by Jack Heath
She survived her training, completed enough missions to earn Noelein’s trust, and was eventually sent to Besmar to gather intelligence. Then she vanished.
Four weeks ago, Fero had crossed the border and found her – or rather, she had found him. They travelled back to Kamau to stop the bombers. Afterwards, Cormanenko had faked her own death in a fire under Melzen hospital. The Library knew she had betrayed them. It was the only way to stay safe.
Now Fero wasn’t sure where they stood. Cormanenko didn’t work for the Library anymore, so she wasn’t his enemy – but she was Kamauan, so she wasn’t his friend.
Cormanenko holstered the guns and tucked a stray black curl behind her ear. ‘What are you doing here, Maschenov?’
It felt strange to hear his real name spoken aloud. ‘I saw the radiation gloves,’ he said. ‘I thought she might work for the Kamauan nuclear program.’
He glanced over to where the woman had been sitting at the desk. A line of blood bags, like those used in transfusions, rested on the pitted desktop next to a roll of duct tape. A stack of metal boxes stood in the corner of the room. They were airtight, sealed with gigantic clamps. Radiation warning symbols were stamped on the sides. This wasn’t the Kamauan nuclear program, but it was something equally dangerous.
Cormanenko helped her fallen comrades up. She had arms like a wrestler. She pulled the man to his feet as though he weighed nothing.
The pair dusted themselves off. The man – a tall, broad-shouldered guy with a thick beard and hairy knuckles – looked especially resentful. Unfairly, Fero thought, since the guy had tried to strangle him first.
Another man walked in – an older, muscly guy with sun-roughened skin. He looked at Fero warily. ‘Wait – who’s this?’
‘So nice of you to join us,’ the bearded man grumbled.
‘Seriously,’ the older guy said, ‘is that who I think it is? I’m supposed to be out there looking for him right now.’
‘This is Maschenov,’ Cormanenko told him, without further explanation. She turned back to Fero. ‘So you followed her. Why?’
It seemed obvious to Fero. ‘I thought maybe I could stop Kamau from launching a nuclear attack on Besmar.’
‘By yourself?’
It didn’t seem wise to tell her he was gathering interest for the Bank, so he just shrugged. ‘I had to try.’
‘Should I search him?’ the woman asked.
‘Yes.’ Cormanenko looked apologetically at Fero. ‘It’s not that we don’t trust you—’
‘I don’t trust him,’ the bearded man put in.
‘It’s okay,’ Fero said. He stood with his feet apart and spread his arms. It was probably too late to cross the border now. Maybe these people would shelter him overnight.
The woman patted him down. She moved much more confidently now that she was inside, away from the cameras.
‘You should sweep me for microdots, too,’ he said. ‘The Library might be tracking my clothes.’ He thought it unlikely – if they were, they could easily have caught him by now – but maybe they were waiting to see where he went before they moved in on him.
Cormanenko pointed at something above Fero’s head. He looked up. A block of iron hung from the ceiling, trailing power cables. ‘Electromagnet,’ she said. ‘They can’t track you in here.’
The woman finished searching Fero and stepped back. ‘He’s clean.’
‘He can’t stay,’ the older guy said. ‘He’s all over the news. Every Librarian, every Cataloguer and every beat cop in the country is looking for him.’
‘We’re not kicking him out,’ Cormanenko said. ‘He won’t last five minutes out there.’
Fero was offended. ‘I won’t stay long,’ he said. ‘I’ll cross the border into Ukraine tomorrow morning.’
‘Really?’ Cormanenko stuck her hands in her pockets. ‘What’s your plan for getting through the checkpoint?’
‘Pickpocket a lookalike in the queue, go through with his passport.’
The other woman snorted. ‘I’m guessing you only watch the state-sponsored news.’
‘No one has been allowed to leave Kamau since the explosion in the Botanic Gardens,’ Cormanenko said. ‘Hundreds of foreign nationals and dual citizens have had their passports confiscated. Anyone who tries to get through the checkpoint is told they need to apply for an exit visa. All applications are eventually denied.’
