Then she thought about calling Cheong. He would know what to do.
He's an amateur, just a bunch of rich men playing out their apocalyptic fantasies.
Yes, contacting him would be stupid. And selfish. Possibly even suicidal. The man would suck her back in, then send her somewhere else with no regard for her safety, just as he had shown her in China. It was unhealthy even considering it, since she had worked so hard during the past five months to put him and everything he represented behind her.
Except you have not put it behind you, have you? Norstrom knew. He threw it right back in your face.
It didn't matter what Norstrom believed, or what he thought of her internet activity. She knew those searches were therapeutic. Each day that passed without her finding some spurious mention of nanites was another victory.
So why are you so eager to make this about China, Angel? Maybe it really was just medicine they got. Maybe it was antibiotics. Maybe the man in black wasn't the devil, but just some national security officer. They all wear black uniforms.
It was driving her crazy, so she decided to try the shower again. But then she ended up cutting it short when she remembered she'd left her phone in the bedroom and swore she thought she heard it ringing. She rushed out, slipping on the wet bathroom floor and nearly going down, bruising her arm against the frame of the door. She hadn't even bothered to grab a towel, and an image flashed through her mind— her cold, stiff body sprawled naked on the floor, a broken neck and limbs bent at unnatural angles. The housekeeping service standing around and laughing at her, tweeting selfies with the disgusting naked dead person.
She looked down at herself and almost cried out at what she beheld. She hadn't really noticed before how much she had aged in the months she'd hidden at home, doing nothing but sitting in the dark and listening to the silence or Jacques' incessant tap-tapping. The muscle melting away from her arms and legs and turning to jelly around her middle. The dark veins showing through her thinning, pale skin.
The hair on her legs.
You're letting yourself go, Angel. Have you no self-esteem anymore?
She quickly checked the screen and confirmed that he hadn't called. No one had. And the absence of any response from anyone made her so angry that she hurled the phone across the room. Then she hurried over, fearful she had broken it.
Just call him.
But no. She couldn't. He had told her to wait. He would call, not the other way around. He'd even warned her it might be later than expected.
Ten o'clock arrived. Her hair dried into a tangled mess, stiff from the conditioner she hadn't rinsed away. And now she didn't want to get back into the damn shower to get it out. Her mind wandered, and she found herself wondering again why Norstrom had been so frantic after she brought up China.
Not frantic, but terrified.
It was like he didn't want it to be true. Like he was afraid if she talked about it, it would become real.
Not like him at all.
Now you're imagining things, Angel. He wasn't scared, just in a hurry.
Except she didn't believe that. He hadn't been in a hurry until she mentioned the nanites.
Let it go, Angel. He'll call soon and explain everything.
She found herself on her back on the bed, staring up at the decorative scroll work in the ceiling. Somehow, her thoughts had drifted to the factory at Wenbai. Jamie on the table, her belly sliced open and the scalpel in Angel's fingers, covered in blood and crawling with swarming tiny black objects. Aston screaming at her to remove the mewling creatures that the nanites had manufactured in her belly. Alien creatures. The blood. The smell—
She launched herself into the air and to the bathroom, sure she was going to be sick, but her breakfast was like hardened cement in her stomach, refusing to budge. Even as she forced herself to try, wanting to be rid of it, she couldn't make herself vomit.
As she hovered over the rim of the toilet, she remembered how Aston had told her about the places they had tested the nanites out. Where were they? South America, she thought. Kansas? Wales? There were more, she was sure of it. Africa? Had he mentioned Europe? What sorts of experiments? She couldn't remember. Why couldn't she remember if a detail like the name on that label came so easily to mind?
He had bragged to her that they were close to a final product. The China incident had set them back, of course. What had happened, the train crash occurring the way it had, was an accident. A saboteur, or so he had claimed. More experiments were needed. But she had never found any mention of the nanites after that.
As if they would publicize it.
Suddenly, every single medical crisis she could remember rose up in her mind— the Ebola scare in West Africa, outbreaks of salmonella and Legionnaires on cruise ships, the meningitis epidemic in Washington State, resurgences of Nipah, dengue, Zika, chikungunya . . . .
On and on, one disaster after another, a relentless parade of near calamitous events that had health officials working around the clock, week after week, to chase them down and suppress them. Had they been experiments?
It seemed suspicious how those outbreaks had appeared without warning, exploding like a brushfire. Then, just as quickly, vanishing. Regional health officials always took credit for their eradication, arguing that their quick action and containment were why the epidemics hadn't been worse. The World Health Organization, already spread too thin from chasing after the next new emerging crisis, simply couldn't follow up with the last. And nobody held anyone accountable; everyone was relieved that the outbreak had ended. They didn't care why.
Nanites?
She grabbed her laptop and powered it up and began to search. What was she missing?
Nothing.
Nothing.
Of course nothing. They would be so much more careful now. Smaller experiments. People no one cared about. People who existed outside of established social and political systems. It made sense to test on those types. Nobody would miss them.
People like the refugees.
