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Chapter 6 (#ulink_31839db3-0896-5798-b0f5-cb74d332d71b)
Salamanca, Spain.
34 hours and 28 minutes to confinement
Dr Andersson stares straight back at me.
I yell out her name, alerting Balthus, still on the cell, as Dr Andersson ducks out of sight, running towards the far entrance where the kitchen yawns wide open, exposed to the fields and beyond.
‘Maria,’ Balthus whispers, ‘where is she?’
Panic. Sheer panic and chaos rise now as I look to the cell phone. I need it, cannot have any noise give away my location. Checking left and right, I count to three then, fast, drop down and crawl on all fours, scurrying forward, snatch the cell then scamper back, slamming my body into a corner, hidden by a tower of books and by the lost, cracked crates that scatter the room.
I catch my breath, try to think.
‘Maria? Talk to me.’
I gulp down saliva. ‘She is here,’ I whisper. ‘Dr Andersson.’
‘Oh shit. Oh shit. She’s with MI5 and MI5 want the Project gone. That can mean only one thing, right?’
‘She is here to kill me.’ The words hang in the air, a foul stench jarring against the fresh, fragrant green grass burst from the fields beyond. For a moment, I freeze, not wanting to acknowledge that my peaceful retreat, my quiet hideaway has been shattered.
‘MI5 want all connections to the Project to disappear,’ Balthus says. ‘Kurt—Daniel—he said that to you, right? That’s why he wanted you to stay with him. The Project did not want to disappear, they broke away and wanted you with them; MI5 wanted you gone. Maria, you’re right. Oh Jesus. She’ll kill you—she’s a trained officer.’
I scan the kitchen door—nothing. Yet. ‘I am trained also.’
‘Yes, but she, well, she’s not like you. She won’t hesitate to do what she’s been told.’
I open my mouth to respond to Balthus when I stop. The image of Raven floats to my mind. They will make you kill me. I have no recollection of what I actually did to her, no tangible evidence of whether I ever hurt the woman or not—no real idea of who I am, of what I am, in truth, capable of.
I glance to the window. It is open. Another bird sits there now on the wooden ledge, head jerking right and left. I can see its feathers soft and shining even from here, a brown and black sheen shimmering in the morning sun.
‘There is no sign of her,’ I say, turning to the phone. ‘She may have a map of the dwelling.’
‘How did they find you?’
‘What?’
‘MI5,’ Balthus whispers. ‘How the hell did they find you? You’ve been off radar.’
I think for a moment, uncomfortable. Have I made a mistake in my encrypted file tracking? In my proxy ISP emails? ‘It is possible they may have infiltrated some files if they have the right technical people to carry out the hack.’ My eyes glance to the laptop open on the crate. ‘I need to hide my notebook.’
‘What? Maria, get out of there!’
A clatter of crates rings from outside, followed by a shatter of glass. Every single part of me drops still.
‘What was that?’ Balthus whispers.
My eyes dart to the side, unable to answer Balthus as I focus, every part of me on fire, desperately pressing back the guttural fear that surges upwards. I need to move now, get to the laptop then leave, but if I go to the right, I’ll have to open the door to the bedroom where my bag is stored, yet if I turn to the left and head past the kitchen where Dr Andersson may be, then I have no chance of grabbing the laptop and notebook.
My instinct is to go into meltdown, to curl up into a ball and slam shut my eyes and plead for this all to go away, so hard is it for me to cope. Yet even as my brain shouts at me to run, gradually, like a rainbow appearing on a stormy day, something happens—a change, a simmering, butter-coloured difference: I become calm. A coolness crackles over me as, in my head, an instinctive knowledge takes control, and over and over in my mind one phrase shoots across the shadows of my thoughts: prepare, wait, engage.
Up ahead, the kitchen door, before closed, is now swinging open.
My hairs stand on end. ‘She’s here.’
‘What? Get … you …she …’ The phone crackles, Balthus’s voice dipping in and out of audio.
I grip the cell tight, telling myself that if I do so, maybe, somehow, I won’t be on my own.
