by Nikki Owen
‘Who are they?’ I ask before I can stop myself.
He does not respond, seeming, at first, as if he will not say anything at all, but then he sniffs, takes a breath and traces one thin finger over the printed faces. ‘They are – were – my family.’ He swallows; the pointed triangle of his Adam’s apple juts out, then sinks in. ‘They passed away a long time ago.’
Returning the frame to its allocated slot on the desk, Black Eyes picks up the file from the table, clutches it to his chest, then stands and stares at the grey blind where Patricia once was. For a few seconds time is suspended, the air swinging in silence around us. I steal a glance at the photograph on the desk.
Ten seconds pass, until, raising his chin, Black Eyes strides to the door and, unlocking it, gestures to the white-washed gleam of the walkways beyond.
‘Come. It’s time I showed you something.’
Zurich Airport, Switzerland.
Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 28 hours and 30 minutes
From: Harriet Alexander (Secretary of State for the Home Department)
To: Maria Martinez
Subject: Re: The Project
Dear Dr Martinez,
Thank you for your email. I’ve had your message decrypted and have verified the details contained within it. This information now is for our eyes only and has been seen by only the most trustworthy members of my immediate staff. You managed to find my private email address, so I am responding directly from that – given the nature of the situation you have brought to my attention, I believe it’s our most secure method of communication at this time.
Firstly, you have my gratitude for informing me of the true cause of death of my husband, Balthazar. Balthus was a dear husband and, while I did not know of your existence, I am sorry for the sadness I am sure you must be feeling at this moment.
I have reviewed your files on this organisation called Project Callidus. Please be assured that I was unaware that this group existed. I am currently seeking to set up talks with the Chief of MI5 with a view to beginning an investigation, but, as I am sure you understand, timing with these things is everything and I have to be very careful and measured with what we do next. Your safety, Dr Martinez, is paramount.
To that end, I would be grateful if we could meet. I understand this may be a complicated request. However, I strongly believe that, after reviewing the initial data you relayed to me, a meeting between us would aid in the investigation in the Project and MI5’s involvement in it.
Please do consider my suggestion. In the meantime, there is one more thing. After hearing of Balthus’s status as your biological father, I was naturally curious about the woman he had a baby – you – with. You asked in your email about her grave and its location. I thought it only right and fair to share the information with you as to her status.
Her name, as you know, is Isabella Bidarte. She is from Bilbao, Spain. The last known location of her is Weisshorn Psychiatric Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland. She was born in May, 1968. I, first, after your grave location request, also assumed she was dead. However, after a confidential investigation by my closest team, I can tell you that Ms Bidarte is indeed still alive, her residence understood still to be the Weisshorn Hospital in Geneva.
I trust this news is of value to you. This has been difficult for me, as I am certain it has been for you. I am sorry for the distress you have, over the years, I am sure, been caused at the hand of our security services. I hope this news of your mother contributes in some way to atoning for that.
Please do consider strongly my request to meet with you in order to aid our vital investigations and put an end to Project Callidus’ operations. Let us keep secure lines of communication open.
Yours truly,
Harriet Alexander
I look up from Chris’s computer tablet at Patricia, my hands shaking at the shock, yet my brain curious and elated at the email.
‘She is alive,’ I say. ‘She is alive.’
Patricia comes close to my side, the milk of her skin and the warm bath of her scent reaching my brain. ‘I’m right here.’
She touches my fingers and my mind becomes a little calmer, small clouds of our breath billowing in the frozen air.
We are hidden by a wall outside Zurich Airport. Close by, the external glass façade of the busy building glistens by a freezing taxi rank and the pencil-straight road washed in paint strokes of sunshine, leaving weak yellow lines across fine snow-covered pavements. I pull out my notebook and the photograph Papa had hidden in Ines’s Madrid cellar. I gaze at Isabella’s face, at her river of hair, her flowing skirt, her baby – me – swaddled and held in arms so smooth and melodic they sing like swans. Could she really be alive? Could it be true? Or is the whole thing a fabrication? Quickly, I begin to write down the email contents, cross match for any patterns, hidden codes or messages, but no matter how hard I look, there is nothing secret to find.
