea only occasionally, she could tell they were sweeping along the coastline. The landscape was lush, the verdant hills behind the road rising into the perfect sky.
Vicente was driving fast, overtaking everything in their way. She was losing the ability to think. Her mother's last whimper filled her mind. She had to pull herself together, she had to find the right moment. The monotony of the road gave no opportunity for surprise – her only hope would be at their destination.
Roadside fruit sellers punctuated the route, sheltering in the shade of palm trees. Katie felt an increasing isolation. She had no status, no rights, nothing she could draw from. It was her against them. The road signs, with their black silhouette of a plane at take-off, gave her a pitiless countdown. Twenty kilometres, then sixteen, then ten, then five. There was no way she could do anything now. Not until the car stopped. And there was no reason for them to stop until they arrived.
If they were just going to put her on a plane, wouldn't she be a liability? She could tell the aircrew what had happened to her. Why would they let her get on a plane – would it all be over by the time she landed? If all this had been about her dad, did that mean he was dead now? Was that it? Surely that made a difference. If he was dead, and these people were untraceable, they would let her go – she was of no use. The thought made her stomach heave and lift, equal and opposite reactions.
What if he was alive? What if he had negotiated her freedom, and this was how it was to be? She had to know more.
'Are you going to put me on a plane to London?' She spoke loudly to overcome the noise of rubber on asphalt. There seemed to be a hole in the floor of the car somewhere; exhaust fumes were rising into her nostrils.
Vicente glanced back at her. 'We are going to put you on a plane. That's all you need to know.'
'And then I'm free?'
'When you land, then you are free.'
'And if I tell the people on the plane I was kidnapped and that you killed my mother?'
'They will land the plane at its destination, and they will tell you to go to the local police. They will contact the Cuban authorities, who will find nothing – not even the body.' He paused. 'Oh, and our colleagues will kill your father.' He said it casually – an afterthought. Katie tried not to hear it. It wasn't true; she was leverage, not the reason he would live or die. But at least this meant her father was alive. Maybe he really had negotiated her safe return. She needed more information.
'Are you coming on the plane?'
Another pause. 'No.'
Ramón laughed. 'Vicente does not like planes.'
Vicente leaned across and cuffed him around the head. Why would they put her on a plane alone? None of this made sense. She couldn't trust them: she had to take control. She could get out of this, and she would.
Ramón was still laughing. Ramón was the weak link. Vicente was cool and could even be kind, but when he had to shoot people dead, he did it. Ramón was a moron. And she could handle morons. She watched the road ahead, and prayed.
CHAPTER 49
THEY WERE THERE. KATIE'S heart pounded in her chest as Vicente pulled into the airport car park and drew to a halt between two huge coaches. Ahead, through the windscreen, she could see the low tiled roof of the terminal. It looked more like a village than an airport; the site was dotted with palm trees and low buildings with red-tiled roofs.
Vicente opened the car door, took a knife from his pocket and cut her hands free from the cable. As the stiff copper wire fell onto the seat, Katie saw the crystal sparkle of the newly cut metal. The angle was right. If she could just pull back a little more of the plastic insulation, it would do the job.
'If you do as we say, you will be fine,' Vicente said.
'And if I don't?'
He fixed his gaze on her eyes. 'You know I will shoot you dead if I have to.'
Katie allowed herself to collapse back on the seat while holding his gaze.
'It won't make a difference to me,' Vicente continued. 'Whatever happens, I will walk away from this. It's really up to you.'
She smiled in grim acceptance. The wire was in her pocket. As Vicente walked ahead of her towards the building, she let her finger touch it, slide back and forth over the edge. It was razor sharp. Her thumbnail caught the plastic, and pulled at it, peeled at it. She began to hang back, just a step or two, so that Ramón was close enough to touch her. She knew he would. At first just a hand on her back. But just before they left the shelter of the coaches she felt his hand slide downwards. Despite the instinctive shiver she didn't allow herself to withdraw from his grasp. She was fifteen and beautiful, and she would use that to her advantage. She concentrated on walking without a trace of a limp, setting her face into a smile, then looking over her shoulder from time to time to catch his eye. His face was shiny from sweat, a drip running down the side of his forehead. His grin bared teeth stained by tobacco. He disgusted her. But she would have to live with that.
Fans whirred in the ceiling inside the terminal. Katie felt otherwordly, as if she was floating through the crowds of smiling tourists. A party had just arrived, and their tour organiser was anxiously waving them through towards the coach park. She yearned to turn and run and join them, but that wouldn't be enough. She had to have her captors taken out, or taken captive. She prayed again, this time for police.
