by Thomas Waite
She rocked Alexandra, forcing herself to stop crying, then climbed to her feet and trudged to her car. She made Alexandra comfortable in the backseat, checking her messages quickly. Just one, from Oleg: “Where are you?”
The question chilled her, and she was glad she’d found and disabled the customized app locator he’d put on her phone. She certainly didn’t reply. She turned out of the lot, knowing she had only one possible course of action.
The drive home, through the thick of Moscow morning traffic, took longer than she expected. Alexandra, so startled at the clinic, now looked sullen, without hope. Galina wished she could say something to cheer her up, but what would that be?
She hoped the answer would come soon. After carrying her daughter to the couch, where she’d been spending most of her days, and tempting her with berry juice and crackers—overjoyed at seeing her eating anything on her own—she rushed to her computers, moving every vital file from her desktop to her laptop. Then she burrowed a trail deep into the “cloud,” where she secured backups of her most important files. She also logged on to Internet Relay Chat, IRC, where the first anonymous message had appeared, sitting back in surprise when she saw the simple response: “I am someone who can help you and your sick daughter.”
Oleg, she thought at once. He was setting her up. Now that Tattoo had failed, he was testing her.
She called PP, asking if she could see him for just a few minutes.
“Yes,” the old man’s familiar voice said. “But I won’t be back until later this afternoon. Come join us for dinner. I was going to call you. Something’s come up with Dmitri. He’s very upset. Maybe you could talk to him. He’s saying your name.”
“Yes, of course.” The “Gull, Gull” that passed for it, she presumed. “One thing,” she said to PP. “I hate to ask this of you, but please don’t tell Oleg I’m coming over.”
“Don’t worry,” PP said so soothingly that it scared her, though she couldn’t be sure exactly why.
Galina spent an anxious day packing up her daughter’s belongings and medications. She also took a few changes of clothes for Alexandra and their toiletries. Not too much, she advised herself. If they come, you don’t want them to know right away.
Who were “they?” She was sure only of Oleg but she also knew that he had a team that killed for him. And a cop—or two—who might be part of it.
As late afternoon turned orange and golden, she fired up her computer one more time and found yet another message: “I am not who you think I am.” Again, she thought only of Oleg. But then she wondered.
She shut off her laptop and placed it in a well-padded carrying case. Driving out of Moscow, checking her rearview constantly. She didn’t know what to expect, but more trouble of the kind she’d experienced at the morgue seemed likely.
Galina heard Alexandra singing to herself in the backseat. She appeared so much better now that she’d napped and put the experience at the clinic behind her.
The electric eye opened the gate to PP’s country palace, as it had for her many times before. She figured her old Renault was the most humble vehicle to ever roll through the entrance.
In seconds, she turned into the car elevator, which lifted her to the second floor, rotated, and left her facing one of the visitor spots.
Carrying Alexandra—the poor child seemed to have no strength left for walking—Galina entered a hallway that ringed the main floor of PP’s huge residence. She peered at a door that opened only by iris recognition.
PP welcomed her with a gentle hug, encircling both mother and child in his strong arms. He led them into the high-ceilinged kitchen. His cook, a Eurasian woman in a pale-blue muslin dress with a crisp white apron and matching cap, was tossing cilantro into a Thai stew. Steam rose to a copper vent, fragrant scents to Galina’s nose. Her stomach rumbled; she realized she had eaten very little all day.
PP had set a place for them, and timed the meal well. Even Alexandra ate spoonfuls of broth, noodles, scallions, and a shrimp. Dmitri, oddly, was not present.
“And papaya juice?” PP asked Alexandra. “It came all the way from Hawaii just for you.”
The girl, wide-eyed at PP’s attention, nodded.
And she did drink the juice—eagerly. Galina thought that if Alexandra could live like this and see Dr. Kublakov, she might survive the leukemia.
PP used a napkin to dab his lips, the cotton so crisply ironed that it unfolded like a deck of cards.
“Now that we have eaten,” he said, “tell me what is wrong, Galina. Did Oleg hurt you?”
How should she respond? In the pause she took trying to answer her own question, PP nodded and spoke again. “I am not certain of what he is up to, but it is not good.”
Again she did not respond quickly enough.
“What did he do to you?” he asked more sternly.
“I can’t say, PP. I’m so sorry. But he did not hit me, nothing like that. Did you want me to talk to Dmitri? I thought he would be here.”
PP shook his head. She didn’t know if that was in response to her refusal to say what Oleg had done, or to the concerns about his younger son. He called out the fifteen-year-old’s name in a voice both commanding and consoling. “Come, Galina is here to see you. Gull has come.”
Dmitri shuffled into the dining area, looking warily at his father and Galina.
“This is the first time he’s left his room since last night,” PP said.
“What happened last night?” she asked.
“He took a photograph of Oleg that was hanging in the upstairs hallway with other family pictures. His fine motor skills are not so good anymore, so to get it out of the frame he broke the glass. Maybe that explains the gash in Oleg’s face in the picture,” PP added dubiously as he held up the torn photo. “Maybe not. Here he is. Have a seat, my son.”
