by Bill Napier
‘Is that Brenda? Joe Callaghan, please.’
‘A moment.’
A couple, in their thirties, appeared outside the phone booth, hats flecked with snow.
Petrie thought there was a coolness in Brenda’s voice, and then he thought he was being paranoid, and then he thought that in his present fix maybe paranoia was his best friend. He waited. The man outside the booth made a big thing of the cold, stamping his feet and flapping his arms. Then a stranger’s voice, male, came on the line. ‘Dr Petrie? Be at the Zámočnícka Ulica at nine o’clock.’
‘Where the hell is that?’
‘It’s in the Old Town, just off St Michael’s Lane. I can’t talk any more.’ The line went dead.
Petrie glanced at his watch: eight-forty. He had a vague idea that the big castle overlooked the Old Town. He set out, using the orange-lit Bratislavský hrad as a beacon.
He wandered along cobbled streets, shiny and wet. Past an Irish bar, all Guinness and green and full of chatter. Couples passed, sometimes single people; there was a 1920s’ elegance about the fur coats and hats. In the dull light, the East European architecture seemed bleak and unwelcoming. Away from the main thoroughfares, the narrower streets were almost deserted; windows were shuttered or heavily curtained. It was a good night to be indoors.
He found the Zámočnícka Ulica within fifteen minutes. It turned out to be a narrow cobbled lane. Feeling vaguely uneasy, Petrie turned cautiously into it, peering into dark corners. Wonderful smells drifted out of a crepa, reminding him that he was out of money to buy food. Something moved but it was only a shadow passing behind a heavy curtain; the lighting inside the room was dull. The lane had a blind bend and light from a café flooded the cobbles at its curve. Petrie stepped into the shadow of a doorway, and waited.
* * *
By mid-afternoon, another call reached Colonel Boroviška, this time from the Deputy Governor of the General Credit Bank: an attempt had been made to use two of the credit cards belonging to the criminal gang, on the Gorkého, right in the city centre. A swift convergence of plainclothes policemen and anonymous cars drew a blank, as did saturation coverage of the surrounding streets.
Still, the news was good: they had no money. Hunger, and the rigours of sleeping in the open in this weather, would soon force their hand. Bratislava was so close to the Austrian border that, Boroviška felt, they would try to cross it in desperation.
He gave them a day, two at the most.
* * *
At ten to nine a police car stops at one end of the lane and a small policeman steps out. Two uniformed colleagues go over and start chatting to him. Petrie tries to sink into the shadow, wonders if he should clear off; but they are just laughing and talking, one of them leaning on the car. It has to be coincidence.
At nine o’clock a church bell begins to strike. At the other end of the lane, two men appear in silhouette. They walk unhurriedly into the lane.
Suddenly, irrationally, Petrie is overcome by panic. There is something implacably hostile about their body language. And the policemen have stopped chatting; they are peering into the lane.
He dives for the café and almost collides with a woman of about thirty, dressed against the cold in a long fur coat and hat. She says, ‘Darling!’ and gives him a squeeze, puts her arm in his and guides him along the lane towards the police. He wonders about pulling free and running but the men, both in their fifties, are about twenty yards away and approaching smartly. ‘Put a smile on your face.’ The accent is American. Terrified, he tries to grin. ‘That’s horrible. You look like Hannibal Lecter.’ He giggles like a teenage girl, feels the woman’s arm tensing in his. They pass within feet of the policemen. They watch them pass, a couple enjoying an evening out.
Up St Michael’s Lane, under the archway, breaking into a trot. The two men are now half-running; they are drawing the attention of the policemen. At the top of the lane there is a black Merc; they climb in. Now the men break into a sprint. The car takes off. One of the men manages to grab a door handle. He is white-haired, about fifty. But then the car accelerates clear. Petrie says, ‘Oh Jesus.’ Callaghan, at the wheel, says, ‘Don’t worry about the number plates.’
The woman is holding out her hand. ‘I’m Alice, Joe’s assistant,’ she says in a conversational tone. She is long-faced, with gypsy earrings and lots of bangles. Petrie begins to wonder if he has strayed into some alternative reality, like Alice in Wonderland.