Vicente led them straight past the row of check-in desks, towards the departures gate. Ramón kept close, still touching her whenever he could. Across the concourse, she could see two armed police in blue uniforms. Vicente paused in front of a closed door. It said Prohibido La Entrada. No Entry. Time was running out. Once through that door, she would be on a hidden path.
'I need to go to the toilet.' Katie pointed across the conco
urse. 'Before I get on the plane. I really need to go. It's just there.' Then she pointed at Ramón. 'He can come with me. To make sure I behave.'
For the first time, she saw doubt in Vicente's eyes; he seemed genuinely unsure of himself. He looked at Ramón, then back at Katie.
'OK,' he said. 'Quickly.' He muttered something to Ramón, who touched his belt to reassure Vicente he was armed. Ramón pushed Katie gently in the direction of the toilets. She glanced back at Vicente. He was staying by the door, looking left then right, up and down the concourse. Waiting for someone.
Katie's heart thumped in her chest. She could hear Ramón's breathing behind her as she led him into the cubicle. It was just large enough for the two of them. His hands were on her as she shut the door, pulling at her blouse. His breathing was loud and deep. She could feel a hardness as he pressed his crotch against her, and a grunt sounded in his gullet. Her stomach turned as she kissed his neck, and her hands shook as she reached down into her pocket. He was pulling at her skirt. She pushed his hands away, gave him a coy look, then started to pull the skirt up.
She knew how he'd react. Everything in him would stop when she revealed her prosthetic. He would be confused for a second or more, not knowing how to react. Just like all the other boys.
It gave her the time and space she needed.
With a slash of copper wire, Katie Virgo cut Ramón's throat.
She thought the blood would cover her, but she spun him away in his shock, and it pulsed onto the wall of the cubicle as his knees crumpled. Ramón was gasping and gurgling, and Katie could hardly bear to breathe as she watched him. She waited for the sound to stop before she opened the door.
Vicente saw her come out of the toilet alone, and moved towards her. She began to run. She was limping now; no one could run properly on a standard prosthetic, and the lining had rubbed away at her stump. But she timed it perfectly; there could be no doubting that Vicente was chasing her. She put her hands to her head and screamed as she ran. 'Help me. Ayuda. Là.' As she reached the two policemen, she turned and pointed. 'Socorro! Help!' Before Vicente could stop and lose himself among the crowds, two 9 mm pistols were aimed at his head.
Katie hardly heard the screams of the tourists. She saw the area clear, and felt a surge of triumph overwhelm her. The scene was stationary: the policemen crouched in aim, and Vicente standing in front of them, hands raised. All she could hear was the rush and whoosh of blood as it raced around in her head.
She had done it. She was free.
CHAPTER 50
THE HALL WAS READY. The sight of it thrilled Genovsky: that they had come as far as this seemed impossible. The huge array of electronics racks facing them, the antennae and dishes on the roof, the wall-mounted display screens and speakers hanging from the ceiling gantry; she had organised every bit of this day, and it would be flawless. Her eyes stopped on the small silver box, only the size of a large suitcase, standing on a tall black steel bench beside the platform. It was all for this. This, their greatest achievement.
When she'd first seen the quantum computer, when Laszlo had handed it over, she had run her fingers over the corners of its grey casing and knew immediately that it needed something grander. It had to be polished and beautiful. She couldn't understand why Laszlo would have made its final covering so ugly. He had spent decades working on it. And when he had finally done it – achieved the impossible – he dressed it like a cheap PC. It had looked like the things they produced back home: the glorious squalor of the Pravets computer, the product of a grinding communist state where vision was to be subverted for the people, ploughed into the fields, shared and diluted, rendered useless.
Vasil had shown breathtaking vision; he began to pull all this together so many years ago. He saw where things were going: the conjunction of smuggling – the drugs and guns and people – and the science of secrets. She felt privileged to be part of it: one of those sent out to work in the land of opportunity, where vision and daring were rewarded. Laszlo never showed the same gratitude; he never got over betraying his friends for the chance to carry on his research. He lived in fear, and died of shame.
They competed, fear and shame. Right up to the end, he was terrified of what they might do to him. And he was ashamed he had used his genius on their behalf. Fear was a truer guide. Fear kept him alive. Shame, the shame that led him to bring Paul Radcliffe in on his secret, that was what had killed Laszlo in the end.
