The building was a modern architectural wonder, three stories of polished steel and massive panes of green-tinted glass. The walls stretched in one direction for twenty meters and at least a hundred in the other. In the distance, past the edge of the building, was a massive tangle of shiny aluminum pipes. Steam spewed from several release valves.
"He's not answering," Emily said, speaking loudly over the rumble and hiss of the power plant's operations. "I sent him a text. Are you sure you don't want a tour while we wait?"
Angel didn't answer. She was tired of arguing with the girl.
Finally, the phone vibrated to let her know it was booted. She chanced a quick glance at the screen, then tapped open the texting app. She had a message to Norstrom pre-loaded, ready to go. One more tap, and it was on its way. She slipped her hands back beneath her armpits, waiting a few seconds to be sure the message was sent, then powered down and removed the battery without looking.
From her limited vantage point at the end of the runway, Angel guessed that the entire compound was enclosed with the same four-meter-high chain linked fence she could see beyond the pipes. It was topped with razor wire, a security measure no doubt meant to keep people out, but just as effective at keeping them in.
"Have you had enough fresh air?" Emily complained, wrinkling her nose at the sulfur smell. She had pulled her mask down beneath her chin and was blowing into her cuffed hands. "It's freezing out here."
Angel turned once more to the view, memorizing as many details as she could.
"Show me your hands!"
Angel spun around, surprised. The girl had snuck up on her without making a sound. "Excuse me?"
"Show me your hands."
Slowly, Angel withdrew her hands from beneath her arms and opened them up for the girl to see. The phone was safely tucked into her bra beneath her shirt.
"Take me to Farid," she said, brushing crossly past Emily. "I've had enough fresh air."
* * *
"The unit where Mister al-Haddad is being temporarily housed," Emily told her, as they boarded the elevator once more, "is one of the family units on Level Eight. The owner hasn't had it furnished yet, so we had to bring in a few things from town. The apartment is a bit bare. It's functional and comfortable. And there's power and water, of course."
"Who is the owner of the unit?" Angel asked.
"I couldn't tell you even if I knew. It's part of the confidentiality agreement. If you had bothered to read it—"
"Why, when you can just tell me what it says?"
They stared at each other for several seconds before Emily huffed behind her mask. "I don't think even Mister Cheong knows who owns it."
"And the apartment I'm staying in?"
She rolled her eyes, making it clear she wasn't going to answer that, either. Instead, she slapped her card against the secret sensor and stabbed the L8 button before the panel had slid fully open.
"It's not Cheong's is it?"
"Don't be ridiculous! Why would he give up his apartment for you?"
"Then, he does have one here."
The doors swished shut.
"Where is his wife now? He is married, if I remember correctly. Is she here?"
"Missus Cheong is in Shanghai. They have a place there. He usually visits her every few days when he's working."
"He leaves her at home?"
Emily frowned, but didn't answer.
"I mean, she doesn't have a problem with her husband spending so much time away from home and . . . ?" She didn't finish the thought, although it should have been clear where she was going with it. Emily was a pretty girl.
"He is a very busy man. His work is important. His wife understands this."
"And how exactly would you describe his work?"
Emily scowled, clearly growing more agitated by Angel's questioning. "You do know about 6X," she snapped.
Angel nodded.
"They are worried about the end of the world. Mister Cheong only wants to make sure humanity is saved if something happens. If they cannot stop the disaster, then they want to make sure humanity will survive to carry on afterward. So they can restart civilization."
Angel raised an eyebrow. She couldn't tell if the poor girl actually believed all that crap or if she was simply reciting something she'd memorized. "What if humanity is not worth saving?"
"How could you say that?"
Angel shrugged, realizing how much like her own brother she sounded just then. "I have seen people do terrible things."
"And you don't believe there are good people?"
"What about you, Emily?" she asked instead of replying. "What do you do for Monsieur Cheong?"
"I am his assistant."
"So, you have your own apartment here then? Or do you stay with him?"
Something flashed in the girl's eyes. "I have a separate temporary residence while he is managing preparations for the bunker." She glared at Angel, practically daring her to take her hints of impropriety to outright accusation.
Angel knew she was intentionally antagonizing the girl, though she didn't know why she was doing it, other than she didn't like her. Nothing the girl had done deserved such an attack. And yet . . . .
The elevator chimes marking the passage between levels seemed especially intrusive in the small space. Emily could have used the distraction to steer the conversation away, and Angel would have been satisfied to let her do so. Instead, the girl said, "Mister Cheong is like a father to me."
"Are you like a daughter to him, or something else?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"I am simply wondering, what will happen to you if this place ever goes into lockdown? If you are like family, will he bring you in with him?"
Emily stabbed again at the L8 button, as if it could make the elevator ride shorter. They still had a couple more levels to go.
"He will not, am I correct?"
"You don't understand how this works!"
"I am trying to understand."
"No, you're not! You just think you're someone pretty special, coming in here and demanding this and that!" Angel flinched at the sudden vehemence. "You think you can just force Mister Cheong to do whatever you ask. Make him do your every bidding. Making him wait all this time for you to call him."
