Master of Starlight

by Keith Short

  ‘You first, Gunther,’ Slavic conceded. ‘What do you think we should do?’

  ‘I think we should try and get Leon back in. We’ve been struggling ever since he left and now that Kaminsky has gone, we can’t run the show ourselves.’

  ‘But Chekhov wouldn’t stand for that. He still thinks Leon is responsible for passing the data to the Americans.’

  ‘And what about you, Roman? Who do you think is responsible?’

  ‘I have to agree with Chekhov.’ Slavic looked down at the table. ‘Why else would Leon just disappear like that?’

  ‘It couldn’t have been him. How could he get the data out? We’re going to have to work together on this. In the meantime, I’ll have to move back to Greifswald and take over Kaminsky’s data transfer role.’

  ‘But that would leave me here as the only remaining member of the lead team.’

  ‘What else do you suggest we do? Chekhov isn’t going to want to suspend the project, is he?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. We have to—’

  The conference room door burst open. A team of armed security staff charged in, followed by Ivan Kuzmin. Schroeder jumped up.

  ‘What the—?’

  Before Schroeder could get the words out, he found himself handcuffed. Two of Kuzmin’s men eased Slavic out of his chair. ‘Mr Chekhov has instructed me to apprehend you both while he completes his investigations into the disclosure of Fusion’s classified research information to a third-party organisation. You are under house arrest until he has the opportunity to question you. I would ask you to come with me, gentlemen,’ announced the stern faced Kuzmin, as if reading their criminal rights.

  The two men looked at each other in dismay. ‘I’ve heard a rumour that there are old prison cells somewhere in this building’s basement,’ Slavic said. ‘God help us both.’

  The nurse left the cell. Roman Slavic flopped back on his tiny mattress, gazed up at the flaked and dirty ceiling and began to construct images in his head from the amorphous patterns of shadows and smudges. It was like the game he used to play as a schoolboy during his summer holidays, lying back on the grass and creating one magical scene after another from the evolving cloudscape. But there was no movement in this tableau, just the static demonic shapes of those who were about to torment him.

  The sedative, or whatever it was they gave him, seemed to kick in as soon as the syringe was drawn back from his forearm. It would make him feel relaxed and dreamy. This morning was no different but in the back of his mind there lurked more sinister emotions. He thought about the other members of the technical lead team. He was the boss, but they were seen as the brains behind the operation. And that had always hurt him. He was forever having to let the clever young upstarts take the credit for Fusion’s technical progress. Why hadn’t God made him a super-brain like Leon Dabrowski? He was a bloody genius. It wasn’t fair. Yes, I have a doctorate in natural philosophy and from a good university at that – but so what? The pay at Fusion is good – but that meant nothing to him either. The only silver lining to this dark cloud was his position of authority within the company – that allowed him to retain his status within the academic institutions. His fellow academics tolerated him though none of them respected him for his intellectual capacity, he was sure of that. And where had his ambitions taken him after all these years? They’d taken him nowhere. He’d fallen short of his goals by a long way. He was an old fossil, a figurehead, an administrator, a suit, a bloody laughing stock.

  His team, his team. How he’d let them down. They worked so hard to secure the future of nuclear energy. They entrusted him with their data. And now he’d shown that vile man Vitaliev how to operate the crypto-key. Poor Pawel, he didn’t deserve to die. Would these people kill the others? Should I have warned Gunther? He shuddered at the thought of a gifted scientist like Leon Dabrowski being mercilessly killed for someone’s commercial gain.

  Slavic started to sob, rolled over and stared at the wall a foot away from his eyes. Like the ceiling, it hadn’t been decorated for years, decades even. Why did Chekhov maintain such a godforsaken place as this? The thought of Vladimir Chekhov filled his stomach with the sick taste of fear. What was to become of him? How long would it be before they came for him? He sat up on the rickety old bed, took off his shirt and surveyed every inch of material until he found a weak spot. He began to pick at it with his bare fingers.

