by Jack Heath
‘Got it.’ Fero folded the glasses and pocketed them. They were cool, but he would be home soon. He didn’t need to worry about his own government watching him.
‘You’ll also need the package with the fake white list in it.’ Wolf passed him a padded envelope. It was A4-sized and surprisingly heavy. ‘Lead-lined,’ she explained. ‘So the list can’t be examined with an X-ray. Don’t open it. Vartaniev will expect it to be sealed. You’ve also got this – copper thermite with a magnesium fuse.’ She pointed at a cylinder about the size of a soft-drink can.
‘An explosive?’
‘No. It doesn’t explode, but it burns very, very hot. Useful if you want to melt through a steel trapdoor or put a hole in the engine block of a car. Just pull the tab and stand back.’
Fero knew perfectly well what thermite was. He had used it as Troy Maschenov. But he tried to look uneasy.
‘It’s safe to carry,’ Wolf told him. ‘It takes temperatures of more than a hundred degrees Celsius to ignite it. Even a lit match won’t set it off if you haven’t pulled the tab.’
‘I’m not expecting you to use the thermite,’ Noelein said. ‘You’re just carrying it in case Wolf needs it.’
Fero felt the first quivers of fear. ‘Wolf is coming with me?’
Wolf snorted. ‘You didn’t think we’d let you walk into Besmar on your own, did you?’
‘You did before,’ Fero pointed out.
Wolf looked at Noelein, who coughed.
‘Well,’ Wolf said. ‘Don’t worry. This time I’ll be by your side the whole way.’
It sounded like a threat, but Fero told himself he was projecting. Wolf couldn’t know his brainwashing was wearing off.
He took the thermite. It was very heavy for such a small can. He could see why Wolf didn’t want to carry it herself.
‘I’ve been to Premiovaya before,’ he said. ‘I know my way around.’
‘Not as well as the Bank does. You’ll need protection from them.’
‘That’s what I’m worried about. Vartaniev will only trust me if I come alone. What is he supposed to make of you?’
‘My cover is solid,’ Wolf said. ‘I’ll explain it when we’re en route.’
Fero’s escape plan shrivelled up and blew away.
‘Great,’ he said.
Two hours later, Fero and Wolf were driving north through Coralsk at a reckless pace. The sun was rising behind Mount Kharsum. A pink stain bled across the clouds where the mountain stabbed the sky. The first few delivery trucks were on the road already, rumbling through the twilight towards supermarkets and white-goods warehouses.
They had to hurry. The sooner they gave the fake white list to Vartaniev, Wolf had explained, the lower the risk that he would manage to acquire the real one first.
Fake white list sounded clunky. ‘Can we call it something else?’ Fero asked. ‘Like, the black list?’
‘No. The black list is a different thing.’
‘What is it?’
‘That’s beyond your clearance level,’ Wolf said.
‘Oh. How about the grey list? The beige list?’
‘Call it what you want, so long as whenever Vartaniev is listening, you call it the white list.’
Fero looked out the window. He watched landmark after landmark disappear. Goodbye, Kamau, he thought. Forever.
Wolf’s cover was nothing impressive. She had a counterfeit Besmari passport in a fake name. She spoke the language, and had told Fero to introduce her to people as his father’s second cousin. ‘Not that we’re likely to be talking to anyone,’ she said. ‘Vartaniev doesn’t know me and won’t trust me, so you’ll have to meet him alone. I’ll be waiting nearby. This is just in case anyone asks while we’re together.’
‘My father’s second cousin,’ Fero repeated. ‘Is that like my first cousin once removed?’
‘Second cousin once removed.’
She wasn’t ‘once removed’ yet, but she would be soon. Fero’s plan was to tell Vartaniev about her as soon as possible. Vartaniev would protect him from Wolf, and anyone else Noelein sent.
Something pricked at his conscience. What would the Bank do to Wolf? And to the Librarians on the real white list, when they got hold of it? Fero told himself that these were not his concerns. The Librarians were the bad guys.
‘So how did you get into this?’ he heard himself ask Wolf.
‘Beyond your clearance level.’