"He was not waiting—"
"But do you know who has to do it all when you finally show up? Me. 'Do this! Make that! Take me here! Take me there!' Well, I don't work for you!"
The doors opened, and the girl prepared to step out, but Angel grabbed her arm. "I'm sorry. I—"
"Leave me alone!" Emily cried. She wrenched her arm away and marched off down the hall.
Chapter Forty
The corridor on Level Eight was adorned in much the same manner as Level Three, but the doors were spaced farther apart to accommodate the larger family units.
Emily strode down the center of the hall, her head and shoulders held rigidly erect and her shoes making soft swishing sounds over the thick carpeting.
Angel had to practically run to keep up with her, despite her height advantage. And when the girl suddenly stopped and pivoted toward one of the doors, she almost plowed into her.
"Unit 812," she snapped. She lifted her hand and rapped briskly on the door. The sound seemed muted in the padded hallway. "Gústav! Open up! It's Emily! I'm here with the woman."
It seemed odd to Angel that there wasn't some sort of door chime. In fact, as she glanced about her in the hallway, she realized how utterly quiet the place was. There was no sound, not even soft music. This struck her as odd, given the decor. Visually, the place reminded her of an upscale Manhattan high rise, or the offices of her husband's former attorneys, not some survival bunker in the frozen wastes of Iceland. The least they could do was pipe in some soothing music.
Perhaps when it is full of filthy-rich survivors from all over the world, she thought. Then they will turn on the music to hypnotize them into forgetting the disaster they are hiding from and the billions of
less-fortunate yet more-deserving dead.
She had to remind herself that it would never happen.
There was a rattle as the deadbolt was flipped. Then the door opened wide, revealing a large man with thinning blond hair and a weathered face. His eyes scanned the girl, then lit on Angel, all without a flicker of emotion.
"Put on your mask," Emily snapped.
He shrugged but didn't move.
"Fine. It's your life."
"I am not contagious anymo—" Angel started to say.
"Just let us in, Gústav. She's here to see Mister al-Haddad."
He didn't immediately move out of the way. First, he stuck his head out the door and looked past them into the hallway. "Where is Cheong? He wanted to be here when—"
The faint chime of the elevator came to them from the far reaches of the hallway, and the even fainter swish of the doors closing as the car was sent to where it had been called.
"That's probably him," Emily said, and pushed the very large man out of the way. He went willingly. After a moment, Angel followed her into the apartment.
Just as Emily had said, the unit was sparsely furnished. The floors were still bare concrete, water-stained but clean, waiting for the carpeting to be installed. The walls and ceilings were painted a flat white. A set of mismatched chairs with worn cushions occupied the main room, along with a pair of cots shoved up against the wall. Each had an unoccupied sleeping bag on it. Empty potato chip bags and dirty dishes were scattered about.
"Dammit, Gústav!" Emily snapped. "You know how much Mister Cheong dislikes messes. He'll be here in a few minutes!"
Gústav ignored her and turned to Angel. "Your man is in the master bedroom."
"Just take her back," Emily growled. "Go on. I'll clean up the mess in here." She began zipping around the room, gathering up the dirty dishes. "And put on your mask, for god's sake!"
The man shrugged again. "As you wish," he said. He spoke with a slight Nordic accent and didn't seem at all concerned about the risk of catching anything. He sauntered toward the back of the apartment, leaving Angel to stand beside the door. "Miss? If you will follow me."
Angel stepped past Emily, warily watching as the girl wadded up the sleeping bags and threw them into a closet.
"It's Missus," Emily shouted after them. "Better get it right before she bites your head off."
Chapter Forty One
There was a knock at the door, which interrupted Farid's tirade, followed by Cheong asking to come in.
Angel turned. Her first thought upon seeing him standing in the doorway was: He looks exactly the same as he did the last time we met, back in the hospital room in China.
There was no expensive overcoat this time, just trousers of some light material and a long-sleeved shirt buttoned up to his chin. On his hands were a pair of thin gloves, gray in color. He did not offer his hand for her to shake.
He, too, wore a surgical mask.
Her second thought was relief that Emily had not accompanied him here. She didn't like the girl. And she couldn't understand how Cheong could, either.
He nodded curtly at Gústav, who interpreted the cue to mean he was dismissed. He shrugged himself away from the wall and exited with the same bored expression on his face that he had worn coming in. In fact, his demeanor hadn't changed one bit in the five or six minutes that Farid had unloaded onto Angel for bringing him here and then abandoning him.
She had been prepared for his anger. She deserved it. But the first time he stopped to take a breath, she interrupted him to remind him she'd been sick. "I would have come sooner, if I were able to." She sat heavily down onto his unmade bed, shaking as much from fatigue as his fury.
The apology reined him in a little, although he was building steam again when Cheong came in.
"I'm pleased to see you back on your feet, Missus de l'Enfantine," Cheong said, nodding at Angel. "You are looking much better than the day you arrived. I trust the accommodations are satisfactory?"
"Much better than these."
Like the rest of the apartment, the room was sparsely adorned— a single bed and a set of rickety drawers that didn't match or even shut properly. The ceiling was painted a light blue hue — although whether it was primer or the final color was impossible to tell — but both the floor and walls were unfinished.
