by Jack Heath
Under the pretence of offering fatherly support, Vartaniev was a ruthless general who considered his soldiers disposable. Why had Fero thought he would be safe here?
One of the bodyguards was still patting him down. Fero recalled just in time that he still had the thermite canister in the pocket of his coat.
‘You want to call off your dogs?’ Fero asked.
Vartaniev laughed. ‘I’ll take it from here, gentlemen. Let him go.’
The bodyguards stepped away and bowed, like samurai warriors.
‘Come to my office,’ Vartaniev said. ‘You look like you could use a hot drink.’
Fero followed him along the plush carpet. ‘And a comfortable chair.’
‘Arrangements can be made.’ Vartaniev twisted a chrome handle and pushed open a cherry-wood door. ‘Welcome.’
Something was wrong. He was being too friendly.
It was a corner office with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the river. Giant mirrors opposite the windows gave Fero the impression that he was surrounded by the grey skyline. A polished wooden desk, the same shade as the door, was bare except for a monitor, a keyboard and a phone. Vartaniev walked past it to a waist-high cabinet, from which he pulled out a teapot and an electric kettle.
‘Nice office,’ Fero said.
‘Just moved in yesterday,’ Vartaniev said as he spooned tea leaves into the pot. ‘After the explosion in Premiovaya, some more funds were allocated to national security. So – what happened four weeks ago?’
Fero was thinking fast. If he told the truth as he’d intended, Vartaniev would kill Wolf and all the agents on the real white list when he received it. But without knowing how much Vartaniev knew, he couldn’t come up with a plausible lie.
‘I was going to ask you the same question,’ he said, stalling. ‘That woman who broke into the Bank – was she the same one who shot me, two years ago?’
‘Dessa Cormanenko,’ Vartaniev said. ‘She’s a thorn in my side.’
‘In your side?’ Fero laughed bitterly. ‘I’m the one she dragged back into Kamau. Do you have any idea what it’s like to escape from that hellhole twice?’
‘You didn’t seem to have any trouble.’ Vartaniev’s voice was neutral. Fero couldn’t tell if he was suspicious.
‘You trained me well,’ he said. ‘Anyway. She burned to death in Melzen hospital, so I never found out what her long-term plan was.’
‘Dessa Cormanenko isn’t dead.’
The Library didn’t know Cormanenko had faked her own death – how did Vartaniev figure it out? Perhaps he somehow knew that she had ordered Bear to steal the Besmari prime minister’s nuclear briefcase. Maybe he had ordered the napalm strike specifically to kill Bear.
No. Vartaniev always gave the impression that he knew everything, but it was a trick. ‘I was there,’ Fero said. ‘She couldn’t have survived.’
Vartaniev shrugged and gestured to the envelope. ‘You have something for me.’
‘Yes,’ Fero said. He was out of time. What should he do?
‘May I?’ Vartaniev held out his hand.
‘Please.’ Fero passed the envelope to him, his mind racing.
Vartaniev turned it over. Both sides were blank. ‘Heavy.’
‘Lead-lined,’ Fero explained. He had decided against telling Vartaniev the list was fake. But if he told Vartaniev the list was real he would be helping Noelein, who was as ruthless as Vartaniev and determined to destroy Besmar. If she ever had the opportunity, she would kill both Fero and Vartaniev without—
Stop. Wait.
With sudden clarity, Fero realised why Noelein had kept him alive. Why she had let him out of the torture chamber under the Library. Why she had sent Wolf across the border with him. Why she had told him not to open the package until Vartaniev was there.
Vartaniev had his finger under the flap, ready to tear.
‘Don’t open it!’ Fero cried.
Vartaniev paused. ‘Why?’
‘It’s a bomb.’
UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE
Fero didn’t see the gun come out of Vartaniev’s jacket. It was just suddenly there, a Makarov pistol pointed at his head.
‘First Verner Heigl betrays me,’ Vartaniev said. ‘And now you.’ The gun was perfectly still in his hand. The short barrel was designed for concealment, not accuracy, but Vartaniev was highly trained. At this range he wouldn’t miss.