‘So,’ says Callaghan. Petrie waits, but Callaghan has nothing to add.
‘Who were they?’ Petrie asks Alice.
She shrugs. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
* * *
The car moved quietly north on the Stefanikova. They stopped at traffic lights, next to a blue tram. Faces looked down at him, people who rode trams every day and lived in cramped apartments where you could hear your neighbour snore, and who wondered what it was like to drive an E-series Merc with soft lights, sweet music and red leather seats no doubt convertible to a bed.
Callaghan looked at Petrie in the rear mirror. ‘You’re quite a guy, Tom.’
‘I committed murder?’
‘Uhuh.’
He kept his voice level. ‘Why did I do that?’
The traffic was lightening and Callaghan put his foot down. The car surged forward effortlessly. ‘Nobody’s saying, beyond the fact that state security is involved. The cops have clear instructions: find you, fire you over to the army, and forget you.’ Callaghan looked over at Petrie, strummed his fingers on the leather-padded steering wheel. ‘State security,’ he said thoughtfully.
Petrie nodded. ‘Find, fire and forget.’
‘And the media are being kept out of it.’
‘What did I do exactly?’
‘You took a hatchet to some guy. You and your girlfriend both. Split his skull in half.’
Alice said, ‘I can tell you’re a dangerous psychopath just by looking at you.’
Callaghan added, ‘Your girlfriend has such a sweet innocent face I think she must be the axe lady.’
Petrie looked out at the grey streets. ‘What was our motive?’
‘The uniforms aren’t privy to that. State security’s a wonderful blanket.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘Alice and I are taking you someplace safe. We listen to what you have to say, and then people in Washington make a decision about you.’
‘There’s a limit to what I can tell you.’
Alice said, ‘There’s no limit to the time you can spend in a Slovakian prison.’
‘I wouldn’t get the length of the courthouse.’
Callaghan sounded as if he was in pain. ‘Tom, the Cold War’s long dead. Extrajudicial killings and poisoned umbrellas are for spy stories.’
Petrie allowed himself a brief, sardonic laugh. ‘Mr Callaghan, you haven’t a clue. Not even the beginnings of a clue. In fact, you have absolutely no bloody idea.’
41
High Tatras
They were on a motorway. It was dark and the traffic was thin, but Callaghan was clearly taking no chances with the speed limit. The big estate car was warm and Alice slipped out of her fur coat. Soon Petrie recognised the road as the one which Freya and he had taken with the soldiers. Callaghan turned off at a sign for Zilina and they drove into a middle-sized, underlit town. Callaghan trickled the car round dark cobbled streets until he found a quiet café. They sat on rickety wooden chairs in a corner.
Petrie had forgotten when he had last eaten. The Czech for spaghetti turned out to be spagety and the proprietor, a small man with Turkish features and a filthy apron, served him a satisfyingly large plate. The Americans settled for coffee and cakes.
Petrie asked Callaghan what he did.
‘I’m a trade adviser. Been on the trans-Caucasian desk until now.’
‘You’re CIA, of course.’
‘I strenuously deny it.’
Alice said, ‘And I deny it too. I’m a freelance travel agent. I travel between Bra
tislava, Budapest and Prague, arranging package deals for regular tour companies.’
‘How do these cities compare?’ Petrie asked her, although he was too fraught to care.
‘Bratislava and Budapest are cities in transition. They’re exciting places to be. I’m not so fond of Prague these days. It’s still beautiful, still the Paris of the east, but it’s become too fashionable for me and there’s too much organised crime. You can’t walk alone at night and the Mafia control the taxis.’
Callaghan nodded his agreement. ‘Getting like LA.’ He was beginning to twitch restlessly and kept glancing towards the door. ‘We ought to move on, people. The less exposure the better.’
Beyond Zilina the road was poor. An ocean liner in the distance turned out to be the chemical works from his earlier trip and Petrie wondered if he was being taken back to the cavern for some reason. But Callaghan drove past the turnoff without comment, and presently they turned left.
