Jason nudged Maze. “Yeah, remember what happened last time you made a joke about Anastasia.”
Maze blanched and threw a look at Anastasia, who stood with her arms folded across her chest and a stony expression on her face. The one rule everyone observed was simple. Never call her “Miss Kitty”. It was a nickname guaranteed to set her off. Harry didn’t see the need for anyone to remind his girlfriend of how she looked, or him for that matter. “Maze, can you find this place if Istvan gives you the rough coordinates?”
Maze’s face softened. “Yeah, I can do that.” She switched her gaze to Istvan. “Sorry for the asshat remark. Come on over and help. Give me the closest point you can think of and I’ll see what I can do.”
Hesitantly, Istvan walked over spoke softly to Tina. Anastasia chose a nearby desk and perched on top of it. Jason took the opportunity to pull Harry out into the hallway, while Farrell stayed in his position, overseeing the whole operation.
“So what is it?” Harry wanted to know once they were outside.
Jason’s face wore a look of gratitude. “First off, that formula you gave me for my aunt, remember? I gave it to the doctor. He tried it and now she’s fine.”
Said formula happened to be something Harry had found in Grushenko’s laboratory in Chernobyl. It was a possible cure for some types of cancer, and he’d given it to Jason so that his aunt, suffering from the disease, might have a chance. “That’s good news,” he said. “Glad I could help.”
“It’s good that you’re back, man,” Jason said, and a note of admiration entered his voice as he took a step back to eye Harry up and down. “You’ve changed.”
The assessment didn’t surprise Harry that much, but he wondered what his best friend really thought. “It doesn’t bother you?”
Jason shook his head. “We’ve always been friends. What you did, you did for Anastasia, am I right?”
“Yeah, that’s about it.” Actually, Harry had taken the serum in order to fight against an unstoppable opponent. However, right now, he didn’t see the need to go into detail.
“Then it’s all good,” Jason affirmed with a quick nod. “And I know it’s good with Maze, too. She’s just gotta get used to it, but really, it’s cool.”
Harry was about to answer when Maze shouted, “Hey guys, I got something!”
Running inside, Harry and Jason grouped around the computer to the left while Farrell, Anastasia and Istvan took the right. Maze stuffed some more chocolate in her mouth before spelling out the details. “This is it,” she pointed to a spot on the map. “It’s in the Gemenc forest like Istvan said. I had to use the surveillance satellites, and searched for anything with an unusual heat pattern. That forest gets pretty warm in the summer, but I found a regular pattern of heat emissions.”
“You’re sure?” Farrell asked.
Maze chomped and swallowed before answering. “It can’t be anything else.” A quick touch of a button and a thermo-graphic image sprang up, showing a solid block of heat well under the surface. “That region of Hungary is part of the Danube, but there are no hot water springs or water tables in that area.”
With her index finger, she pointed to the base of the graph. “And, the emissions of energy are high, regular, and they’re coming from about a mile underground. To me, that indicates a complex of some sort and they’re using a lot of power.”
She spun around in her chair, doing a seated happy dance. “Can I rock it or what?”
“You can and do,” Jason said enthusiastically and slapped palms with her.
“Okay, we have the place,” Farrell cut in. His voice took on a no-nonsense air. “I have to coordinate with the Hungarian government on this. That’s going to take at least a day, if not more. They’ll want to be included in the loop, so I’ll have to give them something.”
Listening to all this information, Harry suddenly felt a sense of uneasiness. Things were coming far too fast and far too easily. Anastasia touched him on the shoulder, making him start. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s too easy. It’s like this Szabo wants us to find him. He’s practically giving us this information.”
“You think it’s a trap?”
The thought had crossed Harry’s mind more than once. It also affected Istvan. At the mention of the word “trap”, he started to back away and his body began to quiver. “I do not wish to go back to my country,” he said. “I am not human, not now. I do not wish my parents to see me. I do not wish anyone to see me.” His lower lip trembled violently. “I will not go.”