It took Fero a moment to digest the implications of what Vartaniev had just said. Heigl had tried to escape from Besmar. Vartaniev had blown him up and blamed the Kamauans, giving himself even more power.
Fero raised his hands. ‘I didn’t defect. Noelein tricked me.’
Vartaniev’s gaze had been cold before. Now it turned to ice. ‘You’re working for Noelein.’
‘No! I just let her think I was. She must have figured out I was planning to double-cross her, so she double-crossed me.’
Suddenly Fero realised that this had been Noelein’s plan all along. She hadn’t known about the bombers two years ago, when she started brainwashing him. She hadn’t known she would need someone to find Cormanenko in Besmar. She just needed somebody who could get close enough to Vartaniev and deliver an explosive. She probably liked the idea of using one of his own assassins against him.
‘We have to get the package out of the building,’ Fero said.
Vartaniev gently placed the envelope on his desk and pushed a button on his phone. The two security guards opened the door in seconds.
‘What was your plan?’ Vartaniev asked. ‘Give me the package and tell me not to open it until you were gone?’
‘I didn’t know it was a bomb! I only just figured that out.’ Fero edged a little closer to the door. Not so he could run – Vartaniev would shoot him in the back – but so the guards couldn’t enter without putting themselves in the firing line.
‘Here’s how I know you’re lying,’ Vartaniev began.
‘I’m not—’
Blam! A bullet chipped the ceiling above Fero’s head. He flinched. In half a second the Makarov was pointed back at his face.
‘Don’t interrupt me,’ Vartaniev said. The fury in his eyes was frightening. Fero remembered how quickly Vartaniev could turn on a cadet when he felt disrespected. ‘I know you’re lying because Noelein would never trust you to bring a package all this way without opening it.’
‘She wouldn’t care if I opened it early,’ Fero said. ‘She wants me dead too.’
‘She could have killed you at any time over the past two years,’ Vartaniev said. ‘It’s me she’s after. If she was actually using you as an oblivious bomb-delivery system, she would have sent someone with you. Someone to wait nearby with a remote detonator.’
The envelope on the desk beeped.
Everyone in the room looked at it. Fero pictured Wolf out on the street, remote in hand, looking up at the building and waiting for the corner office to explode. Counting in her head. One, two . . .
He grabbed a heavy office chair and hurled it at the window. The glass exploded outwards and the chair tumbled into the daylight, plummeting towards the street below.
One of the guards tried to grab him, but Fero slipped out of his grip and grabbed the envelope. Vartaniev had backed into the far corner of the room. He opened fire, but Fero was already moving again. The bullet made a sick thud as it hit one of the guards behind him.
Fero hurled the envelope through the window, hoping it would land in the river rather than on the street—
But it didn’t get that far.
The envelope was barely outside the window when it detonated.
BOOM! The blast seemed to warp the air itself, turning it into something rock hard and as hot as the sun. The force of the explosion picked up one of the guards and slammed him into Fero, sending them both flying into the mirrored wall of Vartaniev’s office. The glass cracked into a gigantic spiderweb pattern.
Fero’s ears were ringing. He could dimly hear the wailing of a fire alarm and someone screaming. He was di
zzy. All over his body, his skin stung. His thoughts had been blasted apart – for a moment he couldn’t remember where he was or how he had gotten there.
Vartaniev’s voice in his head. Imagined, not real. Get up, soldier! Keep moving!
Fero pushed the limp guard off him and stood on shaky legs. The carpet was smoking. Shards of glass were embedded in the door and ceiling like modern art. Vartaniev and the other guard rolled around on the floor, moaning. The guard’s hands looked crispy. Vartaniev’s suit jacket was on fire.
Fero had been lucky. The other guard had shielded him from the worst of the explosion. He rolled Vartaniev over, smothering the flames on his jacket. Not to save his old teacher’s life, but to stop the fire from spreading to the rest of the room.