Cheong glanced around. "Yes, well, we are doing the best we can given the stipulations you set for us. If you prefer, I could move you into a more . . . austere setting as well, something more befitting of, say, your brother?"
He seemed to pause, as if waiting for her to reply.
"Anyway, I'm afraid this is the best we can do for Mister Haddad."
Farid pushed himself away from the wall with a grunt of impatience, sparing her the embarrassment of responding to Cheong's bluff. He was dressed in thin medical scrubs, his hairy arms crossed over his chest.
"You are man in charge! Why I cannot leave?"
"Farid," Angel said, before Cheong could respond. "I told you. I'll explain everything as soon as—"
"You tell me already, but I disagree. You think I am dangerous because of medicine, but I tell you I am not! I have no bad medicine inside of me!"
"Please, Farid! If you didn't, then why didn't you get sick like the rest of us on the boat?"
"Because I—"
Cheong stepped between them. "Perhaps you should first explain why you're both here."
"I have no choice!" Farid shouted.
"Angelique?"
"I told you it's about China."
"Yes, you did. But you have yet to explain how."
"This is going to take a while."
"Then I suppose we should relocate to a more comfortable setting. The other room, perhaps?" He beckoned at the Syrian, inviting him to join them in the common area of the apartment. "Have you eaten?"
"Some."
"Then I'll send Emily into town to fetch us some decent food."
"Is it far?" Farid asked. Angel easily detected the underlying intent in his asking, and she knew Cheong would not have missed it.
"A half hour drive through uninhabited terrain. Nothing between here and there. Come, we can get started while we wait."
Angel nodded at Farid, who reluctantly followed them out and took a seat in one of the mismatched chairs. Cheong provided Emily with instructions, speaking softly to her in the kitchen. Angel found it curious how timid she acted around her boss. It was so unlike the girl's behavior earlier that she felt a sudden unbidden pang of remorse. Might she have misjudged the girl and her relationship with the man?
When he had sent her on her way, Cheong pulled over one of the plastic lawn chairs from the kitchen and sat down in it. Then he indicated with a tip of his head that Angel should begin. "I want to know everything now, just as you promised."
Angel nodded slowly, studying the look on his face. All she could seem to find there was skepticism and impatience. She couldn't help feeling like this was the last place he wanted to be.
"Start from the moment my boy Jian picked you up and took you to Baoyang village," he told her, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. "This time, omit nothing."
* * *
Five hours. That's how long it took her to tell him everything. Well, almost everything, anyway. Even leaving out parts she believed to be unimportant or thought he already knew, it still took much longer than she expected. Her throat was sore, and her chest hurt. And long before she finished, she was utterly exhausted.
Yet she pressed on out of sheer will. And it surprised her how good it felt to finally get it all off her chest.
Cheong listened without interruption, though Farid asked numerous questions, mostly for clarification, and even interjected with his own version of events. He spoke of his imprisonment and involuntary return to Istanbul, but did not mention the man in black.
When Angel brought up his brief hospital stay in Ankara, Turkey, Farid shook his head and again denied that he had been injected with bad medicine. Still, h
e was forced to concede he'd been too sick to know for sure what he had received. And he couldn't explain why he had been the only one not to catch the flu on the boat.
"But you told your brother not to take the medicine. You knew something was wrong with it."
"No, I was wrong to tell him not to take it. It is only medicine."
He listened carefully to her horrific description of the massacre at Nordqvist's, and only then did she sense his resolve weaken. But when she finished, it was back, stronger than ever. He simply refused to accept that he was the unwilling subject of some secret medical experiment.
For that matter, neither did Cheong seem all that impressed by her story. The longer he remained sitting with a stoic look on his face, the more frustrated she became. It was wholly unlike the man she had last seen in China. No longer did he seem very enthusiastic about her, so her mind kept drifting back to these points, forcing her to wonder what might have happened to alter his attitude about her. It distracted her so much that she kept losing track of her thoughts.
Despite Cheong's demand that she tell him everything, she omitted any details having to do with Norstrom's involvement. In her rendition, there was no Norstrom. Thankfully, Farid didn't try to correct her or elaborate.
When she was finished, instead of asking questions, Mister Cheong simply stood up and brushed off his slacks, as if the entire exercise had bored him.
"That's enough for today," he said, and walked over to the phone on the wall by the door. "We will meet again tomorrow, once I have had a chance to discuss this with my bosses."
"You do believe me, don't you?" Angel asked.
He turned and gave her a strange look. "Is there any reason why I shouldn't?"
"No. It is all true. Please, you must believe. Why would I lie about any of it?"
Something flickered in his eyes for the briefest of moments, and he sighed. "To be honest, I'm not sure what I believe. Let's just say I have reasons to be cynical."
He glanced over at Farid, who hadn't moved or said anything in quite a while.
Finally, he turned and plucked the phone off the cradle and jabbed at a few of the buttons. Angel noticed how careful he was to hold the receiver away so that it didn't touch his skin. As a result, she was able to hear Emily's end of the conversation.
Iceland: An International Thriller (The Flense Book 2) Page 27