The fifteen-year-old, bigger than most men, settled next to Galina and took her hand. She squeezed his gently. Two children, one on her lap and the other to her side. Both holding on to her.
“Do you remember how he would walk toward the door to the dungeon, then hurry away from it?” PP asked.
She nodded.
“He does that with Oleg, too, always approaching him then turning away. Then last night, after taking the photo of Oleg, he made horrible sounds, like he had a pain deep in his belly. He was bent over, one arm cupped around his stomach, the other holding out the picture of Oleg. It was like he was holding it as far from himself as possible, and then he started for the dungeon door again, but this time he pounded on it as if someone down there would open it for him. So I did.”
Galina looked at Dmitri, who was staring at her hand, still holding it, but she thought he was also listening very carefully to his father, who went on:
“He looked down the stairs, so I turned on the light. By then poor Dmitri was crying. ‘Go,’ I told him. ‘Papa will come with you.’”
“He’d never been down there?” she asked.
“Only the one time that I know of, and that was with Oleg.”
That’s right. She remembered now.
“But I’m wondering about that now,” PP added quickly.
He held her gaze. Neither the old man nor young woman spoke for a moment. Then he continued: “We went down the stairs all the way to the museum.”
PP’s word for the dungeon with its macabre collection of medieval torture devices. Galina had been down there only once, and had not been able to leave fast enough.
“Then he started with the back-and-forth business,” PP said. “This time by the skull crusher.”
A metal skullcap attached to the end of a heavy-duty screw that was turned from above by a wooden crank. Just thinking about it tightened Galina’s belly. A gruesome instrument.
“That was when he said your name,” PP told her. “Every time he turned from the skull crusher, ‘Gull, Gull.’ I wonder why?”
Galina felt accused. Nothing PP said exactly, but still . . .
“Would you see if he’ll go downstairs with you? He tries so hard to talk to you. I think it’s important we try this.”
Galina cleared her throat. “May I put Alexandra to bed?” She didn’t want her daughter out of her arms, but she wanted her down in that dungeon with those devices even less.
At PP’s assent, she took Alexandra away and settled her in one of the many lavishly appointed guest rooms, promising that she would be right back.
Please, dear God, let that be true.
Alexandra looked sleepy, perhaps from eating, and hardly seemed to notice her mother leaving.
Galina held Dmitri’s hand, now sweaty, and led him down the stairs. But once they reached the concrete floor, she had to coax him to move. PP stayed up by the door. She guessed that he might have thought Dmitri would be more forthcoming if just the two of them were alone. At least she hoped that was the reason.
Dmitri, indeed, proved more willing—but not with words. They walked past the rack, from which Dmitri pulled away, and armaments, including a spiked ball and serrated swords, mace and maul, halberd and war hammer. Galina had to avert her eyes, but curiously, Dmitri stared at the medieval weapons in what she would have called wonder. Maybe that was why he was so surprised when he realized they’d come upon the skull crusher.
The young man bellowed, as if hacked by the halberd, which had held his gaze seconds ago, then wrapped his arms around his abdomen. That was when Galina spotted the photo of Oleg crumpled in his hand. PP must have given it back to him when she was putting Alexandra to bed.
Then, with another shout—pure emotion, no attempt at a word—Dmitri lunged at the skull crusher and slapped the balled-up photo on the metal plate where a victim’s head would lie. He began to crank the wooden arm.
It creaked horribly, as if in protest, a sound almost overwhelmed by Dmitri’s own cries. It seemed each creak of the crusher were coming alive under his skin.
When he finished turning the crank, the crumpled photo sat under the cap like a pea in a shell game. But there was no longer any mystery for Galina about what the skullcap was hiding: the unvarnished truth.
She embraced Dmitri and let the young man with the broken mind of a little boy sob loudly in her arms.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly to him. “Nobody should ever have to go through something like that.”
She guessed she would have to tell PP what he had not witnessed. She hoped he would believe her. She still felt uneasy in his presence tonight and couldn’t fathom why, which compounded her anxiousness.
Galina led Dmitri upstairs. She glimpsed PP standing feet away from the landing. The rage on his face was unmistakable. She wanted to shrink from him, but didn’t dare.
“I have to tell you something,” she managed, wishing she sounded less apologetic, but she felt bad for the boy; he had carried such a brutal burden for so long.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” PP said, smashing his fist against the brocade wallpaper in the short hallway.
He turned to a built-in walnut cabinet, throwing open the door. Inside was a screen and recording device. He punched a button and video appeared of what had just transpired.
“I put cameras in after Dmitri’s ‘fall.’ The moment the light switch goes on, it triggers the digital recorder. I know what he showed you. I’ve waited years to find out what happened.”
“It’s so sad.”
Her cheeks were wet. Dmitri destroyed, his father now broken by the ugly truth about his only healthy son.
“I want to thank you for what you’ve done. It’s not easy to be the bearer of bad news—of the worst news,” he added with a shake of his head. “You don’t have to tell me what Oleg did to you because you have just told me what he did to my baby boy. He is capable of anything. Here.”
