Whatever happened now, at least Katie was safe. The plane would be grounded, inspected, the passengers interrogated. But not killed. Not shot out of the sky, or flown into a city skyscraper.
Marinov and Wheelan were both staring at him. So much for the power of positive thinking.
He could run, but what would that achieve now? His hand itched for his gun, but that, too, would be a pointless move.
Finally, it stopped ringing. Thank God.
Wheelan broke his stare and looked at his watch. 'It's going to be time to wrap this up very soon, Vasil.' He looked over at MacIntyre.
'Gabe,' Wheelan said. His voice was flat, disconnected. MacIntyre stared at him, eyes wide. 'It's over, Gabe.'
Wheelan raised his gun. Virgo felt panic rise within him. He should stop this execution. But there was nothing he could do.
Wheelan squeezed the trigger. MacIntyre fell over backwards. Dead, just like that.
Virgo fought to stay still, not to react.
My God.
Wheelan seemed nonplussed by the act of slaughter. He turned to Marinov. 'Where's the woman?' he said.
Marinov looked around, then back at Wheelan. He was about to say something, but the door behind Virgo opened, and Genovsky entered on cue. She passed right by him. He could see that the hair on the back of her head was matted with blood. Virgo hadn't noticed the injury he'd inflicted; he'd been too busy assaulting her for the key. Her blouse was ruffled and torn, and her trousers sat slightly askew on her hips. Her hair was falling over her face. She looked dazed, still.
'What the hell happened to you?' Marinov's voice was hard-edged, wary.
Genovsky walked further into the hall and looked over at Born's body. Then MacIntyre's. She was stood ten metres away from him now, and Virgo could see her eyes were cloudy.
'He took the key,' she said. Her voice was little more than a whisper. 'Is it over?'
She looked back at Marinov. He was pointing a gun at her face. His eyes were blank, yet terrifying.
'I gave you that key, Alexandra. I gave you control of part of this operation – and you let me down. First Gierek, then Virgo, now this. You have become a liability.'
What to do? Virgo felt a ridiculous sense of responsibility, like he owed it to Genovsky to intervene. Was this vestigial chivalry – an evolutionary reaction to a damsel in distress? It was hardly that complicated. He'd put Born into the firing line, and now he had done the same to Genovsky. It was guilt.
Wheelan saved him the decision. 'Put the gun down, Vasil.' He sounded like he was enjoying himself now. 'It's fine. And with MacIntyre's unfortunate death, we'll need her testimony.'
Testimony. That wasn't a word you expected to hear from the lips of a man who had just cut short hundreds of lives. Genovsky, dazed as she was, obviously had the same thought.
'Testimony?' she said, turning to Wheelan.
'About the entanglement.' Wheelan walked towards her, smiling. 'About Red Spot. And the quantum computer. You're going to be the Department of Homeland Security's star witness.'
Genovsky looked over at Marinov. There was an insistent pleading in her gaze; Virgo felt its pull on his emotions and his breathing shallowed for a moment. Marinov's face remained stone-hard.
Wheelan was still smiling, but now with a freezing stare.
'He sold you to me, Alexandra.' He paused. 'For the good of this country you adopted. But we might be able to get you out in ten to fifteen. As long as things are straightforward.'
Genovsky continued to stare at Marinov, like Wheelan didn't exist. Like his words would be wiped away if Marinov just smiled at her.
Virgo could hardly look at her. The things men did.
Still Genovsky stood there, motionless. Her expression only changed when a precise, clipped double beep fractured the silence in the hall. She turned towards the source of the sound, and her eyes widened in recognition.
'Nathaniel.'
She smiled. Somehow, absurdly, she brought a smile up out of her broken heart.
'Nathaniel Virgo,' she said. 'Did someone just send you a message?'
CHAPTER 83
'ALWAYS-ON'. THAT'S WHAT they called it. Modern communications technology was certainly a wonderful thing – in the right place at the right time. There were times Virgo had been in corporate press conferences when a call had given him a welcome excuse to leave. Even a text message during a difficult interview could provide the resourceful journalist with a neat means of changing tack. But here, blending in, hoping not to be noticed, a text message was not what Virgo wanted.