What if Norstrom was right about the who but wrong about the how and the what? What if it wasn't terrorists but this damn company? What if they were testing the nanites within refugee groups?
She knew she couldn't just sit around and wait for Norstrom anymore. She had to find Mahdi. She needed to—
check his blood
—ask him some more questions.
In her haste to get dressed, she banged her shin on the bottom of the bed, then wrenched her knee.
Calm down, Angel. Settle down before you cripple yourself.
She sat down and shut her eyes, counted to ten. She dialed Norstrom's number and put the phone on speaker so she could tie the laces on her shoes, but the call only connected to an automated recording. She clicked it off halfway through. She already knew the recipient was unavailable.
She grabbed a jacket and her bag and hurried down the hall to the elevator.
Her hair was a mess, and her face lacked makeup. But where she was going, it wouldn't make any difference. The people wouldn't care what she looked like. She could already feel the crushing weight on her chest beginning to lift. She was glad just to be moving again.
Chapter Eleven
The hotel was a modern renovation of what used to be an old administrative building constructed in the mid-nineteenth century. Cut stone exterior, plaster interior. Her room was on the top floor overlooking a busy intersection near one of the city's dozens of museums.
Out in the elevator lobby, a man sat in a chair beneath the window, reading the day's newspaper. He didn't look up or lower it to acknowledge her presence.
Angel pressed the button and waited, anxiously checking the phone.
The paper crinkled.
She felt her scalp prickle. Was the man in the chair watching her? The elevator chimed, and the doors began to open. The newspaper snapped, and she realized he was folding it. Then she sensed the man getting up and moving to stand right behind her. She froze.
He cleared his
throat politely.
She stepped forward and moved to the back of the lift, her heart threatening to burst from her chest. The man followed and leaned over to press the button. "Quel étage?" he asked pleasantly. His thumb hovered over the panel, waiting for her instruction. The doors began to shut.
"Excusez-moi," she whispered, avoiding the man's eyes, and stepped quickly out. "J'ai oublié quelque chose dans ma chambre." She made a show of searching inside her bag for her room key as she went.
He offered to hold the elevator for her, but she told him it wasn't necessary, and soon the doors closed behind her. Only then did she risk a backward glance. The lobby was empty; the strange man had gone down in the elevator.
She didn't care if he was one of the people Norstrom had warned her about— although if he was, then he was a lot more brazen than Norstrom had described. Or maybe he was one of Norstrom's men, sent to keep an eye on her. Anyway, it didn't matter. She didn't care for the scrutiny either way.
She hurried past her room and descended the stairs instead. When she reached the ground floor, she skirted the lobby and departed the hotel through the kitchen, to the confused looks of several of the staff.
The exit deposited her into the worker's parking lot in back. A large plastic garbage bin sat beside the door, already swarming with flies as the morning chill began to fade.
She didn't bother going around to the customer lot to fetch her van. She figured it was likely being watched, if not tracked. Instead, she crossed over to the road, then to another old building with a pass-through to the next street over.
On a whim, she entered one of the businesses off the hallway, a small bookstore, and positioned herself behind a large display where she could keep an eye on the door. After several minutes passed and she was sure she hadn't been followed, she exited and made her way out to the street.
At the intersection of the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Meslay, she hailed a taxi and instructed the driver to take her to the Quai d'Austerlitz at Pont Charles de Gaulle. He did as she asked, dropping her off and thanking her in broken French when she gave him a fifty euro bill and waived off the change. She was in a hurry. He didn't complain.
After the traffic cleared, she hurried across the street and to the steps to access the footpath underneath the bridge. But before she had gone even halfway down, she knew she was already too late.
The entire encampment was fenced off, guarded by armed national security soldiers wearing green and black camouflage fatigues. Police cars were everywhere, their lights spinning white and blue. A crowd had gathered. They were chanting something she couldn't make out.
Half of the tents were gone, swept up into a pile of debris by a tractor with a large metal blade on the front. The refugees were being herded toward prison buses. She could see the last of them getting on.
Chapter Twelve
"No press," the guard told her in perfect English, when she held up her identification badge and asked to enter.
Turning away, he gestured to another man, directing his attention toward the remaining tents and shouting in French for them to be opened up and checked inside.
"I have to see someone," Angel pressed. "It's one of the migrants."
"Sorry, ma'am. No one is permitted inside the perimeter. This is now a national security zone. I advise you to leave the area immediately."
"Why can't I come in?"
"No access," he repeated and indicated the crowd with the stock of his rifle. "Only security personnel. For everyone's safety, I'm going to have to ask you again to leave."
"I will not."
"Then please move away from the barrier."
Angel could sense a level of uneasiness in the bystanders around her. There were a lot of people, which surprised her. But why were they here? Were they angry at the way the refugees were being herded away, or that it had taken so long to do so?
She was aware of the animosity directed against the refugees by the local residents and business owners. It increased a little everyday and bubbled over every time another fight broke out or another tourist was attacked or robbed. It didn't matter if the migrants were to blame or not. Europe was drowning in the ever-increasing tide of refugees. It made them easy scapegoats.