“You have to,” Anastasia said and squatted down beside him. “We need you.” She looked up at Farrell. “When this is all over, he can stay here, can’t he?”
Farrell’s mouth set in a straight line. “You’re going to have to understand that what we’re doing is off the books. This is for our eyes only, you understand?”
“Yeah,” she answered in a sour voice. “I get it. Hide the freaks away from the public.”
A look of indecision appeared on Farrell’s normally stoic face. “It’s not that. It’s for your safety. Did you forget the fact that lynch mobs went after you last time? Did you forget how hard we had to work in order to call them off?”
His voice rose with each passing sentence. “The Chief of Police still doesn’t believe me. The CIA and NSA are also on my back. Only the President knows, and he knows the bare minimum. It’s called plausible deniability. Trust me on this. We’re doing this for you.”
There it was—that trust thing again. Harry trusted Farrell—up to a point. At the same time, he remembered the looks on the faces of the lynch mobs. Fear, hatred and a lust for blood—they all showcased the worst humanity had to offer. The first group of citizens, people he thought were normal and average, had trapped him and Anastasia in a warehouse. Armed with knives, guns and baseball bats, they’d almost succeeded in their lynch attempt. They’d barely escaped with their lives.
As for the second group, a band of subterranean homeless people, they’d tried to do the same. Much as he hated to admit it, this really wasn’t the ideal situation to reveal their presence, not yet.
“At any rate,” Farrell continued, “that’s for the attorney general to decide and for the State Department as well. But,” he added, “I’ll do what I can.”
“Can you give me safety over there?” Istvan asked in a pleading tone.
Far from sounding tough, Anastasia said in the gentlest of voices, “We’re not the ones you should be afraid of. But if we find others like us, then we’ll need you to translate. I don’t speak Hungarian and neither does Harry. We also need you to show us the way. We won’t let anyone hurt you. We promise.”
Istvan still looked doubtful, but finally he gulped and nodded. “I will go,” he said in a low voice. “I am afraid of what I might find, but I will go.”
“We’ll stick with you,” Anastasia said and shot a glance at Harry. “We’re doing this together, right?”
A sudden stab of uncertainty hit Harry and hit hard. Fighting it down, he replied, “We have to stick together.”
Farrell observed the proceedings with nary a muscle moving in his face. Finally, he rubbed his hands together as if sealing some kind of contract. “Then I guess we’re going to Hungary.”
Chapter Five: The Source
Forty-eight hours later, Harry sat next to Anastasia on a private jet bound for Budapest. Farrell sat up front with the pilot after telling them that they’d stop in Iceland to refuel. “Just for an hour or so,” he said. “We can’t fly commercial class, you know.”
The answer came as no consolation to Harry. It didn’t matter which way he went. This was uncharted territory. On American soil, he felt semi-comfortable defending his turf, as it was his turf. Now... he wasn’t sure of anything.
Istvan napped in a seat three rows away, snoring noisily, grunting as a pig would and occasionally muttering something in his sleep. Harry wished he knew Hungarian, but outside of the word goulash he was out of his depth.
&nb
sp; The flight was uneventful, but as they neared Hungarian air space, Anastasia whispered into his ear, “Don’t get too close to Istvan. Something isn’t right.”
Surprised by her comment, Harry stole a look at their companion. He was still sleeping. “I thought you said that he was one of us.”
“He is one of us,” Anastasia replied, her eyes darting to the front area of the plane and back again. A note of caution entered her voice. “But just because he’s the same as us doesn’t mean that he’s on our side. Remember Piotr and Lyudmila? They weren’t. So trust but verify.”
Nodding, Harry sat back and said nothing at first. He believed in his girlfriend, but he’d been thinking the same thing. Istvan turned up out of the blue, gave his location away, suffered no memory loss and had seemed only too willing to tell them everything. Then again, neither Lyudmila nor Piotr had amnesia. He heaved out a sigh. “Okay, like you said, trust but verify.”
