Iris Rising

by Charles Hubbard

  ‘Wait ten minutes before we move,’ Winters says shifting on the cold concrete floor of the derelict and abandoned building. ‘They’re twenty minutes from the station. We don’t want to bump into them.’

  Ten minutes later, Feldman walks ahead and picks the lock of the side maintenance entrance of the train station while Winters paces in front, providing cover and blowing warmed air hard into hands. Feldman needs to hurry. Two caucasians milling about outside can only draw unwanted attention.

  Inside, they proceeded with the aid of a mental map, down a set of narrow winding steel stairs to the sub-basement maintenance staff room. Inside is dimly lit. Hot and foul air swills with the rush of air from an unseen train, mixing with fumes and the dampness from poor ventilation.

  ‘Just like Dalian,’ Feldman intones.

  The room’s door lock is no problem: the type housed entirely in the doorknob. A quick and purposeful twist and the locking pins fail. A hand stops the door from flying open and making a noise.

  ‘Clear,’ Winter whispers entering and seeing no one is inside, his gun aiming ahead. The locker is quickly located.

  Outside, Feldman stands guard twenty yards away, beside a pillar with 180 degrees of vision—mostly varying degrees of blindness. Leg cocked against the wall with a yellow stained light bulb above, facing ahead with a folded newspaper he pretends to be reading. ‘All clear,’ he says into the void in front of him.

  ‘Retrieving package.’

  Feldman watches as a flickering torch emerges out of the darkness like a glow worm whose flight path randomly flickers around a central axis. Having seen the possible threat ahead says, ‘Hold.’

  Feldman turns his head away as the light jerks becomes more pronounced and more purposefully; light occasionally blinding directly into his eyes. Winter stoops low and clutches the duffle bag.

  ‘Hey you!’ A voice commands. ‘You’re not supposed to be down here.’ Feldman is still, a hand lowers to his pocket, a finger curls around the trigger.

  ‘I’m talking to you,’ the man says placing a hand on a rail to pull himself up off the tracks.

  A whop sound.

  The man falls back against the concrete floor with a thud. Feldman cranes his head for witnesses, walks over to the ledge and puts another round between the eyes, jumps down and kicks the body under the ledge, into a darkness only a noxious smell could escape from.

  ‘Target neutralized,’ Feldman advises pulling himself up and wiping his hand against a trouser leg. Puts his gun away. Thinks, glad I stripped and cleaned it back in Dalian.

  ‘Understood.’ Winters unzips the bag and inspected the contents. Satisfied all pieces of the device are accounted for, calls over Feldman to help carry the heavy load. Outside, they blend into the busy sidewalk, and on the platform wait for the next train that will eventually take them to Shiguang Road Station, Yangpu.

  After the meal earlier today, they paid a visit to the target’s apartment. Feldman though it a bit small, but it was better than his previous place. At least the shower was warming and he could shave.

  15

  U.S. Naval Base, Sasebo, Japan

  ‘That’s Lì,’ Sparks says tapping the screen of his laptop, ‘ten hours ago.’ Looks behind and up at Robertson. ‘See!’ The conversation thread temporarily glowing multicolored as his finger presses into the LCD screen.

  ‘Yes,’ Robertson feigns interest. Hears a door open then close and wonders where Mooney is off to.

  ‘I need my glasses,’ Sparks says. ‘They must be on the plane.’ Knocked to the floor and kicked under a seat when Mooney strode towards him with angry conviction. Throws up his hands in frustration. ‘The attack could be happening right now.’

  Sparks scans through unread comments, pinches the bridge of his nose and scrunches sore eyes closed. His enthusiasm mutes when it becomes clear to him Lì’s message to run isn’t cutting through to Fāng.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Robertson says.

  ‘We need them,’ Sparks says leaning in and having a hard time reading one of Lì’s replies. ‘They can help uncover this conspiracy. Possibly stop a war.’

  ‘This Lì and Fāng,’ Robertson says, ‘have all the information they need to get the hell out of if they want to live.’

  ‘Amanda Lane recruited them,’ Sparks notes.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Lane is connected to Black, and Black—’

  ‘Is connected to my leg bone. No, I get it.’ Robertson breathes heavily and looks outside the window and sees Mooney having pulled on a white biohazard suit enter the building flagged with a large DO NOT ENTER sign. ‘Just…keeping doing what you’re doing.’