‘Really? You can’t tell me anything?’
Wolf glanced over at him. ‘You don’t want to know me and I don’t want to know you.’
Privately Fero agreed, but it was hard not to be offended. ‘Why not?’
‘It creates bias,’ she said. ‘Interferes with your judgement and makes the mission harder.’
Fero wondered why he had asked the original question. Was he looking for a reason to care about what happened to her, or a reason not to? Either way, she had given him nothing.
‘Whatever,’ he said, and turned back to the window. They were in the suburbs north of Coralsk now. Pedestrians shuffled along the streets, collars turned up against the cold, gloved hands stuffed into pockets. Their sidelong glances made them look like skittish goats watching for mountain lions. Soldiers stood on every second corner chewing gum and peering into passing cars. The e-tag stuck to Wolf’s windscreen was supposed to get the van through the checkpoints quickly, but she also had a letter of authorisation with the Library’s seal. She slowed down and pressed it to the glass each time a soldier looked too close.
Fero disapproved. What was the point of being a secret agent if she told everyone? But he noticed that the other drivers saw the government plates on the van and steered clear. They were making good time. They would be at the border soon.
Wolf’s camouflage-patterned sports bag sat between them on the bench seat. Fero didn’t know what was in it, other than the sniper rifle. More weapons, probably. But it was a big bag. Why did she need so much equipment for what she claimed was such a simple mission? Catching him glancing at it, she looked over as though daring him to ask the question out loud. He didn’t.
They drove in frosty silence until they reached the wall.
It looked as though it had stood there for a hundred years rather than a little over a hundred hours. In some places the concrete hadn’t set properly and had crumbled away from the rebar that reinforced it. A tattered propaganda poster was glued to one of the few smooth spots. It was a picture of President Nina Grigieva standing alongside a soldier, pointing at something off-camera, her eyes kind but serious. Someone had scribbled over the slogan, changing it from Keeping Kamau Safe to Keeping Kamau Slave. This was seditious and grammatically unsound. Fero instinctively looked away, as though just seeing the vandalised poster could get him in trouble.
On the other side of the road stood a semi-collapsed building, its steel frame charred, the bricks little more than ash. Looking further up the street, Fero saw another, even more badly burned and surrounded by a halo of broken glass. Beyond that, yet another.
Fero hardly ever came this far north, but he was sure the neighbourhood didn’t usually look like this. ‘Why are so many buildings around here burned?’ he asked.
‘There’s a Besmari air force base on the other side of the rampart,’ Wolf said. ‘After that kid got blown up in Premiovaya, they started launching short-range rockets at us, but—’
‘They what?’ How had the Kamauan government kept that quiet?
‘But we have an automated missile defence system,’ Wolf continued. ‘It detects the heat signatures and shoots the rockets out of the sky. So now the Besmaris have gone medieval. They set up a row of catapults on the other side of the wall and started throwing barrels at us.’
Fero was aghast. ‘Filled with . . .’
‘Napalm C. It doesn’t just destroy buildings; the burning fluid sticks to people. Melts the muscles right off their bones. And there’s no heat until the barrels land. No way to see them coming. No way to stop them.’
For as long as Fero could remember, Kamau and Besmar had spied on each other, accused one another of crimes against humanity, and even covertly supported attacks. But this was different. The Besmari military was directly attacking Kamauan citizens. This wasn’t espionage anymore. This was war.
It couldn’t be true. Wolf was lying to him.
‘Don’t worry,’ Wolf said. ‘We’ll get them back.’
It took Fero a second to realise she was talking about retaliation against his people. ‘How?’ he asked.
Wolf smiled. ‘That’s beyond your clearance level.’
INFILTRATION TACTICS
Eventually, Wolf pulled over next to the wall, killed the engine and yanked on the handbrake. ‘We’re here,’ she said.
Fero hopped down from the cabin onto the street. A few metres away a man and a woman in high-vis vests stood in a circle of traffic cones like fairies trapped by a spell. Between them was a jagged-edged hole in the asphalt. It was too dark for Fero to see how deep it was.