Genovsky looked like she was in suspended animation, staring past him, working through the branches of her game. Marinov had just sold her out. Would delivering Virgo buy her back?
She obviously thought it was worth a try.
She turned to Marinov. 'This is Nathaniel Virgo.'
That was it. Her face was almost blank as she said it, emotionless. That could be the concussion, of course. He let his hand move to his chest pocket. If all was lost, he at least wanted to know what the message said. Slowly, coolly, he reached into the pocket. They raised their guns. He pulled out the phone. They stared at him. He flipped it open.
It was from Imogen.
It said: Get out of there. Now.
He looked around. Thanks, Imogen. Fat chance.
CHAPTER 84
HER MIND STILL FOGGY, Alexandra Genovsky struggled to understand what Wheelan could have meant. She stared at Vasil, the man who had saved her, given her a new life. He'd heard about her shame, come to her house and told her parents he needed a housemaid. They'd been through so much together since then, and now they'd achieved everything he'd been working for. No. Wheelan was bluffing. When this was over, she and Vasil would start the rest of their lives together.
Vasil moved slowly across the hall towards Virgo. First, he took the phone and glanced at the screen. Then he put a gun to Virgo's head.
'Who's that from?' Vasil's voice was calm and confident. She'd always admired his strength.
'No one you know,' Virgo said.
Virgo impressed her, too, somehow. He was about to die, but he kept his dignity.
Vasil pressed a couple of buttons on the phone. 'Imogen?'
He closed it with a snap, and dropped it into the breast pocket of his jacket. 'I'll be getting to know Imogen very soon.'
'You're really not her type,' Virgo said. 'She dates the good guys.' He smiled, but Genovsky could see it wasn't there in his eyes. He was scared. And so he should be.
'Hey, but then what do I know?' Virgo added. 'I thought Alex here was your type, and you're about to sell her out.'
Vasil looked over at her. His eyes were intent, serious.
Virgo called out to her. 'Have you worked it out yet, Alex? MacIntyre's dead. So it'll be you. Your final act of loyalty to Vasil Marinov: testifying to the power of the quantum computer and then spending the next thirty years of your life in jail.'
Virgo was bluffing, she could tell. He was trying to talk his way out of this. She didn't want to look at Vasil. But she had to glance.
He was staring back at her, and she couldn't read his face. She never had been able to. If he loved her, he showed it with his body, with the occasional kind word, by what he did.
Virgo's voice cut through her thoughts. 'The thing is, Alex, Gierek wasn't the genius you thought. Neither is Marinov. In fact, he's nothing more than a hacker, a cheapskate. Alex, there is no quantum com–' A sharp crack cut him off in midsentence. Vasil had slapped the gun across Virgo's jaw.
But too late. She didn't need him to finish the sentence.
There is no quantum computer. Of course. Why did they need a quantum computer when they had Wheelan and the feeds from the Situation Room? She almost wanted to laugh. She had wanted to believe that Vasil had done it. But he didn't need to. It's true what they said: love is blind.
CHAPTER 85
KATIE VIRGO STOOD AMONG the passengers on the runway apron. They were huddled together like frightened
sheep, forty metres from the plane. She could see Vicente, his gaze fixed on the terminal building. His lips were moving. It was unlikely his god would get him home now, however hard he prayed. A dozen FBI agents kept them in place, encircling them, hands on black rifles. The flashing orange of the vehicle lights created a pulsing, sinister glow on the guards' faces, but that wouldn't stop her.
Agents moved in among them and began pulling some of the passengers out and leading them away. Once she was taken, that would be it: questioning, holding. Nathaniel Virgo would not be their problem. She had to get out of there.
She had her prosthetic fixed back on. The respite when she'd loosened it on the plane had helped; she could wear it for a little while longer now. For as long as it took. She moved to the back of the crowd, towards the plane.