  ‘These kids are being used by the CIA as a bit of theatre, a diversion to steal our technology.’

  Sparks identified and chose them, got into their skin and tracked their movements so as to make their deaths certain. Now he’s determined to do everything he can to save them. He hasn’t seen the faces of the operatives, the same ones he guesses killed the Iranian scientists two years earlier, so can’t provide Lì with a physical description.

  ‘Feldman and Winters,’ he mutters to himself. ‘Sound like cowboys from the Wild West.’

  Sparks ends the thread with a plea to leave Shanghai and logs off the server. Caresses the spacebar in pensive contemplation.

  ‘Okay Sparks, you’re done here,’ Robertson says with a tone of finality. ‘You’ve warned them.’

  ‘The Barn still needs to be secured.’ Sparks drums the desk with his hands. Thinks aloud, ‘Black has access. Is there anyway we can stop him?’

  Fingers hover over the keyboard straining to think about the next move. ‘I can’t get into the network from the outside. It’s too well protected,’ he says to his reflection staring back. ‘Come on…think.’ Slaps his forehead.

  Looks at Robertson. ‘You heard the General. He said to help.’ He puzzles why if Byzantine Candor is somehow connected to this joint CIA/Army DUST program, doesn’t Robertson seem to know anything about it, doesn’t care, or doesn’t want to know.

  Sparks has a way of drawing information out of people without asking. A look. Awkward silence. Masen had told him pretty much everything about Jessica back in the cafeteria without him asking many questions. But not with Robertson it appears.

  The door creaks open.

  ‘I’ll grab your glasses,’ Robertson says. ‘Is that helping enough for you?’

  Sparks feels a lightness in his shoulders as Robertson moves away, distracted by something out of view.

  ‘Can you flood the building or create an electrical shutdown?’ A female voice. Sparks twists in his seat. ‘…We overheard you talking.’ Jessica Bradbury adds as way of explanation.

  ‘We escaped by creating a diversion,’ Kim Pak says. ‘We shutdown the port of Rason.’ Bradbury gives Pak a reassuring glance and finishes the thought. ‘Think of the building. Can you restrict access somehow, shut it down? A bomb threat?’

  ‘The General would never give you permission to attack a government facility,’ Robertson says lingering at the door, watching the interaction.

  Sparks had already began typing. ‘We don’t need permission.’

  ‘Look Sparks—’ Robertson stops himself remembering the General still hasn’t come up with an idea how to stop Black gaining access to the Barn.

  ‘Glasses, remember?’ Sparks wipes his brow.

  ‘Yes, go away army man,’ Pak says.

  Robertson walks out.

  ‘Jessica, Kim. Glad to put faces to names,’ Sparks says, then seeing Robertson has left adds in a hushed voice: ‘Do they know you had outside help?’

  There’s a silence as Bradbury contemplates how to answer.

  ‘…Yes,’ she labors. ‘I was told it would help John.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ Sparks says typing a message.

  In the adjoining room, Masen walks out, chest heavy, hands clammy despite repeatedly wiping them on h
is jeans. He is aware of his breathing, the pulse, the hiss of it, nostrils flexing ever so slightly as air enters and leaks from his body. He breathes in deeply and extends a hand and grasps the roundness of the door knob. Every movement has become new to him, every muscle moves with instruction. Exhaling, he enters the unknown.

  Initially he sees Sparks sitting at a desk next to a window that mirrors the room he just left, busy working on his laptop. Looks right. Next to a bed is Jessica. Standing and looking out the window her profile is haloed in late afternoon sun; motes of dust float effortlessly in rays of light. The picture bares no resemblance to his mental picture of her; the last time he saw her. Maybe his Jessica is bits of colors stuck together in a certain way, only existing in the past. This Jessica is gaunt, malnourished, a burnt match waiting to be taken away by a puff of air.

  An announced warmth swells deep within and erupts through his face as she turns. She gasps and covers her mouth.

  ‘It’s you,’ he says. Eyes connect. She nods and takes a step forward. Masen walks over, arms hurriedly dance around tubes as they embrace, rest into each other’s shoulder.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Bradbury says. Soothing air whispers into his ear, carrying relief. They squeeze. Ribs stick into him that remind him of a fish’s skeleton.