He handed her one of his finely spun cotton handkerchiefs. She felt hollowed out by what they had just learned. And yet she wasn’t surprised, just horrified. There was such a vast and disturbing difference.
“What do you need?” PP asked her. “I know you need something.”
“A loan. I’m so sorry to have to ask.”
“Whatever you need. You are the rose. If I were fifty years younger . . .” He shook his head. He looked like he might have been ruing the fleet passage of the last half century—only to arrive at the torturous revelations of this moment.
“Go get Alexandra. Meet me in the kitchen.”
When she walked back downstairs with her daughter, PP handed her a thick envelope. “That will take care of you wherever you’re going. I can help again, if you need it. Do not hesitate to ask. This is nothing to me.” He indicated the money. “He is everything to me, though.” He looked at Dmitri, slumped on a chair. Then he peered into Galina’s eyes. “But you and I must have an agreement.”
“Yes, of course. What is it?”
“Never to speak to anyone about what you learned here. And I shall never ask you to go through anything like this again.”
She nodded, as solemn a vow as she had ever made.
“You need to get away from Oleg. You should not take your car,” PP warned her. “They will be searching for it.”
“They?” she asked, remembering that she’d asked herself exactly the same question at home.
“Whoever Oleg has hired to do his dirty work. Thugs. Take my Macan.” He handed her the key fob for a new Porsche SUV Turbo. “The papers are all in the glove box, if you need them.”
“Thank you.”
As she left the house, she saw PP staring at the dungeon door. He looked aggrieved, as sad as any man she’d ever known.
Galina carried Alexandra to the silver Porsche, nestling her daughter in the backseat.
The car elevator lowered them to the ground floor and she drove out the front gate into the velvet blackness of the rural Russian night.
A car appeared almost immediately in her rearview mirror, out of nowhere it seemed. She reached to put the envelope stuffed with cash into the glove box—and discovered a small gun.
With another look in the rearview, her foot found the adrenaline-pumping power of the Porsche’s gas pedal.
CHAPTER 13
LANA WAS GATHERED WITH the rest of Deputy Director Holmes’s closest advisors and aides in his office. They had received one more communication from the submarine hacker, announcing the launch of the Trident II for one a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, which would be nine p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Prime time, they all recognized at once, in the nation’s most populous time zone.
Other than noting the carefully calculated schedule, there had been little talk, either from Teresa McGivern or Joshua Tenon or Clarence Besserman. Few comments even from General Sprouse, Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, or Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Deming. Admiral Wourzy also appeared subdued, as if his arrest for chip counterfeiting had taken place only seconds ago. All seemed stunned into silence, including Lana, by the imminent prospect of the launch.
Now, with fewer than thirty seconds remaining, never had a deadline held a more lethal or precisely defined threat.
With eight screens on, Holmes’s office looked like a network control room. They were monitoring the major news outlets, all of which had interrupted “normally scheduled programming.” Plus, Holmes had had a satellite feed from above Antarctica brought in, along with a screen devoted to the radar that would track the launch. Lana could still scarcely believe it would actually come to pass.
The digital readout on a clock solely devoted to this unprecedented catastrophe wound down to eight seconds. Lana trained her eyes on the numbers, as if will alone could undo this act of mass murder: “. . . 3, 2, 1.”
The Trident II launched. Though she did not see it on any screen—a mere speck on the radar tracker—she had no difficulty imagining the light-color
ed missile rising from the sea in a blaze of solid-rocket fuel turning the blackness orange and red, and white hot in the center of its wake.
Within seconds, the latest advances in the Aegis Missile Defense System flew into action. Aegis had begun in the mid-eighties, and had many successful test knockdowns to its credit. But nothing was foolproof.
Aegis had its own radar, of course, but the military’s high-resolution defense system was also tracking the Trident with its single missile head. In its infancy, the weapon had been a hedge against war, a key component of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. Now in minutes it could rain down from the heavens onto the frozen continent with heat unimaginable to most nonscientists—but there would be nothing mutual about its destruction, with worldwide catastrophe striking many, but not all, nations.
An aide wearing headphones and peering at a computer said the Trident was, indeed, heading toward Antarctica.
The speck on the radar screen indicated nothing of the ICBM’s lethality. But would the technical wizardry noted by the Pentagon briefer actually work? All she’d ever known of missile shields and interceptors made them sound more mythical than real, no more likely to actually shoot down an ICBM than a lightning bolt from Zeus or—more appropriately, perhaps—a strike by Neptune with his primitive trident, for which the missile had been named.
It would be brutally ironic, Lana realized, if the U.S. could not save itself from one of its own creations. And a single Trident II rising from the sea could claim much of the whole world if it exploded on the WAIS.
“Time?” Holmes asked.
The aide with the earphones nodded at the digital readout, where another countdown had begun. Eight minutes turning to seven in the frightening increments, red diodes spelling out the time remaining in the color of blood.
Lana caught Holmes’s eye, then glanced at the door. He nodded. She had to call Emma. She was all but certain that her daughter was watching coverage of the missile launch somewhere. And if Lana could offer her any comfort, she wanted to, but quickly.
Once in the hallway, she reached Emma on the first ring.