Something else disturbed him, and that was the look of their third wheel. Istvan had begun to devolve, a major problem when animal genes were mixed with human ones. Harry had managed to solve the problem with Anastasia, but Istvan seemed to be changing minute by minute. His nose, formerly long, had shrunk and now resembled a pig’s nose, round and flat. There would be more changes. Harry only hoped he’d be able to get to the bottom of this mystery before Istvan devolved too much to be of any help.
Farrell came back to warn them that they were going to land soon. “We’re going to be met at the airport by Major General Anton Bartok,” he said. “He’s the FBI’s liaison over there. It’s just him, a private car, and he’ll do the driving. No one else is in on this.”
Thirty minutes later, they landed. The pilot taxied into a private hangar away from prying eyes. As they deplaned, the hangar was empty save for a lone individual standing near the doors. “That’s Bartok,” Farrell said as the door opened.
A massive man in his forties with a head of short jet-black hair, he wore a light greenish-brown uniform festooned with numerous medals. With square features and dark eyes, his face had the look of unmistakable authority, but that look of being in control faded when Harry and Anastasia stepped down on the tarmac. Instead, a stare of incredulity replaced the authoritative mien. It grew more pronounced when he saw Istvan.
Harry felt the man’s stare, somewhat akin to a scientist observing a rather unusual lab specimen. His mind flashed back to the convenience store incident, but Bartok recovered nicely and addressed them. “My name is Major General Anton Bartok,” he said in flawless English with only a trace of an accent. “I am attached to and at the service of the Ministry of Defense in this country.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Farrell said. Observing formalities, they shook hands and exchanged cellphone numbers.
Istvan stayed in the background, but squeaked out something in Hungarian. After blinking his eyes in surprise, Bartok recovered and gave him a curt nod. Istvan bobbed his head and remained quiet. “When you contacted me, Agent Farrell,” Bartok started off by saying, “and told me about one of our countrymen being, er, transformed, I admit that I was skeptical. I thought that the news reports about transgenics in Manhattan were nothing more than a publicity stunt. I was wrong.”
He turned his gaze on Harry. “Your last name—Goldman—I read about your father after Agent Farrell gave me some of your background. Your father was a genius. It seems that you are as well. I hope that you are not the one who has transformed anyone.”
Harry didn’t see the need to talk about his practical work with transgenics. He was living proof of the process’ effectiveness, as was Anastasia. Instead, he nodded at Bartok. “I just do research, sir.”
“There are more,” Anastasia put in. “My name’s Anastasia Yakusheva, and I’m from Russia, originally.”
“She’s American now,” Farrell chimed in. “Her citizenship papers came through only yesterday.”
Anastasia turned around, a pleased look on her face. “You didn’t tell me. Thank you.” Her tone didn’t sound sarcastic, though, merely grateful.
“There wasn’t time,” Farrell answered, shrugging. “We just got the word. I brought along your passport, just in case.”
Bartok then interrupted the feel-good moment by waving them to a private army limousine. They got in, Farrell in the front seat and Harry, Anastasia and Istvan in the back. Bartok drove off, leading them away from the airfield and onto a highway. Miles of forest on either side of the highway passed in front of them. Bartok kept the conversation going with Farrell about the trouble as they drove along.
“There have been a number of wild animal reports,” he said while navigating. It was roughly two in the afternoon and Harry struggled to concentrate. Jet lag could do that to a person. Being enhanced didn’t make him immune to it. He’d slept on the airplane, but all the same, he couldn’t wait to sack out.
Traffic remained surprisingly light and Bartok continued his stories of mayhem. “Stories of people in the countryside being savaged, ripped apart... at first, we thought it the work of a madman. However, when we saw the bite marks and our coroners confirmed that no knife or human hand could have done...” his voice shook briefly... “Done such savage things, we began to think otherwise.”
He fished around in the glove compartment and brought out a file. “These are some photos our police took. The picture on top is the latest, only three days ago.”