  ‘I’m sorry…I’m sorry.’ The words echo in his head. Bradbury nods. Her voice feels like sweet sticky sunshine.

  Events flood back; Lucia, Tripod, the stresses of work, his own battered body.

  ‘I wanted to die,’ she says. ‘I wanted it to end. I’d given up, but…but…you.’ She shakes, her body feels light as if made of tissue paper. ‘They’re not letting my parents know I’m alive.’ Her breath warms the back of his neck.

  Masen pulls back. ‘You’re caught up in the middle of something big we don’t yet fully understand.’

  ‘I told them you helped. I was never going to tell them. He said you were in danger.’ The concern in her voice almost palpable.

  ‘The container, how did you get in it?’ Masen asks.

  A voice clears a throat. Masen looks behind and sees a kid sitting on the bed.

  Masen squints. ‘Kim…Kim Pak?’ he asks in a questioning tone.

  ‘Some printer you sent over,’ Pak says ballooning his hands as a makeshift bomb. Masen smiles and struggles imagining how he managed to rescue himself let alone Jessica from Rason.

  Masen repeats his question and gets a surprising answer. ‘General Hung…’ But before Pak finishes Bradbury laughs and Masen looks between the two.

  ‘Kim created a fictitious general who ordered the container onto the ship,’ she says adjusting her gown. ‘I remember a sensation of being picked up and carried down a ladder. Then we woke up on a ship.’ Starts crying. ‘Kim saved me, he came up with the plan.’ Her hand adjusts to the tension in the IV drip as it tugs at her skin. Masen sees it. Similar clothes, shaved heads, vandalized faces and forsaken bodies attest to their shared experience.

  She wipes her face which has a calming effect. ‘I see you haven’t changed, Slick,’ she says with a teasing chuckle, composing herself. ‘Still breaking the rules?’

  The hairs on his arms stand out. Slick. He likes the sound and sentimentality of it. How it tethers her to him over time and distance. The way the ‘i’ stretches before the ‘k’ snaps at the end, the shape of her lips and the way her nose moves and how crows feet form as she smiles.

  ‘Well, I did,’ she responds to his questioning stare. Strength reasserting itself. The Jessica he remembers. ‘I changed.’

  ‘They know,’ Sparks says arriving late to the party, ‘Mooney knows about us helping.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Masen says, ‘we’re already in prison.’

  16

  Yangpu District, Shanghai, China

  Fāng trails behind Lì who walks ahead fashioning a visor from a piece of paper to keep the rain off his glasses, but soon becomes sodden. ‘Let’s see what fantasy he’s come up with today,’ Fāng says loudly. ‘I’m only agreeing to read this thread because I hate kicking the ball on wet grass.’

  The wet pavement reflects distorted reds and yellows of passing cars. Lì’s trying to think of a way to convince Fāng to trust this American, to trust him. Turning the corner, the Internet Café’s stairs comes into view.

  ‘He said he’ll be in touch,’ Lì mumbles and turns towards the stairs. A shoe submerges in a puddle of muddy water soaking the hem of his trousers. His mind easing at the idea Fāng might finally be listening, even if it’s rattling around his thick skull like a marble trapped in a glass jar.

  A sudden sheeting of rain send the pair scuttling for the stairs. Fāng sprints for cover crashing into Lì who grips the rail but is barely capable of arresting the combined weight and his hand slides on the slippery metal.

  ‘Careful!’ Lì shouts as they’re forced down the stairs in a controlled crash.

  ‘Quickly,’ Fāng says pushing Lì through the door. ‘I’m getting soaked,’

  Like a pack of wet dogs thrashing coats dry, the pair enter, pay unspoken respects to their friend at the front counter and quickly proceed over to where Lì usually sits. Fāng pulls up a chair and stoops over the back support, breaching Lì’s comfort zone. Combs his thick bristle hair as Lì logs on. Thinks, right, what are we looking at?

  ‘If there’s nothing, promise you’ll drop this,’ Fāng says.

  ‘He won’t give up,’ Lì says wiping his face and pinching his eyes.

  ‘Well, if he’s so determined to save you.’