‘Mongoose,’ Wolf said as she and Fero approached. ‘Bear.’
Fero looked up sharply. Yes, it was Bear – the muscly old guy who secretly worked for Cormanenko. The man who was supposed to cross the border today and steal the launch codes from the Besmari prime minister. He looked startled to see Fero, but said nothing.
‘You’re supposed to be wearing construction gear,’ Mongoose said to Wolf. She had long eyelashes, a pointed nose and a harsh, surprisingly deep voice.
‘You think you’re fooling anyone with this?’ Wolf gestured to the traffic cones and detour signs. ‘Like it takes two weeks to fix a pothole? Like anyone would even bother, with bombed-out buildings all around us?’
‘I don’t make the rules,’ Mongoose said. ‘I just follow them. You should too.’
‘We didn’t have time to change,’ Wolf said.
Bear pointed at the hole with a gnarled finger. ‘Just get down there before someone sees you.’
Wolf stepped into the hole and fell out of sight. Fero heard a scuffling noise from below. He peered into the shadows but still couldn’t see anything.
‘Come on down,’ Wolf called.
Fero hadn’t told the Library about Cormanenko’s plan, but he was about to tell Vartaniev. If Bear tried to steal the prime minister’s nuclear briefcase, the Bank would be waiting for him. ‘Stay here,’ Fero told him.
Mongoose rolled her eyes. ‘We’re not going anywhere.’
Bear said nothing. Fero couldn’t tell if he had understood.
‘Hurry up,’ Wolf hissed.
Fero jumped into the hole. He fell for half a second, bracing himself, and landed in a pile of coarse sand. He stood up, shaking out his jarred legs, and dusted himself off as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Wolf was already a few metres away, her torch beam crawling across the uneven floor of the tunnel. She had to stoop as she walked, but Fero didn’t.
He eyed the rough stone above his head. The bombers wouldn’t have built this tunnel to last. How stable could it be?
His renegade history teacher, Ms Tilya, had told the class about a North Korean attempt to move troops secretly into South Korea in the 1970s. The North Koreans tunnelled under the border and made it almost as far as Seoul, the South Korean capital, before the tunnel was discovered. The North Koreans painted the walls black as they retreated, hoping to pass it off as a coalmine. Fero wondered if disguising a tunnel as a pothole was any less absurd.
Boom. The ground shook. Dust cascaded down onto Fero’s hair.
‘What was that?’ he hissed, fighting off a sneeze.
‘An explosion,’ Wolf replied.
Fero knew that. He had meant, what kind of explosion? Was it a bomb? If so, was it nuclear? Who had attacked whom? He opened his mouth to ask these questions, but then the screaming started. Shrieks of horror, echoing from the street above. The tunnel lit up as liquid fire dribbled down into the entrance like lava.
Napalm C. A barrel must have been catapulted over the wall.
Balls of smoke swelled up like black cabbages, filling the tunnel – and a crack wormed across the stone above his head. The wooden support struts creaked and moaned.
‘Run!’ Wolf yelled.
They sprinted uphill towards the Besmari end of the tunnel. Fero pounded the ground so hard that he thought his heart might burst. Wolf was just ahead of him. He could see a circle of sunlight at the other end. But he wasn’t going to make it. He could hear the tunnel crashing down behind him. Cracks overtook him as he ran, splintering the walls and the ceiling.
Just as he could feel the daylight, the tunnel collapsed above him.
Gravel thundered down on his head. Blinded, he lost his footing and fell into a slight depression in the ground. A big rock crashed down beside the groove and rolled over it, trapping him. Dirt poured through the gaps. He was drowning in it.
He tried to hold his breath as Vartaniev had taught him, but the rock was squeezing him like a toothpaste tube. All the air had escaped from his lungs and there was no way to get more. He tried to drag himself out of the crushing blackness but his arms didn’t move. There was too much weight on his back. It was like trying to swim through poured concrete.
This is how I die, he thought. Two miserable steps from my homeland.
Then someone tugged on the strap in his hand.