But to treat them like this, led away at the end of a rifle and loaded onto buses meant for convicted killers and thieves? It wasn't right.
Only a few dozen remained in line, slowly shuffling toward the door of the last bus. If Mahdi was among them, she didn't see him.
"I just need to talk to one in particular, please," she begged. "His name is Mahdi Haddad."
"Sorry, Ma'am."
In the taxi on the way over, she had decided that she would take Mahdi to see Norstrom. It would have been better if she could collect a sample of his blood as proof. But she didn't have any way to take it, much less analyze it. Norstrom would.
"Any of them," she begged.
"Sorry, ma'am," the soldier repeated.
Black smoke belched out of the exhaust pipes as the vehicles started and revved their engines. With a loud whine, the first of them began to wend their way toward the road on the other side of the underpass.
"Where are they taking them?" she asked. "Where are they going?"
The guard shrugged and told her again to back away. "Make room. We don't want anyone to get injured."
Angel left him and tried to push her way through the crowd toward the area where the buses were heading to leave.
The gathering was rapidly growing larger, drawing more onlookers curious to see what the commotion was all about. Some of them looked like professional protesters. She'd seen them at the other camps with their signs and their chants, harassing the migrants, screaming at them to go home. They had an instinct for showing up when there might be trouble, when the press and the police were around. Had they prompted this?
Or did it have to do with Norstrom's warning about terrorist attacks?
She forced her way through the crowd, ducking beneath the protesters' signs, trying to keep the buses in her sights. She scanned the windows for Mahdi, but she couldn't see through the metal gratings. The refugees were vague silhouettes behind the dark glass.
She reached the gate just as the first vehicle passed through it. The guards held the metal barrier to the side, shouting at the bystanders to stand clear. The buses continued to head out through the opening, turning toward the main road. There, they were joined by several heavy-duty vehicles with security forces markings on them.
"Where are they being taken?" she called out to the closest guard.
Like his colleague, he ignored her. "Dégager la zone!" he shouted, ordering the crowd to clear the area. Angel detected an American accent. "Éloignez-vous de la porte! Move away from the gate!" When the crowd didn't, he pulled out a whistle and blew into it.
Several more guards appeared out of the back of a truck. They hurried over and began to press the restless crowd away from the metal rail. Some resisted, but they were easily forced back. They seemed to know exactly how far to challenge the soldiers.
"Why are they being relocated?" Angel called out again. "Where are they being taken? I demand that you tell me!"
The soldier glanced at her identification, then up at her face and frowned suspiciously. He pulled his radio to his mouth and spoke quietly into it, his eyes never leaving hers. He nodded and stepped over to her. "Why do you need to know?" he demanded.
"Who authorized this? Who are you working for?"
"United Nations, ma'am." He tapped a patch on his sleeve. "Now, if you don't mind—"
"Norstrom? Was it Norstrom?"
He looked startled for a moment, then shook his head. "Never heard of them." But he quickly left her, backing away and once more speaking into his radio.
"Where then?" she shouted after him. "Tell me where they are going."
"Who cares where they go?" someone behind her shouted. "As long as they're not here, stealing our food and polluting our water."
"North," a
nother said. "I heard one of them say north and east."
"Calais?" Angel asked.
There was a semi-permanent migrant settlement there consisting of several thousand people, the so-called Migrant Jungle of Calais. It was just outside the entrance to the Chunnel leading into Great Britain. Angel had only seen the site in pictures. It looked like a terrible place, a near-lawless wasteland of filth and chaos. Even the charity groups found it difficult to manage.
"Not Calais," another said. "It is already too crowded there. I heard one of them say they are taking them to Roubaix."
"Well, you know, I'm glad about it," an old woman standing beside her said, winking and nodding grimly. "No matter where they go. It's about time they did something about the mess here."
"They have no homes," Angel said.
"They left their homes behind. They chose to and then to come here."
"Because of war!"
"They don't belong here. They have already been here overlong, making trouble, bringing their diseases and their barbaric ideas."
"Since when is it barbaric to wish for safety for your family?"
"They should force them to leave France, if you ask me. France is not for them!"
"It's just as well that they are putting them together with those nasty Gypsies and their filthy men," another said.
Angel stared at them in disbelief. "Did you not see the women and children? They are sick and hungry and—"
"Move them out!" the guard shouted through his bullhorn, startling the crowd into silence for a moment. "Stand back," he warned. "Let them through."
"What threat do they pose?" Angel demanded. "Why are you taking them away?"
He stared at her again, impatience momentarily creasing his brow, then turned his back on her once more. He'd clearly had enough of the crowd's challenges.
"They're terrorists, you know," the old woman said, tugging on Angel's sleeve. "All of them. Even the children. They make them wear those explosive vests, blow things up, kill people at weddings and funerals. They would kill us all. They teach them to shoot guns they're barely old enough to lift."
Iceland: An International Thriller (The Flense Book 2) Page 8