  Lì pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. ‘Saves us both.’ The words have a stinging clarity of force and determination behind them. Fāng casts a doubting glance over the backlogged correspondence between the two as Lì scrolls through newer, unread entries.

  They are back at the place where the PLA first discovered their electronic fingerprints and found that they could use their talents to hack into foreign government networks. After the pair finished their university studies they were recruited and put to work in unit 61398.

  ‘Is that him?’ Fāng points to the icon, top right of screen as a new message appears.

  Lì reads the message aloud for effect, dragging a finger across the screen to dramatize its meaning. ‘Likely tomorrow, probably two operatives will carry out Byzantine Candor. Identities unknown, method unknown, but likely as you arrive for work.’

  Lì turns to Fāng. ‘Work.’

  Fāng throws up his hands and scoffs, ‘Byzantine Candor, you falling for that?’ And pushes his chair back, dismounts and points at the screen. ‘This is a waste of time.’ Points to himself. ‘I’m going home.’ Turns to leave. ‘Listening to you has made me tired. I’m grabbing something to eat and having an early night.’

  An hour later Lì stands alone outside the Café’s door—Fāng’s wallet in his hand. ‘He’s always leaving it somewhere,’ Lì says to himself—sheltering under the awning as heavy rain sends a small stream cascading down the stairs and disappearing down a grate. Thinks, Fāng will be soaked. He is resigned his message has falling on deaf ears. Had expected to at least see him come back for his wallet.

  Visibility is poor. He takes off his glasses, neatly placing them inside the pocket of his jacket as broken droplets of rain mist in the swirl of the wind making it impossible for him to see properly with them on. The rain shows no sign of abating.

  Lì unfurls the collar of his jacket in preparation, grips the cold wet handrail and launches himself up through the rain, careful not to slip on the steps and looks up nearing the top step for traffic. With a clear path leaps onto the road, pursuing what looks like a dry spot, just past a power pole on the opposite side of the road.

  ‘That’s both of them,’ Feldman notes sitting back from the window in the room’s shadow. His powerful binoculars clearly making out Lì’s jacket as he sprints across the road.

  ‘Are you sure? The rain’s heavy,’ Winters says pulling out all of the m
achine’s components from the bag and arranging them methodically in order on the ground in front.

  ‘Brown leather jacket.’ Feldman tightens the focus, maximizes the zoom and follows the jerking movements as Lì runs then stops next to a pole. ‘Chevron style yellow stripes on the front, same height. Definitely him.’

  The radioactive marker swabbed on by Winters as he brushed past Lì yesterday on his way to work isn’t visible to the naked eye, but glows through the binoculars. Holds up a small screen for Winters benefit. It recorded what the binoculars saw. The jacket is too distinctive to be confused with any other.

  ‘That’ll make both targets tucked in for the night,’ Winters says finishing assembling a small section of the bottom supports so the machine can still be transported in the bag. It will save time tomorrow morning, and he can do with the practice.

  ‘We should use the rain as cover and get it into position,’ Feldman says.

  ‘Agreed,’ Winters replies.

  Feldman has been studying Winters ever since he arrived. There is something more compliant about him, an eagerness to please. Distance.

  Lì calculates a lull in the rain and makes a run for it, toward a red-bricked apartment building where there’s an awning. But as he slows his side erupts in pain, the jacket arrests his momentum. Looking down he sees it snagged on a sharp piece of metal jutting out from a brick wall. Struggling, the jacket rips but he is stuck in what feels like a strong one-arm grip, the metal zip holds the material together and fails to open despite increasing violent throws.

  ‘Come on…,’ Lì says struggling.

  With a stinging sensation on his side, Lì manages to fumble the jacket clear and rubs the wound. Blood; sticky and warm. Winces as fingers find the tear in his skin. Wet, tired, and sore, he manages to free himself, abandons his jacket and runs home.

  Across the road, two young boys were peering out the window, watching the rain and witnessed what they thought was rather an amusing sight in the comfort of their warm and dry bedroom. Daring one another, the older boy runs outside as soon as the man is out of sight and quickly frees the jacket and brings it back. Rubbing it down and patting it dry with a towel, he parades the jacket in the bedroom, taunting his younger brother. ‘I got wet and went outside so it’s mine.’ Not content his older brother is enjoying all of the spoils, the younger brother starts to cry.