  Ivan Kuzmin carried the breakfast tray down the dusty wooden steps. It was so different from the rest of the building down here – a place so incongruous that he felt he was entering a different era, a different world even. Every morning he followed this same routine. He could have arranged for one of his men to do it, but he preferred to carry out the task himself; the old man deserved some respect, didn’t he? In Kuzmin’s eyes, Slavic was a loyal and dignified company man who shouldn’t be treated like a criminal, and these disgusting cells should have been converted to something useful years ago. God only knew what heinous acts they committed in this cell when Anatoly Chekhov was alive. Was Vladimir Chekhov aware of its existence?

  He set the tray down on the table outside the door to Slavic’s cell, unlocked the door with the ancient gaoler’s key and pushed it ajar. ‘Your breakfast, Dr Slavic,’ he said courteously. He opened the door a little further, conscious of the need to preserve the old director’s dignity. ‘Dr Slavic, are you awake?’ It was unusual for Slavic to be asleep at this time and, when there was no response, Kuzmin fumbled at the light switch. But the light didn’t come on. His eyes adjusted and through the gloom he made out the shape of a bare arm dangling towards the floor. He threw the cell door wide open to make best use of the feeble lighting in the corridor, took a single step into the room and stopped. A kneeling figure leaned forward at an angle of forty-five degrees. ‘Oh God, Slavic!’ he shouted as he swiped the alarm icon on his wafer.

  The two duty security officers arrived within a minute, switched on their magno-torches and illuminated the cell with brilliant white light. All three men stood frozen at the entrance and gawped at the purple-necked naked body of Dr Roman Slavic, held rigidly in place by a taut ribbon of twisted cloth that was tied to the bed’s metal headboard. Kuzmin was first to speak. ‘God, he must have calculated that to perfection.’

  CHAPTER 34

  ‘Wake up, Ana. Time to go.’

  Magda was already awake. Filled with anxiety, she’d been unable to sleep. Throughout the restless hours, she’d occupied her mind with her partially constructed computer model – every room she’d been in, every corridor, every predicted appendage to the subterranean complex. The waiting was over. She was ready to go.

  The entrance door to Sergei’s quarters closed behind them. ‘Follow me and question nothing I say.’ They set off down the corridor into the gloom; only the pale blue emergency lighting illuminated the way forward. After ten minutes and two downward elevator journeys, Magda found herself in a corridor that she recognised. Surely, we’re not going into the Drum Room? She said nothing and followed Sergei into the pitch-black silence of the cylindrical room. A few steps in, the LEDs came to life and the surface became soft under her feet. Sergei tapped his wafer and a section of the room’s wall slid back to reveal what to Magda looked like a bank of ATM slots. Fascinated, she watched him insert his wafer into one of the slots and, from the slot above, another wafer emerged. Taking the replacement wafer, Sergei spoke for the first time since they’d left his quarters.

  ‘Initiate exit route.’

  The floor beneath Magda’s feet took on a solid feel. ‘You told me you’d never had a Melomet signature. You lied to me.’

  ‘I also told you to keep quiet. Follow me.’

  They walked to the centre of the room. Sergei stopped her dead with his hand. ‘Activate plinth.’ The cylindrical section of floor under their feet started to rise. Soon the rest of the floor was twenty metres below them and they were still accelerating – they we
re going to pile into the roof. Magda grabbed hold of Sergei and pulled herself into his chest. Impact was only metres away. At the last moment, the ceiling slid to the side and they glided through the aperture. Magda breathed a sigh of relief as the plinth settled to a steady speed. After a further minute, they slowed to a halt.

  ‘Open exit door.’ A door slid open in the wall to reveal a long tunnel curving away into the distance.

  This is it, the way out. Her model hadn’t predicted that the Drum Room doubled up as a hidden elevator shaft. Why should it have done? She’d been plotting her way out through a multi-channel maze. She chastised herself. Why didn’t I have the foresight to develop parallel models?

  Sergei took her hand. ‘Are you ready for this, Ana?’ They stepped forward on to the aluminium floor. ‘Start!’

  ‘A travellator?’

  ‘It is safe for you to speak again now,’ Sergei said with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

  ‘Sorry, I forgot myself again.’