There was no darkness anywhere: the portable lights reflected off the white fuselage, throwing a ghostly pallor over the crowd. There were no shadows to run into.
How had it come to this?
The guards would be on her soon: they seemed to be removing people at random. They had probably taken fifty passengers away in the past five minutes. She had to decide, and quickly. She faced the plane. There was a chance she could slip through the cordon unnoticed, and find a shadow behind one of the plane's enormous tyres. If she created some kind of a distraction, then ran, crouching, under the plane . . .
A hand fell on her shoulder.
'Katie Virgo?'
She spun round. Fight or flight? The man was showing her a badge, but she didn't listen to the name. He was big, although she could probably land a punch, then run. But where?
His eyes stopped her plan in its tracks. He looked more worried than she was. He looked behind him, then leaned in and spoke in a whisper.
'Katie, I know about your father.'
Katie heard herself breathe again, a deep rush of air leaving her lungs. She studied the man's face. It was a stupid thing, when people said someone had an honest face. What did that mean? But there it was in front of her: an honest face.
'Let's go, then,' she said.
The eyes stole a glance down at her leg. He knew.
But he didn't say anything; he just pushed gently at her back, guiding her along with the growing flood of passengers being led towards the terminal. She looked back, over her shoulder. In the distance, receding now, she saw Vicente being led away. They took him alone, not as part of a group like the non-Hispanic passengers. He didn't stand a chance.
Inside the terminal, the stream of bodies headed through a door marked No Entry. Airports were really starting to piss her off.
The man leaned forward and whispered in her ear. 'Start walking tall, like you own the place, like you're with me. We're breaking away now.'
As they turned a corner, he pulled her out of the stream. They stood still for a moment, watching the crowd pass. He lifted a hand to his black earpiece.
'OK, we're coming.'
He turned to face her. 'We're needed back at the main entrance.' His voice was over-loud, but she forgave the hammy delivery. The main entrance sounded good to her.
Maybe she didn't look like an FBI agent, but she could sure as hell hold herself like one. They hurried confidently back through the terminal. The agent flashed his badge a couple of times, but no one challenged them. It was that easy. As they came out through the entrance, a huge black truck flashed its hazard lights and its door locks clunked.
'Get in the back. And keep down.'
Katie opened the rear door and collapsed onto the bench seat. She heard the engine roar into life, then they pulled away, the acceleration throwing her against the backrest.
CHAPTER 86
EVERYONE SAID THAT THE communists bred the most inventive problem solvers. NASA employed Bulgarians because they were the best programmers. Even when she had only been working as an administrator, the researchers she managed told her to join their team. It was as if American schools taught that there was something in the water over there, something that made Eastern Europe raise dangerously clever sons and daughters. No wonder the Cold War lasted so long.
Well, here she was, living proof that Bulgarians could be stupid, too. There is no quantum computer. Alexandra Genovsky almost wanted to laugh.
How long had it been since Gierek gave up on the quantum computer and offered a neat deception as a substitute?
She should have seen it. How did Vasil see it, when she didn't? Simple: he was one of the clever ones. He had spent years developing communications programs for NASA. And he'd obviously put his experience to work.
How did she not see it? Was she just too enthralled by the science to see how unnecessary it all was? There was just no need for entanglement to control remote systems. Suddenly, in the past few years, the internet was everywhere, connected to everything. The entire air-traffic control system of the United States, power companies across the globe – everyone's systems were connected, via off-the-shelf software and the internet's optical fibres, to almost every computer on the planet. If anyone could get their software installed inside the firewall, they had an open door. And when you were the world's leading supplier of firewall and anti-virus software, like MacIntyre's company, how hard was that? All Vasil had to supply was the communications coding. The rest was simple hacking.
She couldn't help feeling a sense of shame that she had fallen for it all, just like MacIntyre had. She'd thought she was better than that. It turned out she wasn't: she had killed for Vasil, she had recruited for him, cleaned up when there was a mess. But that was all she was good for. If she'd had half his brains, she'd have known. Even Virgo had duped her – she knew now that story about the entanglement sent to the FBI was all a lie.
