The House Next Door Trilogy (Books 1-3)

by Jule Owen

  “What?”

  “I said, check your Paper.”

  Dragomirov unfolds the portable Paper he keeps in his chest pocket. There is a flag on the screen. A message from Central Command. Classified. The usual bureaucratic language, but the gist of it: Give Colonel Borodin your full cooperation.

  “How did you do this?” Dragomirov asks, flabbergasted.

  Borodin fixes him with his steady green eyes. “We are at war. I am in charge of a highly strategic territory. I want to know what’s going on. Have you interrogated him?”

  “I interviewed him yesterday. His story is inconsistent. His bioID is giving a strange readout.”

  “In what way?”

  “He has the bioID of someone who died 381 years ago.”

  Borodin doesn’t show any sign of surprise, doesn’t laugh or even raise an eyebrow. Not a muscle on his face moves.

  Dragomirov asks, “You don’t think it’s odd? Have you come across this before, Polkovnik? This kind of anomaly?”

  Borodin ignores the question. “Why are you interested in this boy? Why are you here in my territory? Why does the government think it a good idea to send you here?” He says this with such direct rudeness that Dragomirov is amazed. “You were tracking someone else, weren’t you? You weren’t searching for the boy.”

  Then Dragomirov smiles, a spider again. “For weeks we have tracked ATLAS terrorists across your territory. I am surprised, frankly, that your people weren’t aware of this. I’m amazed they failed to notice us.”

  “You lost the terrorists, Dragomirov.” The word terrorists is accented with his fingers. “You found this boy accidentally. You think he’s like the one you had but lost. He isn’t.”

  How does he know this? Dragomirov is open-mouthed. Before he regains his composure, Borodin is on his feet, the coiled energy suddenly released.

  “I am taking the prisoner.”

  “What? No. You won’t take the prisoner.” Dragomirov scrambles from the armchair, putting his teacup down with a clatter.

  “I will take him. You read the orders. Full cooperation.”

  Dragomirov gathers himself. His eyes are barely level with the buttons on the chest of Borodin’s jacket. There’s no way for him to look this man in the eye, unless he stands on a ladder. It makes him angry. He says, “I want authorisation on this matter from the Security Council. I want them made aware of a reference to a specific FSB case.”

  Borodin gazes down at him with what Dragomirov imagines is an indulgent expression. “Go and check with your committees. If you don’t have an answer by tomorrow morning, I am taking the boy with me.” Borodin goes to the door of the hut. “But if you want my advice, I would give up. The war is coming to its climax. Go home and be with your family.”

  Livid with anger, Dragomirov spits, “You will get communication from the director tonight.”

  Borodin half-shrugs, as if the response was inevitable. “Don’t concern yourself with hospitality for me and my men,” he says. “We brought our own shelter and supplies.” He pushes open the door, and then he is gone.

  Dragomirov is in the briefing room with Dr Lapin and Major Rostov. He’s agitated.

  “Doctor, what do you need from me to complete your tests?”

  “We need to get the boy back to Moscow to test him thoroughly, but I told you the blood tests I ran yesterday were normal. There was nothing like the anomalies we saw with Lamplighter. His blood is pedestrian, with the exception of the medibot, which is, of course, illegal. There was one strange thing, though.”

  “Yes?”

  “His medibot is exactly like the type in common use at the outbreak of the First Space War. He is wearing a Lenz and an e-Pin, but they are also of an old design and use protocols long defunct.”

  “You are telling me you think this boy is 433 years old?”

  The doctor smiles and shakes his head. “No, no. As I said, it’s impossible. I’m saying the technology is consistent with the identity he is assuming. It’s consistent with the data in his bioID.”

  “Meaning this is an elaborate hoax?”

  “Why would the ATLAS secret services send a sixteen-year-old secret agent deep into enemy territory unsupported? Why on earth would his cover be time travel?” Rostov asks.

  Dragomirov says, “He is part of the group of maggots with the Lamplighter. I am sure of it. Doctor, you need to keep working on this boy. Maybe they’ve found a way to mask his biological anomalies.”

