87
I PUT THE MAP MILA HAD shown me into my head. Mila had told me there was a sharp bend after you entered the tunnel from the house, and that was where the old complex lay, where Zaid would have done his secret work, and where the truth about this weapon would be.
I ran. Dim lights illuminated the tunnel, and the air smelled damp. I could hear in the distance a rushing of water. As I went down the tunnel, the sound increased in volume and then faded as I ran deeper into the ground. The passageway opened into a large open space, hewn from rock. Concrete blocks, gray with age, constituted the floor. The air was cool. Low-hanging lights. A metal table filled with an array of computers. Personal photos dotted it: Bahjat Zaid and his family; a picture of Yasmin as a girl, standing with her father, the sun slanting across her face.
I shut the door behind me and flipped the lock, then I sat at the computer at the center of the table. Gear that looked like external hard drives was attached to the machines. Each drive held a small slot, too small for a CD, more like a flash-drive connector but narrower. Each bore a Militronics stamp.
I moved the mouse. The computer’s monitor awoke. Someone had been here, and recently. The screen showed what looked like an oversized barcode image, full of encoded data that meant nothing to me.
I looked at the file’s name: DNA 017. This was someone’s DNA analysis? The software had an Open Recent Files option.
There was a list of files under the arrow: DNA 001 to DNA 015. I hit the More option under the last listing. It showed a numerically ordered list of files, the last being DNA 050. Fifty files, fifty DNAs.
In each corner was a picture: DNA 050 was a girl who looked to be about twelve.
They were analyzing the genetic profiles of children? Why?
I started scanning the files. Most were children; a few were men; the rest were women, most appearing to be in their forties and fifties. They looked like normal, everyday people. Some of the photos looked like passport images, but some did not; the people, all well dressed, were walking, several of them waving at the camera. I recognized none of them, and no names were attached to the files.
Who were these people?
I looked at the drives. One was mounted on the computer’s screen. Maybe all the answers were on the external drive—a backup I could take with me. I selected Eject on the icon.
But the drive didn’t eject. Instead, a small chip did, from the drive. I held it up. It had a flat shiny surface, a grid on it echoing the one I’d seen on the weird gun and on the remnants of the Amsterdam bomb. On the table lay a plastic case sized for the chip. I slid it into the protective case, then put the case into my shoe.
Then the door unlocked and opened as I began to sit down at the computer again.
Edward and Yasmin stood there, with a gun locked on Mila’s head. The same unusual gun I’d seen him fire inside St. Pancras.
“Hands up, Sam,” Edward said.
I obeyed.
“Finally. Face-to-face.” He smiled. “Wow. You’re a piece of work, man.”
I didn’t speak. I thought of him slapping Lucy in the car. I thought of him driving away while my friends burned and died.
“I don’t blame you for trying,” he said. “You are much tougher than I ever thought you would be. We figured you for, you know, a PowerPoint jockey mostly. But no. I really have to say, you surprised me.”
My gun was on the table, less than a foot away from me. Even if they killed me and Mila, I could not let them walk. Whatever they were planning, my God, against innocent people, against kids…
“If you move or resist us,” Edward said, “your baby dies. It just takes one call.”
He knew where my child was.
“Stay still,” Edward said. “Yasmin, take his weapons.”
She obeyed. She brought the gun and the knife to Edward.
“Why?” I said. “Why my wife? Why kill all your friends in Holland?”
“Why should I explain a thing to you? I don’t care if you die confused. Yasmin, search him.”
She came back to me and her hands, shaking, roamed my body. She didn’t think to check my shoes…
“Who do you work for, Sam?”
I nodded at Mila. Mila said nothing.
“And who does she work for?”
“She won’t tell me.”
“Where is our troublesome Lucy?”
“Gone.”
“Dead,” Mila lied. “She wouldn’t tell Sam where his son is.”
“I will put your mind at ease about one point, Sam.” Edward smiled. “I sold your son.”
They were the four worst words I’d ever heard. Worse than “Watch what happens to men like him,” when my brother was killed. Worse than “I’m supposed to kill you,” said by my wife. For a moment I thought my knees would buckle.