  The moving walkway soon reached its operating speed. Magda felt the thrill of its rapid pace around the circular tunnel. At last, I’m getting out. But escapades such as this had a habit of ending up in strange places. And Sergei was more unpredictable than normal tonight.

  The walkway decelerated. ‘What happens next?’ she asked, but no answer came back. She looked across at Sergei and realised he wasn’t listening. The travellator had slowed to a crawl and his eyes were glued in the forward direction. ‘Sergei, are you OK?’ He didn’t move. She followed his gaze and saw what had grabbed his attention. There was a junction ahead. ‘Who are they, Sergei?’

  ‘This wasn’t meant to happen.’

  ‘But who are they?’

  ‘Reverse!’

  The travellator accelerated away from the junction. Sergei snapped out of his trance. ‘The junction we were approaching is a carousel roundabout. It links both complexes to the exit. But it shouldn’t be occupied by those people.’ He pointed back up the tunnel. Magda caught a last glimpse of the group in the distance. It was a steady stream of pedestrian traffic by now.

  ‘It looked like a fire drill,’ Magda said. ‘You’re telling me there’s another complex? What’s going on, Sergei?’

  ‘We don’t have fire drills down here. But I agree, it looks like some sort of evacuation. We mustn’t get mixed up in that. I know of one more emergency route. We’re here now. Stop at EJ One.’

  The travellator stopped. Magda noticed a thin red line around the circumference of the tunnel’s otherwise white wall; next to the line was a small label: ‘Emergency Junction 1’.

  ‘Open EJ One!’

  A door slid back to reveal another tunnel. This one was straight with a rectangular cross section. ‘We walk from here but be careful.’ Sergei pointed up to the tunnel’s roof. ‘Those alarm sensors have narrow detection beams – we have to keep to the edges. And don’t touch the walls.’

  They set off down the tunnel, taking care not to drift into the middle. Magda couldn’t prevent her thoughts from being diverted to her model. A second complex? It has its own secret exit route and the two routes meet at a single junction? Got it, two parallel complexes integrated into the same three-dimensional space. Two independent worlds with minimal cross-linkage. How clever. For the first time, she understood why her model had predicted so much unused space.

  Sergei stopped. ‘Here it is.’

  Magda could see no indication of their next junction. He looked at her and smiled. It was a glimpse of the old Sergei.

  ‘Look up. See how the sensors in the roof are missing at this point. You’re safe to cross to my side now. Open exit!’

  The hidden door revealed itself by moving back a couple of centimetres before flashing to one side. But it wasn’t the outside world that Magda was looking at. She peered down yet another corridor, just like those she saw on a daily basis. The weight of dismay pressed on her shoulders. She felt like bursting into tears. ‘Sergei, you’ve been deceiving me. It’s just another one of your cruel jokes. You—’

  Sergei placed his finger over her lips. ‘One final leg, I promise. But you must remain silent once more.’

  As they approached the end of the corridor, Magda could make out a sign through the gloom: ‘Emergency Exit’. The door to the world outside? She jumped as he called out, ‘Exit!’ and grabbed her by the elbow. They dashed for the closed door. ‘Don’t stop,’ Sergei shouted. Ten metres from the door, Magda felt herself being tugged forward as Sergei stepped up the pace. The solid-looking door hadn’t budged. They were going to slam into it. ‘Now!’ Sergei yelled at the top of his voice. The door slid open. They burst into a vast hall and the door zipped shut behind them.

  The hall was teeming, people wandering everywhere in a maelstrom. ‘Quick,’ Sergei said, ‘keep you head down and don’t show your face till we get out.’ They weaved and pushed their way through the throng. Magda tucked into Sergei’s armpit as he hustled her along the hall. A pale white light shone from above but she knew better than to look up. Her freedom was approaching. Please God, don’t take it away now. They reached the glazed entrance door to the building’s ground floor.

  ‘Please form lines and stay calm,’ someone shouted above the purling din.

  Sergei glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Goodbye,’ she heard him whisper as he held up his wafer to the reader. The door opened. ‘We’re out!’ he cried as the door closed behind them. ‘Let’s go!’ Heads down and holding hands, they ran down the gravel drive and through the open wrought-iron gate – the gate to freedom.