  “Then I need to get him back to Moscow. There’s no more for me to do with the tools I have here.”

  “We need to get this man Borodin off our backs. He knows far too much. It’s strange,” Dragomirov says.

  “Perhaps he was briefed by Central Command Centre. Their communication did indicate he has the highest clearance,” replies Rostov.

  “No one knows about this mission but us and the director of the FSB. This whole thing with the authorisation is odd. I don’t believe it,” says Dragomirov.

  “I’ve taken a look at it myself. It’s genuine. I even requested and received a confirmation. But he’s on the same side as us. Shouldn’t we bring him in?” asks Rostov.

  “No. I want him gone.” Dragomirov stares at his shoes. He says, “Get me a meeting with the director in Moscow as soon as possible. We need to make sure we control the prisoner. Let’s get Borodin off our backs, and then we’ll get authorisation to send you back to Moscow with the prisoner, doctor.”

  “What about you?” Lapin asks.

  “We’re going to stay and continue to hunt down Lamplighter,” Dragomirov says.

  Rostov stands, ready to go and execute orders.

  Dragomirov looks at him. “There’s something else, Major. We have a weak link. Someone is leaking information, and it’s getting back to Borodin. Let’s make sure it’s no one here.”

  “I’m on it,” Rostov says.

  22 The Silent Prayer

  The night falls suddenly in the forest, like a heavy cloak being thrown over a lamp.

  A few miles from base camp, an odd group of men and women sit around a fire. There are a few grey heads and wrinkled faces, some much younger, too. They are the strangest army in the world.

  A priest, one of the grey heads, dressed in a threadbare dog collar, leads the group in prayer. They hold hands. The tall, gaunt man they call Lev, short for Angel Leventis, opens his eyes during the prayer and winks at an elderly woman with garishly dyed red hair and skin so gnarled her face is like one of the trees surrounding them. She sits next to a heavy man with a skinhead and a scar on his face. A wizened old man whose head nods slightly watches them, and beside him sits a man in his late thirties with a massively well-developed upper body, arms the size of most thighs, and no legs. His face is set in an expression of concentrated piety, and he holds the hands of his wife on one side and his teenaged son on the other.

  Oblivious, the priest gives thanks for their food, for their lives, for their opportunity in history. The priest asks for God’s protection on one last mission before they and all the other rejected peoples of the earth go underground to save themselves from Wormwood.

  “May we humbly try to emulate the ways of the first Tekton. May we follow his advice. Because we believe his ways were consistent with the ways of God.”

  “Amen.”

  The prayer finishes.

  Not a word is spoken, but everyone hears.

  23 Evgeny the Spy

  Klokov is searching for the cook.

  Kapral Churkin says there is a mole in the camp. All the other men in their platoon think if anyone’s a squealer, it’s the soft, fat cook, Evgeny Shukshin. Speaking English, after all, is deeply suspect. The way he behaves with the foreign boy prisoner is odd. Plus, he makes them eat those disgusting biscuits. They are all ready to serve him up to Dragomirov, but they have to find him first.

  He’s not in the cookhouse or in the mess. He’s not down at the wash block or in the barracks. He’s not in the open-air shelter or where the men play
cards at night near the fire. Or down by the boats.

  There are not many other places he might be.

  Klokov stops, his hands behind his head, scanning. Not far from the helipad, on the cleared land next to the edge of the forest near the water, the district governor’s men have set up camp. They have a roaring fire going under a fish-laden spit. They have tarpaulins and hammocks. A couple of the men are cutting wood at the edge of the jungle with machetes. Another is gutting and washing more fish in the river.

  Then Klokov spots the cook walking across from their camp, with one of the governor’s men, in plain sight, running a hose from the base camp well to their temporary camp. They are deep in conversation. They run the hose all the way to a cauldron hanging above the fire.

  Klokov is convinced Evgeny is the mole. But he wants to hear what he’s discussing with the soldier. He quickly retreats to base camp and then slips into the forest, taking a circuit all the way around the boundary of the settlement, until he’s next to Borodin’s camp. The fire is on the edge of the clearing. The fat cook is still talking to Borodin’s soldier. His name is Yolkov. Their voices carry. Standing with his back to a large kapok tree, Klokov listens.