Virgo was on the floor. She could see blood pouring from his bottom lip, but Vasil wanted to do more damage.
'Get up.'
Vasil was pulling Virgo to his feet. Virgo looked strangely calm. Someone in his position had no reason to be calm. Vasil leaned close to his face.
'What do you know about the quantum computer?'
Virgo smiled, like he had been asked that before.
'I know that it's an expensive white elephant. Why spend billions of dollars when you can just corrupt, blackmail and manipulate the right people? You've got living proof right here.'
He pointed to Wheelan. 'Let me guess. He feels America is vulnerable without quantum cryptography. Wouldn't hurt his argument if he could show that someone had broken White House encryption. And what better way than to pretend someone has a quantum computer already?'
Genovsky looked over towards Wheelan. The corner of his mouth was turned up in an almost imperceptible smirk. Virgo was right on target. He was good – better than she was. She had wanted to believe they had achieved all this.
Vasil turned to Wheelan. 'How long?'
Wheelan checked his watch. 'A few more minutes. We should wait. Better that they hear some gunshots on their way in.' He looked at Virgo.
'In a few hours from now, plenty of people will take the evidence and conclude there is – or was – a quantum computer. What makes you so sure they're wrong?'
Virgo didn't answer. He changed the subject.
'Why did you kill Gabriel MacIntyre?' he said. 'He would have been the perfect witness for you – credulous and credible.'
'Because he was surplus to requirements. And we need one silent scapegoat.'
Genovsky didn't want to hear what was coming next. She already knew what Virgo was going to say. He stared at her.
'He was surplus to requirements,' Virgo agreed. He turned towards her and stared. 'He isn't any more. Is he, Alexandra?'
He kept his eyes on her as he spoke to Wheelan. 'Now that Alexandra knows about the fake, her testimony is not going to be very convincing at all.'
'You're right, of course.' Wheelan looked like he was thinking. Just for a moment. And then, with a smile, he seemed to make up his mind.
'Vasil.'
That was all Wheelan said. He said it with a flick of
his head towards her. That was it.
Genovsky watched Vasil swing his arm away from Virgo, rotate it towards her. His face looked troubled but resolute, like a mariner sailing into a storm. It was the same look she had seen on Vasil's face the night the priest was forced to cut her. She had never told Vasil she saw him there, almost out of sight, behind the rows of other men. When he came to her house, she had pretended not to recognise him. It didn't matter that he had been there, giving silent assent to her punishment. He had rescued her, that was enough. She had forgiven him. Now he was pointing a gun at her. Just for a moment, colourful parades flashed through her mind, visions of a Bulgarian summer, she and Vasil watching the celebrations. The village children were wearing flowers in their hair. She locked her gaze onto Vasil's face, searching for the bond between them. Vasil hesitated, and she thought she heard children singing.
Then his finger squeezed the trigger. The explosion from the muzzle drowned out the melody, and sent her into an echoing blackness.
CHAPTER 87
THEY WERE CLEAR OF the airport's commotion now, racing across the bridge towards the lights of the city.
'That was almost too easy,' Katie said, sitting up. 'What did you say your name was?'
'Delaney. Frank Delaney. I'm with the FBI.'
'Where are we going, Frank Delaney?' Katie asked.
He hesitated before answering. 'Away from here. Somewhere safe.'
That was all he had planned, to get her away, safe from Wheelan and his people. That would be his contribution.
'And where's my father?'
More hesitation. 'I'm not sure.'
Her face loomed large in his rear-view mirror. 'What do you mean, you're not sure? Where is he? What's going on?'
What to say? That he, Frank Delaney, had made a bad call, let Virgo down, and thrown him further into danger? Or that he had disappeared after escaping the FBI? That he had no idea where Virgo was? Delaney said nothing, but he could tell from her eyes that wasn't going to be enough for Katie Virgo.
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