  The early morning silence in the park was enticing. Her turn to drag him. She grabbed Sergei by the hand. ‘Come on, PTI, let’s go.’ The cold air battered her cheeks as she ran and the delicate scrunch of frosted grass under her feet was exhilarating. She shouted out loud. ‘We’re free, Sergei, free at last!’

  They stopped under a leafless old oak tree that peered over a sea of white turning green in the heat of the rising sun. Hands on knees, Magda panted deep breaths of fresh cold air and felt the lifeblood surging through her body. It’s all so beautiful.

  ‘Look, Sergei, look at the sunrise.’ She tilted her head up to the pale blue sky and spun around with her hands in the air. ‘It’s the sun we can see over there, with nothing but empty space separating us from it. None of your frosted glass. And look at the grass down there. Real growing grass, not gym matting.’ The joy of freedom overwhelmed her. She flung her arms around him and sank into his heaving chest. ‘Oh, Sergei,’ she sobbed, ‘we’ve done it.’

  But Sergei wasn’t holding her like he normally did. He removed her arms from his waist and eased her away. ‘Yes, Ana, we are free.’

  Why was he handling her like this, with a total lack of emotion? With the break of dawn, the full realisation of what they’d done flooded her body like an urn filling with water. ‘Sergei, what’s wrong?’

  He didn’t answer. He looked at her in a way she didn’t recognise. She’d used him and he knew it. She’d slept in his bed and it was as if he’d forgotten. He’d been her minder, trained her body to the peak of fitness and smiled at her while he did it. She was looking at the same handsome face and impressive body, but the Sergei she knew and pretended to love was no longer with her. This was someone different standing in his place. And she was afraid of this man.

  ‘Sergei, I have to go.’

  ‘Ana, you always had to go. And I wish you well.’

  She kissed his cheek and remembered the first time. It was another peace offering but this time it was also a goodbye. ‘I’ll miss you, Sergei.’

  Sergei said nothing but offered his hand. It was so impersonal, so businesslike. It seemed wrong to part like this. Ladylike, she shook his hand but couldn’t look at his face. In the knowledge that these were her final moments with Sergei, she turned away and walked across the open expanse of grass. She could feel his eyes following her. Had she
hurt him? Did he despise her for what she’d done?

  Compelled to look at him for one last time, she stopped and turned back. There was nothing but fields surrounding the old tree, and the nearest park feature was a copse over a hundred metres away. As if everything she’d experienced was a dream, PTI Sergei disappeared. Magda stood alone wondering what to do next. Then she realised – Ana is gone too.

  CHAPTER 35

  Malkin had an uneasy feeling that something was going on around him today. As usual, he was shut away in his private viewing room, busy reviewing old recordings, looking for potential improvements to feed back to Rodin and the sexual fantasy designers. And as usual, he spotted few opportunities for enhancing the fantasies. The close-up shots of his clients showed them to be delighted with their experiences in Eight Over Nine. Rodin was doing a fine job.

  Thinking about it, he hadn’t seen Rodin for days. The other job had to take priority at times, of course, and the benefits outweighed the risks as far as links to the Russian Embassy were concerned. And what about the strange noises he’d heard earlier that morning? He instructed the Melomet to reduce the soundtrack volume and listened again. The rumblings were still there but sounded as if they were coming from further away. He’d investigate this later. Perhaps it was a test run for one of Rodin’s new fantasies. Where the hell is Rodin?

  He turned his attention back to the video-wall. The screen went blank. What the . . .?

  ‘Call for you, Mr Malkin,’ said the Melomet, ‘from Mr Chekhov.’

  Malkin jumped as the imposing figure of Vladimir Chekhov snapped at him, ‘I will see you in the pakhan’s office, Malkin. Chekhov out.’ The screen went blank.

  Chekhov? Here at Goldhurst, waiting for him down there in the lower levels. A hot wave of panic surged inside him. He must have already seen what’s been going on in his father’s old domain and he’d have gone ballistic. What was he going to tell him after all this time? Oh, and by the way, Vladimir old chap, I meant to mention my flagship brothel, Eight Over Nine. It just slipped my memory. He hurried to the elevator.