Fero felt his escape plan wither and die. ‘Why?’
‘Because no one wants to be here when Besmar launches their nukes,’ Cormanenko said. ‘But if too many people leave, the economy will collapse.’
‘Besmar won’t do that,’ Fero said. His country wouldn’t murder civilians.
‘Not right now,’ Cormanenko agreed. ‘Kamau would retaliate. Both countries would be annihilated. But if Besmar sees an opportunity, they’ll take it.’
Quiet rage bubbled in Fero’s belly. Those were his people she was talking about.
‘He has to go,’ the older guy said. ‘What we’re doing is too important.’
‘What are you doing?’ Fero asked, eyeing the blood bags and the stack of metal boxes.
The bearded man and the woman both looked at Cormanenko.
‘Are you sure you want me to answer that question?’ Cormanenko asked.
Fero was already a target of the Library. Knowing what she was up to wouldn’t put him in any additional danger – and it might be useful for Vartaniev. ‘Maybe I can help,’ he said.
‘Dessa,’ the bearded man said. ‘You can’t—’
‘He might be useful as a fail safe.’
A ‘fail safe’ was a device which was only used when everything else went wrong, like the giant spring on the bottom of a lift shaft. Fero had sometimes heard these devices referred to as ‘dead man’s switches’.
Cormanenko turned to Fero. ‘I’m taking a risk by trusting you. Are we going to have a problem?’
Fero tried to keep his gaze level. Cormanenko had saved his life, but his loyalty was to Besmar. Sometimes that meant doing things that made him uncomfortable – like lying to Cormanenko.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No problem.’
‘Follow me,’ Cormanenko said.
He followed her through a door in the far wall of the office, up a flight of rusted metal stairs, and into a narrow room with four thin sleeping mats on the concrete floor. Two rucksacks hung from a hook on the wall. Fero saw a torch and some empty cans of food in the corner.
Cormanenko closed the door. ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘Xin – that’s the woman downstairs – does work for the Kamauan nuclear program. But she also works for me.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Kamau won’t surrender its nuclear weapons, because they’re afraid Besmar might attack. Xin is going to steal the plutonium cores so the warheads can’t be detonated.’
Fero stared at her. ‘By herself?’
‘It’s a dangerous task,’ Cormanenko acknowledged. ‘She knows that. But Haypen – the guy with the beard – made some duplicate cores out of depleted uranium. Xin should be able to get out of the facility before anyone realises she’s made the switch.’
‘Wait – so you guys are working for the Bank?’
Cormanenko looked affronted. ‘No! We’re trying to prevent nuclear war. I have an undercover operative in Besmar as well.’
Fero felt a sinking sensation in his chest. ‘Sabotaging the Besmari warheads?’
Cormanenko shook her head. ‘The Soviet Union moved most of their missiles into Besmar during the Cold War. There are too many silos. Instead, I got him to steal the launch codes from Parliament House in Premiovaya. He’s already replaced them with duplicates and destroyed the originals. Bear – that’s the older guy, with the muscles – he’s going to sneak across the border tomorrow and steal the other set of launch codes from the Besmari prime minister. That way Besmar still has working nukes but they can’t launch them.’
‘But if they succeed and Xin fails – and the Library finds out Besmar is def
enceless . . .’
Cormanenko nodded grimly. ‘Then Kamau will launch its nukes at Besmar. Or if Xin succeeds and the team in Besmar fails, then Besmar will launch nukes at Kamau.’
The ground seemed unsteady beneath Fero. ‘You’re going to start a nuclear war.’
‘I’m trying to prevent one. If both countries are disarmed at the same time, there’s hope for a truce. As long as those missiles exist and can be armed, nuclear war is inevitable.’
‘Besmar won’t launch,’ Fero insisted.
‘In a poll last week, seventy per cent of Besmaris said they would support a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Kamau. Scared people make bad decisions.’
Fero resisted the urge to get defensive. If spies were planning to steal both sets of launch codes and leave Besmar defenceless, Vartaniev needed to know about it. ‘The codes are defended by the prime ministerial guard,’ he said. ‘They’re never more than ten metres from the PM. How can Bear possibly expect to get to them?’