She knew the better way: gratitude and debt. And love. She was almost sure she loved Vasil. Not love in the glossy magazine sense, not that husband and wife kind of interdependence; she did not deceive herself into thinking that Vasil depended on her. He could live without her, she knew that. But she orbited him, lived in his gravity. It was just how things were; you came into someone's path and they were so much bigger that you couldn't escape their pull. And so you orbited, and you gazed inwards and you knew you'd never escape. You did what you could, everything you could, made them glad that you and no other soul were their satellite. It was simpler, stronger like that. Equal, mutual need was destructive. If two identical stars orbited each other, they spiralled in. They ended up destroying each other, and nothing survived. Like Nathaniel Virgo was spiralling in on his dead wife right now. It was no one's fault; not his, not hers. But that didn't stop everything collapsing in on itself to an assured mutual destruction.
She and Vasil would walk away from this, their fortunes assured, to a new life where there were no more projects: just the two of them, secure and blissful. Vasil had bought her a spinning globe, told her to pick a country. She wanted to go to Australia. She had always wanted to go to Australia: her parents' encyclopaedia back home had pictures of the strangest animals. She used to look at it in the early mornings, before school; she fell in love with the kangaroos, their tiny infants peeking out from the pouch. That looked like the right way to grow up.
She thought fleetingly of Virgo's daughter.
'Alexandra.' She looked up. Vasil was smiling at her, but it was his working smile, the one that required instant obedience. 'Are you ready?'
She was ready. Vasil was putting a lot of faith in her, letting her handle so much tonight. And she would not disappoint him: whatever was going on with Virgo and the entanglement generator, she wouldn't let Vasil down. This would be his crown, his mark of ascendancy complete. Years ago, in his house in Pravets, he had told her he would do great things, things that would make him richer than anyone in that stinking town, richer than the thugs that trafficked frightened women through moonlit nights, beating them to death if they tried to escape their fate. And here he was, here they were, in the vanguard of a revolution.
She walked across to the front of the hall. A few technicians were fussing around the casing, checking connections, then glancing at their laptop screens to register the outputs. There was no input yet, that would come later. For now, the machine rested in its potential, its drives and data buffers sitting happily in superposition. Strings of atoms – set in nothing more complex than a peculiar plastic, Laszlo had said – in their billions, each one in two different quantum states at once: simultaneously binary 0 and binary 1. And when the data came, it would push them one way or the other. Then the final coup de grâce: the laser pulse that swept through the molecules at the speed of light, its energy first entangling their strange hybrid states to run a billion calculations at once, then falling away to collapse the quantum states into the binary code for the final result. The key. The 214 MICHAEL BROOKS key to the White House communications codes. And to their new life away together.
Wherever that would be – Vasil had said he didn't like the idea of Australia. She would let him decide.
CHAPTER 51
KATIE STOOD STILL, HER heart beating out of her chest. It was over.
A tall, wiry man in a brown suit walked calmly into the scene. He was holding a gun in his left hand, and the policemen lowered their weapons in deference to his. Secret police? Everything was under control. The man caught hold of V
icente's shirt, and beckoned to Katie.
'Please,' he said. His smile told her he wasn't fazed by anything. 'This way.'
He moved towards the door where Vicente had stopped. He opened it and, keeping his gun trained on Vicente, courteously stepped aside to allow Katie through.
She found herself standing in a cavernous hall that was criss-crossed by an intestinal mess of conveyor belts carrying tagged luggage. The cases and bags were flowing out into the light, out to waiting trolleys. Then they were going away from this place. She felt tension relieve in her shoulders at the thought. She was going away from this place. She heard the door close behind her, and turned round.
The man in the brown suit was aiming his pistol at her chest.
'You were very careless there, Vicente,' he said, quietly. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a sheaf of papers. Without taking his eyes off Katie, he handed them over his shoulder. 'Take these. There's been a change of plan. You're going with her. The plane is ready.'
Vicente took the papers. Katie stared at the gun, transfixed. She had done everything possible to win her freedom.
How could she still be in this nightmare? She couldn't move, couldn't think, could hardly even breathe. She was crushed, defeated.
She forced her chest to expand, to take in air. It was a setback, but she wasn't defeated. Not yet. She would exhale in a moment, and she would be cool again. She would begin to calculate, to plan her next escape.
She exhaled.
'Why would I get on this plane?' she said.
She would not be beaten down by this. She had just killed a man. Now, there were no limits.
'Because your father's life depends on it.'
He knew it was the one claim that would make her hesitate, and she hated him for it. She believed this man in a way she hadn't Vincente. She had already tried to get away once – this time they would make sure there wasn't another chance. And if her dad's life was really at stake, she wouldn't take it anyway. Thousands of miles apart, they were in this together.
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