They were heading north. From his memory of a map Petrie knew they were approaching the triple point between Slovakia, Poland and Russia. It was gratifyingly far from Bratislava.
‘The High Tatras,’ Alice said.
‘Real mountains,’ Callaghan added. ‘Not the toys you people have been under.’
The warmth of the car, and the events of the day, were driving Petrie towards sleep. He fought it.
A side road, and a long, winding climb. At just after 1 a.m. by the Merc’s clock, the headlights swept round a large white-painted building.
The stars were bright in a crystalline sky and the air was bitter. Callaghan was playing with a flashlight, and then he had turned a key and was pushing open a green-painted metal door.
Petrie found himself in a cavernous living room with a sloping, wood-lined ceiling. Wooden shutters took up the far end of the room; at the other end was a fireplace seemingly large enough to take small trees, and next to it a set of wooden steps went up to an unfenced balcony from which doors led off. The house was icy.
‘This is a safe house?’
‘I guess so,’ Callaghan said. ‘At least until I turn you over to the authorities. We don’t have much call for safe houses these days. It’s actually my holiday chalet. Come on up and I’ll show you to a guest room. Maybe I can rustle up a toothbrush.’
They left Alice pouring herself a remarkably large Martini.
‘This do?’
‘Fine, thanks.’
‘See you in the morning, then.’ The door was heavy ash and it closed with a satisfying clunk. There was a lock and Petrie turned it. More wooden shutters took up a wall but Petrie left them shut. He felt cocooned and safe after the exposure of the city streets, and he knew it was a dangerous illusion.
He emptied the contents of his pockets on to the bed.
A few notes and coins. Six credit cards. A Swiss army knife. Two compact disks which could change the world, and Vashislav’s mobile phone, which Freya had handed him in the coach.
He adjusted the mobile to be mute and put it under his pillow. There was a small bookcase and he slipped the disks into Wildlife of the High Tatras, somewhere between the Tatra marmot and the Ural owl. He told himself, as he slid into a dream, that Freya was safe and well somewhere in Europe and that the Americans would pluck them out of the cauldron and that in the land of the Burger King they would, like so many before them, find refuge from a hostile world.
* * *
Low sunlight was finding chinks in the solid wooden shutters. Petrie pulled them open and looked out over a panorama more Swiss than Slovakian. A French door led directly on to a wooden balcony and he stepped out.
As safe houses went, this one would be hard to fault. A scattering of chalets lined a hairpin road up through the mountains. Anyone approaching would be seen for maybe fifteen minutes. Here and there, in the distance, sunlight glinted metallically from mountain tops, pink in the morning sun, and he thought there might be radio antennae or military radars on the summits.
The early morning cold was breath-catching, and he was wearing only boxer shorts. Shivering, he turned back to dress.
He checked the mobile phone. A message!
Crossed border through woods near Bratislava, stole bicycle and cycled to Gyor in Hungary, fifty miles. Lift to Romania – don’t ask about border crossing.
How are you? Reply through Unur.
Freya.
Relief surged through Petrie’s body. He looked again at the snowy needles bristling all the way to the far horizon, topped with sun-pierced fluffy clouds like pink and yellow knickerbocker glory, and he thought it was the most beautiful sight on the planet. He re-read the message, bubbling with pleasure.
Freya! Still alive!
* * *
‘Who is he?’
General Kamensky was enjoying another of Boroviška’s cigars. There was a No Smoking sign in the police chief’s office but nobody, least of all the Chief of Police, was daring to point out the fact.
The screen showed a security camera’s view of a busy street. The time resolution was poor, and Petrie and the other man were shown as walking in a series of jerks.
‘Where’s his companion? The girl?’
‘We’re working on that.’
‘You mean you have no idea.’
The Assistant Chief of Police said, ‘Here it comes,’ froze a frame and zoomed in on Petrie’s companion until the face was a mosaic of little squares. ‘We’ve smoothed it out,’ he said, and the image sharpened.
‘Who is he?’ the General repeated in an irritated tone. So the little country was proud of its expanding IT, but Kamensky had less interest in this display of electronic virtuosity than he had in the results.