Every muscle in me becomes rigid, ready, suddenly not caring about the illegal means in which I was trained by the Project, because, right now, I want to know it all, want desperately to remember every tiny detail of what I was taught, because it could save me. My eyes land on the lone toothbrush on the shelf by the wall.
The phone flickers again.
‘Maria? Maria, are you okay? Are you there?’
Balthus. The sound of his voice, the familiar curve of it floods me, for some reason, with relief.
‘I am here.’ I keep my volume low—there are sounds creaking from the kitchen.
Prepare.
I do a rapid assessment. I am wearing my running gear. I am fast, fit, but even when I calculate the time and trajectory at which I can sprint, I know that if Dr Andersson has a gun and surveillance of her own, I will never escape unless I can get to the bedroom.
‘Can you get out?’ Balthus says.
‘The bedroom door opens onto the shed where the truck is parked—it is my only safe route out.’
‘Good! Can you get to the door?’
I look to the kitchen, calculate the angles and trajectory. ‘I cannot determine if I can be seen.’
‘Well, is there another way?’
I think fast when my eyes, scanning the area for Dr Andersson’s face, see something, something long, thick, rusty—solid.
An iron bar by the cabinet, one I use for the fire pit outside, now sits discarded, tossed to one side after I got distracted from obsessing over tracking every tiny detail about the NSA scandal.
The kitchen door suddenly sways, a waltz, one, two, three, one, two, three, dancing in and out of the room. Is she here? I look to the iron bar then back to the door, and even though it screeches when it swings, too loud for my ears, for my senses, I slap the aggravation it causes aside because it offers me something, that unbearable noise: it offers me cover.
I drop like a stone. Flat to the floor, I scurry along the tiles so fast, so quick that by the time the second creak sounds, my fingers are handcuffed to the iron bar and, on the third creak, I am hauling it up and crawling back to where the window sits.
The cell phone crinkles and Balthus’s voice trickles in. ‘Where are you?’
‘Home.’
‘No, I mean … Oh, it doesn’t matter. Have you got the laptop and book?’
‘No.’
‘But you can get them?’
‘Yes.’ I glance to where they still sit. Right now, it is all a matter of timing.
Wait …
I rest my back for a moment against the cool wash of the wall and listen. My hands squeeze the iron bar as I assess where the danger source is, scanning my memory, determining what I should do next. For some reason, after two, three seconds pass, I find myself slowly coming to a stand. It surprises me, the move, makes my pulse rocket, but still I do it, slipping the cell phone into the band pocket of my shorts, watching as my feet, ghost-like, become taut, engaged, and before I can stop myself, before I can order my body to halt its course, I am holding the iron bar aloft and preparing to stride straight through the kitchen door.
Eliminate the threat.
‘Maria,’ Balthus says, ‘have you left yet?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘I can eliminate the threat.’
‘What? No. Just get the laptop and notebook and run.’
‘Negative. The best course of action is to—’ I see her. There, in the solitary cabinet, a waterfall of blonde hair reflecting in the glass panes in the wood. My chest tightens as panic shoots up. ‘She is here.’
‘What? Christ, Maria. Move!’
I go to run, to dart out of the way, but before I do, before my feet flip fast enough, the window behind me shatters, a clap of thunder in the silence. Shards of glass rain down onto my bare neck, shoulders, arms and legs, scissor splinters tearing apart the warm, suede air of the summer sun.
A bag is thrust over my head, plunging me into a sudden frightening, claustrophobic darkness. I thrash about, frantic to get out, and, as I lift my arms to try to rip the bag off my head, the iron bar slips from my grip and clatters to the tiles.
‘Maria? Maria?!’
The bag becomes tighter and tighter, and Balthus’s voice echoes from the phone, the sound of him reduced to just lost, helpless words drifting alone into the ripped, fractured room.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_6fd9f438-82a8-5ad7-9c90-617368e45585)
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
I wake up once more to find myself still alive.
Woozy, weary, my eyelids flicker as my sight takes in a panoramic view of the room, of the black, the stench. My muscles ache and throb, and in my head is a searing pain that shoots down my neck to the base of my back and stays there, pulsating, a globe of pins pricking my skin and bones. I curl my fingers into fists. The hallucination, the memory of it all floods back, the water, the feeling of drowning all fresh in my mind as if the shore were still at my feet.