Bartok handed the file to Farrell who leafed through it. Wordlessly, he passed it to the back seat. Harry got a look at the victims. There were five pictures, all with massive bite marks to the neck and claw marks to the bodies. All of the victims had been rent limb from limb. Anastasia took the pictures and began to growl. “This one,” she said, referring to victim number three, “looks like it was torn apart by a bear. I recognize the bite marks.
“But this one,” she held up a picture of the first victim, “it looks like a bird’s talons tore into her.”
Istvan declined to look at the pictures and stayed huddled in his seat. Anastasia passed the pictures back. “Are we going to the forest now?” she asked.
“No,” Bartok replied. “We are going to the coroner’s office first to look at the victims and then discuss what to do. We shall look tomorrow morning, first thing. I promise you this.”
Privately, Harry thought they were wasting time and Anastasia obviously felt the same way, for she growled her disapproval, but Farrell turned around in his seat and shook his head. “It’s how things are done here. Remember, we’re guests.”
That settled the argument. Shortly thereafter, they arrived at a two-story mid-sized brick building in downtown Budapest. People walked by, seemingly unconcerned with the limousine driving along the road. Harry peeked out the window and wondered what the ordinary citizen would think of him and his companions. He then squelched the thought. He knew.
“This is where the bodies are,” Bartok announced as they swung into an underground garage. He parked the car and gestured for them to exit. “We shall take the service elevator. Ordinarily, there are five people on duty, but our ministry has asked them to take time off. Any new arrivals come in,” he chuckled, although Harry found nothing funny about it, “they will go somewhere else. For now, I do not wish to provoke a scene or cause any undue fear. We will be left alone there.”
“Hey,” Anastasia said with a note of indignation. “How are we making a—”
“We won’t, but that’s how it is,” Harry interrupted and put his hand on her arm to quiet her. “We look how we look and people aren’t going to be used to that.” He glanced at Bartok. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Correct,” Bartok nodded. “I am sorry. Despite my surprise when I first met you, I now know why you look as you do. However, others won’t. You must understand that when the attacks began, the civilians were understandably frightened. There were mobs, riots, and innocents were hurt. Please forgive their...” he stopped to search for the right word, “ignorance.”
Anastasia shook Har
ry’s hand off and sat back in her seat, muttering non-sequiturs. They took the elevator to the basement and walked down a quiet corridor with Bartok in the lead. Five doors down, he inclined his head to the left. “They are in here. The upper levels are for the administrators and the technicians. There is no one else around. For now, your secrets stay with me.”
The room was large, white-walled and sterile smelling. As Harry walked in, he automatically took in the details. A large wooden table stood in the center of the room with a number of chairs around it and ashtrays on top. A few laptops sat on the shelves in the far corner. Three glass cabinets that contained surgical instruments. That was it for the furniture, with the exception of the receptacles for the dead.
A heavy odor of disinfectant hung in the air. “Ordinarily, we don’t need disinfectant, but this is summer and the bodies have begun to decay,” Bartok said.
He walked over to the wall where the deceased were ensconced in their temporary metal shells. He pulled one open and removed the sheet. Half a man was on the slab, the right side of him. The left side was missing, all of it, from head to toe. Dried blood kept the intact half stuck to the cold metal. Istvan immediately turned away and Harry suddenly experienced a bout of nausea. He fought it down. Tossing his lunch wouldn’t help things.
“Jesus,” Farrell whispered. “Who was this?” That comment seemed to sum it all up.
With an air of detachment, Bartok waved at the body. “This happened two days ago. His name is Tomas Marucz, a farmer near Gemenc. He was killed at night. Unfortunately, there were no witnesses. Naturally, we conducted an investigation, but there were no prints, no leads and no way to find the killers.”
At first, Harry chalked up the Hungarian army guy as being a cold fish, but then figured that he was used to seeing death up close and personal. Harry had been forced to kill—once—when he faced off against Piotr. He had no taste for killing. He’d only done so in order to save his life. After viewing this corpse, he had the feeling that a lot more death would be coming his way.
Revolution Page 6