‘Our cameras tracked him as far as Hviezdoslavova Square.’
‘So?’ Kamensky thought, The fool can only spin out his moment of glory for so long.
Another picture came up on the screen. The Cossack hat was gone, and the man was grinning at some social function, but it was recognisably the same individual.
‘Hviezdoslavova Square houses the American Embassy. This man advises American businessmen on trade opportunities in our country. His name is Joseph Callaghan.’
There was a pause. Then Kamensky smiled, and the others round the screen smiled too.
42
The X-Theory
Bull had loosened his tie and was tapping his chin meditatively with an unopened can of beer. Across from him, the CIA Director was sipping froth from the top of a glass.
Hazel Baxendale started the DVD rolling and settled back in an armchair next to Professor Gene Killman.
The picture was in colour and its quality was good, although the sound had an echoey quality. The camera had been set up in a room decorated with yellow embossed wallpaper. Shutters had been opened at a large window through which there was what looked like an Alpine view. Petrie sat in a swivel chair, at a desk with pewter trays, blotter and pen holder. A desk lamp had been swivelled to light up his face and there were little beads of sweat on his brow. Occasionally a hand would appear on the right, when the questioner was gesturing. Otherwise the only sign of the interrogators was cigarette smoke and two voices off-stage, both American, one of them female. In the event they had little interrogating to do: Petrie was pouring it out like a man unburdening his soul. He was visibly shaking.
Petrie: First, the starting point. You’re not going to believe a word of what I say. Not a word.
Callaghan: Not even one?
Petrie: But that’s okay. The important thing is not whether you believe it, which you won’t, but that you transmit what I say to people in Washington who can evaluate it.
Callaghan: Okay, Tom, that was a good opening line. You’ve softened me up nicely and now I’m ready to buy whatever you tell me. Now, just so there’s no misunderstanding between us: you’re wanted for murder and I ought to be handing you over to the Slovaks. I haven’t yet done so for one reason only. You claim to have something – you haven’t said what – that affects American interests.
/>
Alice: Big league.
Callaghan: Now I don’t give a toss if you’re the Boston Strangler. All I want to know is one thing: where do big league American interests come in?
Petrie’s voice is low and rapid, matching the tension apparent in his face: First you have to understand about the underground facility in the Tatras. It’s designed to pick up exotic particles of a type we might know nothing about.
Callaghan: Is this a secret laboratory or what? I’ve never heard of it.
Petrie: No, it’s a joint British-Russian experiment, unclassified and open. It’s under a mountain, but that’s because they need to shield the equipment from ordinary particles, cosmic rays and the like. Only particles of a new type can get through. Apart from the odd neutralino from the Sun. I won’t bother you with them.
Callaghan: Why should we care anyway?
Alice: American interests, Tom?
Petrie: They picked up particles all right. For twelve years there was nothing and then there was this terrific storm, billions of particles shooting right through the mountain and probably right through the Earth. It was something totally new, and it was Nobel Prize stuff.
But then they saw something else. The particle storm wasn’t like a spray of buckshot: they arrived in a pattern, there were rhythms in space and time of arrival, that’s when they asked me in, I’m a mathematician and I specialise in pattern recognition, that’s what I do, I do patterns, I look for order inside chaos.
Alice: When you say patterns …
Petrie: Intelligent patterns. The signals were arriving from deep space and they were intelligent signals.
There is a long silence. The camera is fixed on Petrie’s face, but he adds nothing to his incredible statement.
Callaghan: Intelligent signals? Like from Klingons or something?
Alice: You were right, Tom. We don’t believe it.
Petrie: What? No no, that was the bit you’re supposed to believe. This is the bit you won’t believe. I decrypted some of the patterns and it turned out I was looking at the human genome, all thirty thousand genes, redundant DNA insertions from ancient bacteria, the lot. Then there were chemical formulae, thousands of them. So far as I can see they’re enzymes, they target the aging genes, the cancer genes, the Alzheimer genes, everything. Lots of them do things we don’t understand and it will take a generation or two to work them out.