Chris hurries over, cupping his hands and blowing on his fingers. ‘I thought spring was supposed to be warmer here.’
Patricia rolls her eyes. ‘Wimp.’
He stares at her, shudders, then looks to me. ‘Okay, so—’ He sneezes.
‘Bless you.’
He tilts his head at Patricia and raises one eyebrow; I have no idea why.
‘Okay, so,’ he continues, ‘I’ve double-tracked the email on my system and it’s from her alright – it’s from Harriet Alexander.’
I clutch the sepia-tone photograph in my fingers. ‘Are you certain?’
‘Yep. The thing is, she said what she said, you know, about investigating the Project, but if MI5 are tracking her then they’ll know she’s talking to you.’ He points to the email. ‘They’ll know now she’s planning to investigate it all.’
‘Doc,’ Patricia says, ‘he’s right. They’ll follow you and then MI5’ll want you dead and the Project will want you with them, just like before. The Home Secretary asked to meet you. Wouldn’t that be the right idea? She’s based in Westminster – it doesn’t get much safer than there. The Project and MI5 can’t get you then.’
‘Hang on though,’ Chris says. ‘What if she knows something – your mom, Isabella?’
I turn to him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Okay, so, what if we find her and she can, I don’t know, tell us something to really put the nail in the Project’s coffin? Because the way I see it, you can’t trust—’
Patricia shakes her head. ‘No. No way. Too risky…’
‘A nail in a coffin?’ I say, but Patricia continues.
‘The police have our bloody pictures, Chris, for God’s sake. They’ll find us. And then MI5 will get to us before we get back to the UK and we’re all stuffed.’
‘Wimp,’ he says. ‘We’ll be fine.’
Patricia rolls her eyes and looks to me. ‘Doc, I don’t like it. It’s risky. God, I’d rather we went to the safe house of Chris’s in Zurich than go to the hospital in Geneva.’
There is a wall straight in front of us. It is beige, bland, the grouting along the brickwork in neat patterned lines, each one with a clear beginning and an obvious ending. I calculate the length of the edges to help my brain to think straight in the midst of the plane engine roar in the air around me, the birds in the swaying fir trees near the network of road and railways, the tremble of trolley wheels and the faint scent of distant cigarette smoke. Yet it is only when a lick of aviator fuel flicks my nostrils, jolting me upwards, that the thought occurs to me.
The brick and the grouting and the definable end. I think about that word – end – how it sounds and what it means…
Slowly at first then faster, I study the cellar picture in my hands then scan the dates scrawled on the back. ‘There is an end.’
Patricia looks over. ‘What d’you mean?’
I spin round to Chris, my mind moving at speed. ‘Isabella’s birth date and death date are both on this photograph.’
He looks.
‘If she is alive,’ I continue, brain pla
nning now at lightning speed, ‘as the email said, why is the date of her death written here? It was written over two decades ago. The conclusion can only be that either my Papa wrote down the date without it being true or—’
‘Or the Home Secretary is lying,’ Chris says.
I look to him, his body stomping from foot to foot, his breath blowing small, white candy strands into the air, and for the first time since we arrived in Zurich, I feel a strong urge to turn to him and nuzzle my face in his neck and just smell him.
‘I have to know whether she is alive or not,’ I say now. ‘And if Weisshorn Hospital was her last known location then that is where we will go.’
Patricia stretches bolt upright. ‘Doc, no. I don’t think that’s a good idea. There’s a high chance she’s not there and then what? Why on earth d’you want to go there, Doc, when it’s so risky? Why?’
I stare at Isabella’s image. ‘She is the only family I have left,’ I say, quietly, softly.
Patricia’s shoulders drop. ‘Oh, Doc.’ Around us, lace patterns of snow float to the tarmac and evaporate into nothing. Patricia wipes her eyes, but doesn’t speak and when I inspect her left hand, I see her index finger and thumb pressing hard against each other so the skin is white.