Shouting outside. Footsteps approached the office. Several people in heavy boots, equipment jingling. It sounded like the fire department, except they couldn’t have responded so quickly. The Tellers were on their way. They might not shoot him on the spot, but if they caught him, his execution was inevitable.
There was nowhere to hide. But he couldn’t leave – it sounded as though they were right outside the door.
Fero ran over to the smashed window and peered out. It was a long way down. If he fell, the impact would turn him into chutney. But leaning forward, he saw that the window of the office immediately below this one had been shattered by the explosion. Only a narrow concrete shelf separated the two windows. Maybe he could climb down.
Fero snapped off the remaining triangles of glass and crawled backwards out of the window onto the shelf. His legs were dangling over the deadly drop when two more security guards burst into the room, brandishing assault rifles. The guards looked at the charred walls, the broken glass, the smoking bodies of the wounded. Then they saw Fero, halfway out the window. They took aim with their Kalashnikovs.
‘Help me!’ Fero cried.
This confused them for a fraction of a second. They didn’t shoot.
Fero slipped down out of sight. Now he was hanging off the edge of the shelf by his fingertips. The wind buffeted his face. He could see into the office below Vartaniev’s. It was empty – probably the occupant had fled when the explosion smashed the window.
Fero could hear the guards running across Vartaniev’s office towards him. At any moment they would peer over the shelf and shoot him – or just stomp on his fingers, if they wanted to save on bullets.
He kicked his legs forward and dropped down onto the narrow shelf below. Then he vaulted through the empty window frame and slid across the desk. By the time the keyboard and monitor hit the floor behind him he was already out in the corridor, headed for the stairwell.
He slapped several buttons as he ran past the lifts. This would slow down anyone who tried to take a lift to the ground floor and intercept him, but they would probably be smart enough to head for the stairs as he was doing.
When he shoved open the stairwell door he found himself in a queue of mumbling, frightened office workers, shuffling down the stairs in single file. The building was being evacuated. With his burned clothes and blackened face, Fero didn’t have much hope of blending in with them. He ran down the stairs, pushing past indignant evacuees, until he reached the ground floor. There he slipped through the milling crowd towards the exit. One particularly tall man was nearly at the door; Fero stayed close behind him so the guards didn’t spot his charred outfit.
Daylight. A throng of office workers stood in the car park, awaiting instructions. Fero could already hear sirens. The smoke from the bomb hung above him, a giant downward arrow the police couldn’t possibly miss.
Seconds after the explosion, they would have started searching satellite feeds for the perpetrator. The nearest train station was more than a kilometre away and would be filled with CCTV cameras. Fero had no money for a taxi; in any case, the driver would know he was a fugitive as soon as he saw the police cars.
There was no fast way out of this area. Therefore he needed to hide.
Fero ducked into an underpass, waited, and then walked back out the way he’d come. Anyone tracking him on satellite would be confused for a few precious seconds. He jogged over to a shopping arcade and ducked inside just as a police car screamed past.
The arcade was full of people bustling back and forth with shopping bags. Fero dug Wolf’s counter-surveillance glasses out of his pocket and put them on. Suddenly all the shoppers had an eerie glow around their eyeballs, as if they were possessed by demons.
Fero looked up. Cameras everywhere. One glinted in the ceiling every few metres. At least two sparkled in every shop. But they would be run by the shopping centre, not the government. It would take the police a few minutes to access the system. And when they did, it would be harder to follow him through a crowd like this. He ran past a bookshop, a pharmacy and a camera store – which glowed like a fairground through his glasses. He was looking for a stairwell. He needed to get underground, where satellites couldn’t track him.
The Library must have given him this equipment for a reason. A tracker might be implanted in the glasses. If she didn’t think he was dead, Wolf could be using them to follow him. But right now Wolf was the least of his problems, and the glasses were useful.
Fero couldn’t find any stairs, but there was a lift. It was risky. The police could cut the power and trap him in there. But there was no more time to search for stairs. He would just have to hope the cops were too slow, still confused and disorganised after the explosion.
He jumped into the lift. A camera glowed in the corner. Fero pushed the button for the basement car park. The doors started to slide closed.