Fero was still holding the bag with the thermite and the fake white list. It had been thrown ahead of him as he fell. Now someone was pulling on the bag. Fero held on tight, screaming noiselessly as Wolf dragged him out of the rubble, stretching every ligament in his aching body. He spat out a clod of sand that retained a perfect impression of his teeth.
‘Thank you,’ he tried to say, but a fit of coughs came out instead.
‘You okay?’ Wolf asked.
Fero still couldn’t speak. His warning had been useless. Bear was dead – there was no way he could have survived the direct blast of Napalm C. Cormanenko’s plan had failed.
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE STATE
The last time Fero had been to Besmar he hadn’t known it was his home. It was similar to Kamau, and he had been surprised by how familiar it felt – the withered poplars, the road signs, the ads for products he recognised.
Now he had the opposite experience. He had expected to feel a sense of certainty and safety as soon as he crossed the border. But he couldn’t get the screams out of his head. He wondered how many people had died when the Besmari air force – his countrymen – had launched the napalm.
‘Keep up,’ Wolf said. She had just got off the phone to Noelein.
Fero plodded up the highway on bruised, aching legs. Grit was still trapped between his teeth. Even with Wolf carrying both equipment bags, he struggled to match her pace.
‘Did she say anything about Mongoose and Bear?’ he asked. He hadn’t heard Wolf mention them on the phone.
‘Dead,’ Wolf said. ‘But they knew what they signed up for.’
Fero tried not to imagine the chaos on the burning street. ‘How will you get home?’ he asked.
‘The Library is digging a replacement tunnel not far from the airfield,’ Wolf said. ‘It should be finished within a couple of days.’ If she noticed that Fero had said ‘you’ rather than ‘we’, she didn’t say so.
With his clothes torn and clods of dirt stuck in his hair, Fero knew he must look like a vampire who had just crawled out of a grave. He felt conspicuous – which for a trained spy was akin to feeling doomed. He told himself that he was in his home country now. He was safe.
‘What’s on your mind, Fero?’ Wolf asked.
‘Nothing.’
By now the guards would have reached the collapsed tunnel, and perhaps realised someone had crossed the border. Wolf had swept away their footprints with a branch, but some traces always remained. They needed to get to Premiovaya and blend in.
They spent two hours trudging through the sleet, dropping into the ditch beside the highway whenever they saw a car on the horizon. Once a plane flew overhead and t
hey ran for the trees, but it looked commercial. By the time they reached the city, Fero had brushed off most of the dirt, but he still felt visibly dishevelled. He couldn’t wait to get to his mother’s house and take a shower. He hoped there was still a bed in his old room.
The thought of an untouched bedroom almost triggered one of Troy Maschenov’s memories, but it floated out of reach before he could catch it.
The city seemed more subdued than the last time Fero had seen it. The heavy traffic moved slowly. Fewer pedestrians ambled along the streets, but plenty of people stared anxiously out through apartment windows. The explosion – Verner’s death – had shaken everyone up. Fero passed a sign which read PUBLIC FALLOUT SHELTER HERE.
No one had salted the ice on the footpath, and his shoes didn’t have great grip. He had to walk carefully so he didn’t slip over.
‘Put on your sunglasses,’ Wolf said. ‘Any cameras?’
Fero peered through the lenses. A bright spot flared at the other end of the street. ‘One,’ he said, nodding towards it.
‘Okay. Keep your distance from that one and we’ll be fine.’ Wolf pointed to a charity clothing bin outside a post office. ‘You need some new clothes.’
‘Why?’ Fero asked. ‘Isn’t Vartaniev supposed to think I just fought my way out of Kamau?’
‘That won’t matter if we can’t get to Vartaniev,’ Wolf said. ‘You look like you walked off the set of a zombie movie. Grab those bags and come back. You can change in the alley.’
Fero looked at the plastic bags slumped against the bin, overflowing with jackets and old neck-ties. ‘Isn’t that stealing?’
‘You won’t get caught. You look homeless.’
‘Wow, thanks. Don’t real homeless people need those clothes?’
Wolf boggled at him. ‘What’s wrong with you? Get over there!’