‘Ok, so Google,’ Chris says. ‘You freak out on trains, right?’
I tear my sight from Patricia. ‘What?’
Chris leans against the wall and, fast, flips open his laptop. ‘There’s the Goldenpass route to Lausanne in Geneva. It’s long, but quiet, a tourist route, but not busy at this time of year. We can lie low.’ He looks to me, hair flopping in his eyes. ‘Would you be okay with that? It would mean it’s calmer for you to, well, to deal with.’
I study the details he has pulled up on the journey. Wide-open carriages, large windows, space, clean mountain air and no crowds. ‘We will have to change outfits so we are not recognised.’
‘No sweat. I’ve got untraceable credit cards that can buy us new stuff, and an uncanny ability to deactivate security cameras.’ He pauses, drops still for a moment, looks to the photograph in my hand. ‘Hey, we’ll find her, whatever the ending. We can go under the radar, figure out everything we can. We’ve done it before, we can do it again.’
I watch his lips move, smell his scent. ‘Can you hack into the Weisshorn Hospital, track any data?’
His face breaks out into a grin. ‘For you? Anything.’
Patricia coughs. ‘What’— she stops, swallows— ‘sorry – what time does the train depart?’
‘In one hour,’ Chris says. ‘We all ready to go?’
‘Yes.’ I throw my rucksack to my shoulder. ‘But first, I need to use the toilet facilities.’
‘Oh. Okay,’ Patricia says. She slips her cell phone from her bag, checks it and slides it out of sight.
Chapter 6
Goldenpass railway line, The Alps, Switzerland.
Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 26 hours and 20 minutes
I am unable to pull my eyes from the palette of watercolour before me. Aching blue lagoons of sky sifting in a mist of citrus and orange peel. Carpets of green grass shoots sprinkled with sugar flakes of snow all scattered among petals of spring painted with brush strokes of yellows and lilacs and multi-coloured confetti. Majestic mountains rise up, backs straight, muscles taut, mountains that, each time I gaze at them, each second I take in their strong, solid presence as they whisk past the window, a lump forms in my throat. When my sight drifts up to the fading turquoise of the sky, my breathing softens, and I think to myself that no matter what happens, no matter what wars are raged, what lives are slain, what untruths are spewed and sewn, the mountains that soar high above us are always there. Solid, present and true.
‘Doc, you okay?’
I peel my forehead from the window. Patricia now wears a wine-red sweat top with a hood and pocket, and on her legs blue jeans the colour of the night sea hug her skin. Her brown wig is still in place, as is Chris’s bottle-blonde mane as he sits by us hunched over his laptop. We are all now casually dressed, but, despite the simple comfort of the clothes, the fresh cardboard cotton of the t-shirt I currently wear itches my skin, irritating me. It’s unbearable, so I go to take it off, but Patricia reaches forward.
‘No, Doc. Not here.’
I stop. ‘Why?’
‘People don’t get changed down to their bras in public places.’
I drop my hand. ‘Oh.’
Scratching my stomach to bat away the clothing annoyance, I glance round the carriage. It is sparse. An old man with white hair wearing a pressed herringbone coat, black tie, cotton-blue shirt sits two seats beyond reading a daily newspaper containing headlines about the NSA and their surveillance of the German Head of State. Near to him is perched a young woman, small bird-like shoulders hunched over a worn-out copy of Animal Farm, the dog ears of the cover touching the tips of ten porcelain fingers as she turns the page, nails bitten, faded black jeans on petite, slim legs.
The only other group in the carriage is a father in his early thirties with two children, both boys under the age of ten, one nestled under each arm. The children are swaddled in navy blue duffle coats sewn with eight toggles apiece and they sit across a wooden table, opposite an elderly woman whose stomach and chin rest in kneaded batches of dough, square metal-framed glasses perched on the tip of a podgy nose as, making conversation with the small family, she points out the various Alpine sights that trundle past.