‘Patricia?’ I croak. ‘Can you hear me?’
There is a cough. ‘D … Doc?’
‘Patricia?’ Hearing her voice makes me happy for one solitary, exquisite second and I let out a small whoop. ‘What is your status?’
A laugh ripples out, weak, vanilla, but there. ‘I love how—’ she halts, hacks up something from her throat— ‘I love how even in a shithole like this, you’re still so formal.’ She gags then hauls in a shoal of breath. ‘My leg’s killing me.’
‘Your leg is killing you?’ I panic, confused. ‘How can your leg kill you?’
‘No, no it’s not …’ She laughs again, but it does not sound like her, as if were altered somehow, down an octave. ‘Doc, it’s a phrase. Remember those? I taught you about them in prison. My leg’s not actually killing me—it just means it really hurts.’
‘Oh.’
Some time passes, but I don’t know how much. I drift in and out of consciousness, the blackness of the room throwing a blanket over everything, rendering each line of vision I try to establish useless. Slowly, though, after a while, an element of lucidity begins to return. It is small, the tide of it, the clarity that trickles back towards the shore, towards the solid certainty of the land in my mind, but nonetheless it is there and, for the first time since I awoke in this room, there is a grip of strength inside me.
‘Doc, where are we?’
I let out a breath, one controlled exhalation, then think. Location, logistics. How did we get here? If there are drugs in my system, then how were they administered and why? To transport me? But from where? And if so, does that mean Patricia has been drugged too?
For the next few moments, we remain silent. Patricia, lying on the floor at whichever side she is, sings some type of Irish lullaby, a song about the sea, and for ten seconds, I become calm, listen only to her melody, all whipped vanilla cream and light chocolate soufflé. I know it is wrong. I know that for her to be here means danger, being in this room trapped with me, yet still, as she sings, as her voice dances through the air, gliding through the gloom, I feel a slice of gratitude, of selfish thankfulness that my friend is near to me.
‘Hey, Doc,’ Patricia says after a while, after the serene song has faded into the dark air, ‘do you remember when we first met?’
‘Oh. Yes. It was a Tuesday.’
‘Was it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cool. And do you remember what you said to me?’
The image of the scene flashes in my mind. Patricia, tattoos of the Virgin Mary and a blackbird on her arm, me bending forward to analyse them without saying anything at all to Patricia until she spoke again to me, telling me I was ‘getting a little close.’
‘The first words I spoke to you were about your name,’ I say. ‘“Patricia. It is the female form of Patrick. Patrick means—”’
‘Means nobleman.’ She laughs, joining in the end of my sentence. There is a sigh, small, mewed, and I find myself breathing more easy at the sound. ‘Your face was all bruised, Doc, do you remember?’
‘Yes.’ A flash comes to me, an image of a fist to the face. I swallow.
‘Doc, I’m so sorry I brought it up. Are you … are you okay?’
‘Why do people think I am a freak?’
‘Huh?’
‘Why do they call me weird?’
She wheezes into the air. ‘I don’t know, Doc. People are idiots. They don’t always see that it’s okay just to be who we are. Last time I looked, we were all, by, well, our very human nature, I guess, different to each other. At what point does different turn into weird? Who the hell knows? My answer? It doesn’t. We just are who we are, and the quicker the world accepts that, the better a place it will be.’
I sit and think about what my friend’s words mean and how, when I am confused, she seems to cut through the bewilderment, and the clouds in my head part a little quicker and the cage that surrounds makes me feel just a little less isolated.
After a few moments Patricia coughs. ‘She worked for MI5, right, that Michaela?’
‘Yes. She did.’
‘Jesus, it’s fucked up shit.’ She pauses, the blackness of the room pressing down on us. ‘I’m glad I met you, Doc, even though we’re locked up now in God knows where—I’m glad I met you. Without you, I … I wouldn’t have got out on parole so fast—that Harry lawyer of yours helped me, before he … well, you know.’ She inhales. ‘I still think about my mum, how she was in pain. It was the right thing to do to, you know … to end her life. I’d do the prison sentence all over again if I had to, just so she wouldn’t have to suffer.’