Cormanenko opened her mouth to reply, and then hesitated. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I worked as a Teller, remember?’
‘I remember, but you shouldn’t.’
‘You gave me my memories back,’ Fero said.
‘I only told you your name. To protect you from the Librarians you thought were your parents. The memories themselves—’
‘I used an enzyme to reverse the brainwashing.’ He didn’t tell her that he still had gaps in his memory. He felt somehow ashamed.
Something like grief crossed Cormanenko’s face. ‘I see. So the boy I knew as Fero Dremovich – he’s gone?’
‘He never existed,’ Fero said, trying to convince himself as much as her.
Xin burst through the door. ‘Cormanenko!’ she hissed. ‘We have a problem. There’s someone outside.’
Fero felt his heart skip a beat.
‘Talk to me,’ Cormanenko said. There was no emotion in her face. Fero had seen that look before. It was as if she put so much brainpower into crisis management that there was none left for fear.
‘Four people hanging around out front.’ Xin’s eyes were wide. ‘Another five out back, with seven more waiting in the alley. No uniforms, but they’re not civilians.’
‘How long have they been there?’
‘The first one appeared two minutes ago.’ Xin pointed at Fero. ‘He led them to us.’
Fero backed away. ‘Whoever it is, they’re not with me.’
‘Move the duplicate cores into the crawl space.’ Cormanenko pushed past Xin and started running down the stairs. Fero followed.
‘Haypen is already doing that,’ Xin said, hurrying after them. ‘But that doesn’t leave any room for us to hide.’
‘I’m working on that. Where’s Bear?’
‘He left before they arrived.’
Suspicious, Fero thought, but said nothing.
‘I can call him back,’ Xin offered.
‘No,’ Cormanenko said. ‘If anything happens to him, the operation in Besmar is shot.’
They reached the office. Fero was surprised to see that the stack of boxes was already gone. He looked around but couldn’t see the entrance to the crawl space.
Haypen was covered in concrete dust. ‘I can take out the ones in the alley,’ he told Cormanenko.
‘Don’t. More will come. We need to lead them away. Are they armed?’
Xin looked at her as though she was stupid.
‘I mean with heavy weapons,’ Cormanenko clarified. ‘Assault rifles, grenade launchers . . .’
‘Not that I saw. They’re in plain clothes – they want this done quietly.’ Xin brought up a live feed on her phone. There must have been a camera hidden outside. Over her shoulder, Fero caught a glimpse of seven people loitering in the alley. One of them was Wilt.
He looked like a completely different man. The glasses were gone. His expression had changed – the usual kindly curiosity had been replaced by grim professionalism. As he walked along the row of Librarians, murmuring orders, Fero noticed that even his limp was gone.
Knowing that Wilt was a spy hadn’t prepared Fero for seeing it. His father hadn’t turned on him. His father had been erased from existence, leaving behind this sinister shadow.
‘They’re Librarians,’ Fero said.
Cormanenko glanced over at him. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive. They’re not after you. They’re here for me.’
‘They must have spotted you on the CCTV,’ Haypen said. ‘Followed you here.’ He didn’t say I told you so to Cormanenko, but Fero could tell he wanted to.
If Cormanenko and her comrades were caught but Bear wasn’t, then Besmar would be disarmed but not Kamau. The Library would annihilate Fero’s homeland with nuclear weapons as soon as they realised they could.
Fero couldn’t let that happen.
‘I can draw them away,’ he said.
‘I can’t ask you to do that,’ Cormanenko said.
‘You don’t have to.’
‘We can’t trust him,’ Haypen said. ‘If he’s caught—’
‘He won’t tell the Library anything,’ said Cormanenko.
Fero wasn’t sure that was true. He thought back to the Investigator and the guillotine. But this was his only option. ‘We’re wasting time,’ he said. ‘Is there roof access?’
Cormanenko nodded. ‘This way.’