‘Hold it!’ someone shouted.
Fero backed into the corner of the lift. Just as the doors were about to close, a hand slipped between them and they jerked open.
But the man who stood there wasn’t a cop, or one of Vartaniev’s guys. Just a regular shopper, looking peeved because Fero hadn’t held the door for him.
‘Sorry,’ Fero mumbled. The man rolled his luminous eyes.
They rode down to the basement in silence. When the doors opened again, Fero gestured for the man to go first and followed him into the underground car park.
There were no other people, but lots of cars. Several exits, too – three for pedestrians and two for vehicles. If the cops lost track of him down here, they wouldn’t know where he went. Cameras twinkled in the ceiling. He had to shut them down.
Fero circled around to the staff lift – the doors were narrower, dirtier – and found the fuse box. It was fastened closed with a fat padlock. No matter. He grabbed the can of thermite, balanced it on top of the fuse box and pulled the tab. He stepped back and looked away.
He didn’t have to wait long. The thermite ignited with a thumphiss. A wave of energy washed over Fero’s back, hot enough to sting even through his clothes. All the lights flickered and died. He turned around in time to see the last of the molten metal dribble onto the ground and keep going, burning a hole into the concrete. The fuse box was a ruined skeleton. To get the lights and cameras working again, someone would have to rewire the building. It would take days.
Fero ran through the darkness. He could just make out a sign above a row of cars: 30 MINUTES ONLY. He tried the door handles of each car. After eight cars he found one that opened – a white sedan with dirty hubcaps and a slightly dented bonnet. Fero leaned over the driver’s seat and found the button to open the boot. With one last look around – no one was nearby, as far as he could tell – he clambered into the boot and pulled it shut over his head.
When the driver returned, there was a chance that they would open the boot to put their shopping away. Patting around, Fero found a prickly picnic blanket bundled up in a corner. He pressed himself against the back wall of the boot and dragged the blanket over his body.
Less than a minute later he heard the cops arrive. Sirens grew louder and louder and then switched off. Tyres screeched. Doors slammed. He heard shouting but couldn’t make out any words. Someone
would presumably be suggesting that he might have left by one of the exits. Somebody else might argue that he had probably gone back up in the lift. Fero could only hope that no one thought to start cracking open boots.
He could hear torches clicking on. Cops would be shining them under cars and into back seats. He held his breath. Just when he was starting to get dizzy from lack of oxygen, he heard the crackling of a radio. Information was being passed up the chain of command, and instructions handed back down.
More movement now. Cars rumbling away, footsteps fading. Soon silence fell in the car park.
Fero’s sense of relief was fragile. He would have been last spotted on camera seven minutes ago, maybe eight. By now they would have put up roadblocks and shut down the trains and trams. They would be circulating footage of him to news outlets and on social media. The search radius would be at least twelve kilometres, because that was as far away as he could have got by car in eight minutes.
The real question was this: when they couldn’t find Fero on any of the cameras, and they checked all the known blind spots – all the bathrooms, underpasses, stormwater tunnels – would it occur to them that he must be right where they last saw him, mere metres from the burned-out fuse box? Or would they assume he had slipped through the net?
Footsteps approached the car. One of the cops was still here.
No. Fero heard the car door open. The vehicle rocked sideways as someone settled into the driver’s seat. The engine started.
Fero took a shaky breath. Okay, driver, he thought. Get me out of here.
HUMAN CARGO
After fifteen minutes of gentle driving – long enough to travel about twelve kilometres – the car stopped. Then it started. Stopped. Started. It was part of a slow-moving queue. Fero guessed the driver was approaching a roadblock.
The heat from the engine had turned the boot into an oven. The air was starting to feel thin in Fero’s lungs. Either he had used up too much of the oxygen or the exhaust fumes were slowly seeping in. It wouldn’t take much to poison him. Fero told himself to get out of the boot as soon as he found himself getting drowsy. Even if the car was moving. Even if he might get shot by police. Otherwise his corpse would be a nasty surprise next time the driver unwrapped the picnic blanket.