I observe the father for a moment, watch the way he smiles each time one of his sons whoops or claps at spotting a random cow or a snow-covered mountain top. A father, living, breathing. I hold my gaze on the family scene then, swallowing hard, I touch the picture of my Papa and the photograph of Isabella and her baby.
‘Hey,’ Patricia says, leaning forwards a little, ‘what’ve you done to your thumb?’
‘What?’
‘Your thumb – have you hurt yourself?’
I glance down at the small wound peeking out beneath a pale plaster still partially wet with blood. ‘I cut it.’
‘Where?’
‘In the toilets in Zurich.’
She leans forward. ‘Ooof, that looks sore. Must have been some wallop you gave it.’
I hide my hand out of sight and try to ignore the sting. ‘It is healing.’
The train jostles on and I take out my notebook, careful to avoid contact with my thumb. I check our current location against the brief list I have compiled to help me tackle the journey. Places, times, exact locations, short, sketched scenarios.
Satisfied we are on schedule, I peer through the wide window again and breathe easier. I turn my attention to Chris and his laptop.
‘Have you hacked the Weisshorn database yet?’
He shakes his head. ‘Yeah, but it doesn’t make sense.’
‘What does not make sense?’
Chris sits back, scratches his chin. ‘Well, okay, so I’m in their system, yeah – the hospital’s. I still can’t find Isabella’s name, but, either way, there seems to be some kind of glitch with my computer.’ He swivels his laptop to me and points. ‘See it?’
There are a series of numbers, stretching across the screen and linking to the database Chris is trying to hack. ‘They are codes,’ I say.
He nods. ‘I know, right? And every time I click on them, the screen shakes, just for a second.’ He shows me, and, sure enough, it shakes.
Patricia leans in to see. ‘Why’s it doing that?’
‘No idea. I’ve checked the OS, but it’s all fine.’
‘Can you not tell using a file or something and bypass the shake, or whatever you do?’
‘Nope. My trace files won’t open right now. No idea why.’
Connections firing, I rip open my notebook and cross-reference my written data with the online file then sit back. Nerves prick my spine. Something is not right. I wait for a second, think through the program on the laptop with the details in my notebook from dreams long gone. The motion of the train
back and forth, the rhythm and gentle chug of the sound and its predictable pattern soothes my brain, and I flip through my cerebral files, checking, referencing, interweaving the recalled data in my mind as if it were open in a book in front of me. Connections, link, numbers…
‘There’s a thread,’ I say finally, noting that just five seconds have passed.
Chris’s eyes flip wide open. ‘Jesus, that was quick.’ He’s right – even for me that was fast work. The train, the lull of it, the empty white bowl of the mountains and snow – that must be enabling my mind to work at such speed. Patricia watches me closely, frowning.
‘The thread,’ I continue, scanning the laptop, ‘is linked by an algorithm like this one’— I swivel my notebook to him— ‘that attributes a line at the back of this hacking program into the hospital.’
‘What? You serious?’ He peers at the page. ‘You got all that from there? But what does it mean?’
I try to think it through, but the woman with Animal Farm breaks open a baguette of ham and cheese and the scent flicks at my nostrils. Butter, stale bread, sloppy ham with veins of fat, the sugary fug of processed cheese. I pinch my nose shut and, trying to focus on anything but the smell, look to Chris’s laptop and the information from the hospital contained on it. The data merges together in my mind, line after line of it racking up a catalogue of knowledge at such speed and with such force that I have to slam my palm down on the table to steady myself. I am aware of the stares towards me, but I ignore them, focus on the screen as, slowly then faster still, an answer begins to form, until, with fear, I realise what is happening.
‘There is a tracker.’ I swallow. ‘It’s linked to the program, activated when you connected with the hospital database.’ How did I come to that conclusion so fast?
‘What?’ Chris studies the screen, eyes wide. ‘Holy fuck! But if they’ve targeted my actual laptop it means that, whoever’s done that, whoever’s singled this device out must have done it deliberately. They must have known I’d try and get into Weisshorn and as soon as I did, they sent a virus to my computer to locate it. Fuck.’