They sprinted across to the far side of the warehouse, where a shaky ladder led them up to a narrow walkway. They ran along the walkway to another ladder, which stretched up to a trapdoor in the ceiling.
‘Take this.’ Cormanenko gave him a slip of paper with ten digits written on it. ‘That’s a modified version of my phone number. Swap the fives and the sixes around when you dial and you’ll get through to me. Call when you can.’
‘Thanks.’ Fero quickly memorised the numbers by picturing himself punching them into a keypad. He stuffed the paper into his pocket. Then he climbed up the ladder and pushed open the trapdoor. The night air hit him like the fog from a meat locker. A sliver of moon cut through a sky devoid of stars.
When Fero clambered out onto the sloped roof, the corrugated surface bent beneath his feet. It was hard to tell which panels were metal and which were plastic. The plastic was likely to snap under his weight. He would fall to his death on the concrete floor of the warehouse. But there was no time for caution. At any moment the Librarians could burst in and find Cormanenko. She had faked her own death to hide from them – if they found out she was alive, they would kill her for real.
The gap between this building and the next was about five metres. To pass his training, Fero had needed to jump six metres horizontally. He had done it – once, in daylight, after half an hour of stretching and with a long run-up on even ground.
If he didn’t make it, at least the Librarians in the alley below would break his fall.
Fero sprinted down the slope towards the gutters. No point being quiet – he was creating a diversion, after all. The roof panels clanged and clattered beneath his shoes. Every instinct screeched at him to slow down. Instead he accelerated. If he wasn’t going at full speed he would never make the jump. He saw a plastic panel just in time to avoid putting his foot through it. But dodging the pitfall broke his rhythm and slowed him down.
He stumbled towards the gutter. It was too late to stop. At the last second he threw all his weight into a desperate leap.
He hurtled out over the deadly drop. There was just enough moonlight to see the faces of the Librarians below looking up at him – no alarm, no surprise, just ruthless calculation.
But he had lost too much momentum. He wasn’t going to make it. He flung out a hand and managed to snag the gutter of the building on the opposite side of the alley. Metal creaked and rivets popped, but it held his weight.
A bullet chipped the brickwork beside his torso. The pop of a suppressed pistol cut through the air a split second later.
‘Hold your fire!’ someone hissed. They wanted him alive. N
ot necessarily a good thing.
Fero hauled himself up across the gutter and scrambled onto the rooftop. He was out of the firing line, but not for long. Splink! A grappling hook found purchase on the gutter behind him.
Snow encrusted the slate shingles. Fero climbed from one stout chimney to the next, keeping his head low. He reached the crest and ran down the other side of the rooftop. No sign of a fire escape or any other safe way to get back down to the ground, but the gap between this building and the next was only two metres. Fero jumped across with ease.
This rooftop was flat concrete. Easy to cross at speed. A ladder was bolted to the far side. Fero sprinted towards it. The Librarians were still on the first rooftop. If he could get out of sight, he might be able to cross the border before they found him again. Hopefully they wouldn’t think to search the warehouse, at least until Cormanenko and the others had had time to get away.
Fero had almost reached the ladder down to the street when a man appeared at the top of it. He scrabbled up onto the roof and pointed a gun at Fero. The man was in his thirties, solidly built, with a dimpled chin and a scar across one eyebrow. The gun was a Chinese-made MK81 pistol with a suppressor screwed onto the muzzle. It was so close to Fero’s face that he could see scratches on the barrel.
‘Drop to your knees,’ the scarred man commanded.
If Fero got handcuffed, he was as good as dead. Every second he waited brought the other Librarians closer.
‘Now!’ the man said.
Fero grabbed the gun barrel. The man pulled the trigger, but he was too slow. Fero had already twisted his torso out of the way. The bullet ricocheted off the concrete roof as Fero grabbed the man’s wrist with his other hand and twisted the gun out of his grip. The movement came instinctively – part of his spy training, buried just beneath the surface. It was almost scary how easy it was to take the gun.
Astonished that he was still alive, Fero stepped back so the scarred man couldn’t pull the same trick on him. ‘Get out of my way,’ he said.
The man hesitated.