“I sold him to a trafficker. She’s keeping him close at hand for me. She’ll kill him if you or Lucy make trouble.”
I have no words for the horror, the rage. White hot, like I’d been crafted from lightning.
I spoke the only words that occurred to me: “I’m going to kill you.” I should have bargained. Said I’d do whatever. Just don’t… just don’t hurt my kid. Sell him? Vomit rose in my throat. I swallowed the sourness down.
Edward laughed. “No, you’re not.” He gestured me away from the computer. I stepped away. Then he did something odd. He ejected a computer chip from the side of the gun where the unusual grid lay and inserted a new one from his shirt pocket. The chip was just like the one in my shoe. The gun was a bit bigger than the standard Glock, heavy and glossy and very dangerous.
Yasmin started. “Are you giving a demo? Did you get his—”
“Never mind,” Edward said. “I want to take them to the shaft.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Mila was in handcuffs. Yasmin took me by the arm, pressed a gun against my neck, and guided me out of the lab. We walked—me and Yasmin first, then Edward and Mila. The corridor was narrow, not enough room to fight. And if I fought, he had my son killed.
“Your father just wanted to save you,” I said to Yasmin. “He gave up everything to save you.”
“My father wanted to control me.” She virtually spat out the words.
“Someone’s controlling you far worse than your father ever did,” I said.
“Shut up,” Edward said.
I wanted to keep him rattled. He’d make a mistake, maybe. “The DNA analysis for the kids and the other people? What’s that about?”
“You’ll be free of all worries by then,” Edward said. “Don’t burden your mind with it.”
This was the end of my life. No way out, no exit. We walked down to a dark room that was a widening in the corridor. I could smell the earthy tang of artesian water.
“Just kill them,” Yasmin said. Her voice shook. We knew what had been done to her, and she didn’t like us being around. We were from her old life, outside the cocoon where Edward had trapped her.
The hallway’s splinter opened up into a narrow room, and the concrete ended at a heavy steel door. We went through the door into a round stone room. At the end of the room was a large hole, nearly seven feet across. In its depths I could hear a rush of water. I remembered seeing the start of a river on the property map. This must be the underground route of that river.
“Take him to the edge, Yasmin,” Edward said. She eased me along. Edward kept one gun trained on Mila’s throat, the other on me.
“You behaved, so your son lives,” Edward said. “You are a good father.”
“You don’t need to hurt my kid. Ever.” I was going to die for a son I’d never see. Okay. It was what it was. But I wished I’d gotten to hold him, to see his face, look for the clear bits of me and Lucy—yes, even Lucy, the Lucy of my dreams, the honest one—in his face.
Edward’s mouth twitched. “I’m sure he’ll have a good life.”
I had nowhere to run, nowhere to fight, and in my last moment I decided dignity was the only exit.
Let me go, Lucy had said, and I hadn’t. I couldn’t. It had got me here. “I’m sorry, Mila,” I said. She nodded.
Edward raised the odd, heavy gun that he’d slipped the computer chip into and aimed it at my chest. He was seven feet away. I wondered if I’d die before I hit the water, if I’d drown. I didn’t want to drown. I thought of my father, my mother, the weird life they’d made for me, my brother. I thought of Daniel. I held on to him.
The barrel of his gun centered on my chest.
He fired.
I kept standing and like an idiot I looked down at my chest, where a gaping hole should have been. My T-shirt was unmarred.
Four feet away from me, Yasmin staggered, stunned. Blood welled from her chest.
Couldn’t be. The gun was aimed directly at me. Impossible. She was four feet to my left, and Edward’s aim hadn’t veered.
Edward laughed. Mila’s mouth dropped open. I caught Yasmin at the edge of the shaft, felt the life pulse out of her as I held her in my arms.
“One man’s science,” he said, “is another man’s magic.”
“What… what?” I managed. She couldn’t be dead. The gun was aimed at me.
“I don’t need her anymore.” He raised the gun again.
“While you die in the dark, I am going to kill your baby,” he hissed. “Just because I can.”
He fired two more shots. I held Yasmin, tried to turn us both away but there was nowhere to go. The bullets hammered into her and I fell into blackness. I fell into dark water, Yasmin still in my arms.