  “I like to put thyme inside the fish skins. These river fish have a strong taste. It takes the edge off,” says Evgeny. Delving into his pocket, he pulls out some leaves. “Here, I took the liberty of bringing you some from the cookhouse. Shall I show you?”

  “Please do.”

  Evgeny uses a knife to make pockets in the sides of the cooking fish and stuffs in the herbs.

  “Thank you, Evgeny. And thanks for the potatoes and the water, too. The colonel thinks we ought to be self-sufficient, but he’s not the one cooking for fifteen men in the jungle with no provisions. We have a proper camp thirty miles north. We were only meant to come down here for the day. In and out, was what he said. I’m not even a cook, but suddenly like that” – he clicks his fingers – “I’m meant to know how to do all these things.”

  Evgeny nods sympathetically.

  “Do you always camp in the jungle? I would have thought Borodin would have a more civilised base camp.”

  “Oh, he does, back in Uelen. A proper barracks, parade ground, a nearby town with restaurants and shops. It’s civilised. But we’re hardly ever there. Borodin likes to tour his territory. Recently, we’ve trekked over every inch of this godforsaken snake and spider pit of an ant-infested excuse for a strip of jungle, looking for god-only-knows what.”

  “Is it true they call him the Cat, your colonel?”

  Yolkov nods. “We all do.”

  “On account of?”

  “His eyes. The way he walks. And the fact he’ll track any living thing in the jungle. If it’s here, he will know it.” Yolkov grins. “The men say at night he doesn’t sleep but wakes and goes a-hunting. Comes back in the morning with bloody teeth.”

  “Ha!”

  “Of course, it’s nonsense.”

  “Of course it is! Pot is full.” Evgeny switches off the hose using a nozzle at the end, lays it on the ground and checks the fish, then selects a potato from the bag on the floor and starts to peel it with his pocket knife. Handing a potato to Yolkov, he says, “Here. I’m not doing all the work.”

  Yolkov starts to peel. “Five months in this hell-hole,” he says.

  “We’ve been on the road a year.”

  “A year!”

  Evgeny nods. “We started in the desert, would you believe it, and then we went everywhere there is to go on the Federation map.”

  “Do you have a family?”

  “Yes. A wife, Marta.” Evgeny digs into the inside pocket of his shirt, pulls out a crumpled, faded photograph. “And Edik, my son. See, he is fifteen. Getting so tall! Do you have kids?”

  “I have a wife, Bria. No children.”

  Evgeny holds Yolkov’s eyes, sorry to have made so much of his son.

  “Don’t you miss them? All that time on the road! A year!” Yolkov says.

  “Of course I miss them! Like missing limbs. I wish we’d finish this crazy mission Dragomirov is on. Then I can go home.”

  “I want a hot shower, running water, a cold beer, dry socks, a proper bed. Even though it would mean certain court martial, I would walk back to town now if I thought I had a cat-in-hell’s chance of making it five hundred yards through the jungle alive. . . . It is odd the boy survived.”

  “It’s a mystery how he got here in the first place. Doesn’t speak a word of Russian. Luckily, I speak English.”

  “You spoke to him?”

  “I was with the group that found him.”

  “Is he what Dragomirov was hunting for?”

  “No. I don’t think so. Dragomirov is searching for a girl.”

  “A girl?”

  “They call her the Lamplighter.”

  “Who does?”

  “The maggots. The non-people living beyond the city walls. They think she’s some kind of sign. I don’t know. It’s all crazy stuff. Anyhow, she caused several rebellions amongst the maggots, whether she intended to or not. Dragomirov caught her at one point and took her to a lab for Dr Lapin to examine with his machines. Some of the men say Dragomirov thinks she’s some kind of weapon.”

  “A weapon?!”

  “Yes, some kind of hyper-tech advanced, enhanced human. But the men talk nonsense most of the time. Half of them think the world is about to end.”

  The two men laugh.

  “What happened to the girl?” Yolkov asks.

  “She escaped. God knows how. We have the tightest security imaginable. Now the man is obsessed with trying to get her back.” Evgeny stops talking suddenly. It occurs to him he’s doing what he has been told many times he shouldn’t do, shooting his mouth off. He says, “I should be getting back.”

  Still with his back pressed against the tree, Klokov is soaking up this conversation with a surging glee. He has caught the traitor red-handed and can hardly wait to get back to Churkin and tell him what he’s heard. Dragomirov will praise him for his vigilance. He thinks about the promotion he’ll surely get and all the benefits that go with it. No more damned mouldy biscuits.

  Then without warning, without sound or the faintest disturbance to alert him, something cold and sharp presses against the skin of his neck. Cold like metal. Sharp like a knife. Straining his eyes down, he sees it. There is a hand and an arm, holding a blade to his throat.

  A voice says, “Don’t move. Don’t even breathe. I will kill you right here, drag your body into the forest for the night creatures to clean, and never give it a second thought.” It’s a deep, growling kind of a voice. The knife slowly lifts from Klokov’s skin. Breathing out with relief, he staggers forward. Borodin comes from behind the tree, sheathing his knife. “Why are you spying on my camp and my men? Why are you creeping around? I could have killed you.”

  Klokov scrambles to salute. “I wasn’t spying on your men, sir. I was spying on one of ours.”

  “Who?”

  “Our fat cook. I’ll show you.” Hard-ass leads Borodin the few steps from the undergrowth to the fire with the spit and the cooking pot.

  Yolkov is tending to the roasting fish and peers through streaming, smoky eyes as Borodin approaches and salutes. Evgeny has disappeared.

  Dragomirov’s face and neck are red. He’s having a terrible evening.

  First, Rostov came to tell him that the FSB director isn’t available for a conference call, but he sent a message to say that Borodin is one of the best trackers in the Russian army and Dragomirov should make full use of his skills and resources in his search for the Lamplighter, and he must respect Borodin’s rank and authority. In other words, Dragomirov is going to have to bow and scrape to the overgrown animal.

  Now, before Rostov has even finished, Borodin himself has come bursting into his private quarters, shoving ahead of him some cretin from the lower ranks, bringing in all sorts of jungle debris on the bottom of his boots.

  “I found this man hiding in the trees
beside my camp. By his own admission he was spying.”

  Klokov is shaken. This isn’t how he imagined things at all. “I wasn’t spying on Colonel Borodin’s men, sir.”

  Rostov, smarting from the dressing-down he’s just received on account of the failed attempt to organise a call with the FSB director, yells at Klokov, “Did anyone ask you to speak, soldat?!”

  “No, sir!”

  “Then shut up!”

  “What were you doing in Colonel Borodin’s camp?” Dragomirov asks.

  Klokov hesitates.

  Major Rostov yells, “Speak when you’re asked a question!”

  “Sir! I was following soldat Evgeny Shukshin.”

  “What? Why?” Dragomirov asks.

  “Following orders, sir!”

  “Whose orders?”

  “Kapral Andrei Churkin.”

  Dragomirov sighs and says to Rostov, “Major, go and get Churkin.” Rostov moves towards the door. “Actually, hold on, Rostov.” Dragomirov turns to Klokov again. “Do you know why Kapral Churkin wanted you to follow – who is it again?”

  Rostov and Klokov both say “Shukshin” at the same time.

  Dragomirov nods. “Do you know why you were ordered to follow this man?”

  “We thought he was a spy, sir!”

  “A spy? Who was he supposed to be spying on?”

  “Us. For Colonel Dragomirov, sir.”

  Dragomirov, confused, frowns at Rostov. “Any idea what’s going on here?”

  The penny drops for Major Rostov, with a cold, creeping horror. He says, “Sir, I’m not sure we want to discuss . . .” He tries to indicate Borodin with his eyes, but Dragomirov snaps impatiently. “Say it, whatever it is, Major.”

  “I briefed Churkin and other section leaders yesterday, sir. I asked them to be vigilant and not discuss or share classified information. I also asked them to search for weak links in their ranks.”

  “Why did you ask them that, Major Rostov?”