Buch lesen: «The Killing Files»

Chapter 2

Salamancan Mountains, Spain.

34 hours and 56 minutes to confinement

Suddenly I am not standing in my Salamanca kitchen, but instead am in a white clinical room, a room that now, from my dreams, from my nightmares, I know well.

I am fifteen years old, limbs long and thin, jutting out at awkward Bambi angles. I am sitting robot-straight in a metal bed and my long matted rope of thick black hair is uncut and wild and resting on a white hospital gown where freckles puncture plump sun-kissed skin, cashmere soft, no lines yet of a longer life lived. ECG probes sit glued to my small rib cage and concave abdomen, and in the background the pit-put of a heart rate monitor hums.

I turn my head and see him. The man. I intake a sharp breath, but there is no surprise in it, no immediate concern, as if I have been expecting him, as if this, here, is a routine that offers me some strange, warped comfort.

‘Your vital signs are good,’ the man says. His voice has a Scottish lilt, each word a slice of a knife, a slow turn of a screw. ‘Can you tell me who I am?’

‘Dr Carr.’ My voice is a feather, a butterfly wing. I shiver.

He smiles and when he does, his lips slice thin and it makes me think of a cut on my arm. ‘And you have a special name for me, don’t you, Maria—what is it?’

‘Black Eyes.’

I can feel my nerves rise and so I scan the room as a distraction. The walls are white and by them stand three stainless steel seats and two cream Formica tables. There are no pictures or soft materials, just brown plastic blinds and two officers guarding the doors with handguns hanging by their sides. I don’t like it and so start to jig my leg.

‘Maria, look at me. Can you look at me?’

‘No.’ Jig, jig. ‘I want to go home.’

His smile slips and, without warning, his arm whips out and slaps my leg still. ‘Stop stimming and look at me.’

A sting like one hundred needle points pricks my skin. My leg drops still. I want to scream at him, jolted by the feel of his touch, but am too scared because I know he could shout and the noise would bother me too much, and so instead I attempt to do as he says so he won’t touch me again.

He rolls his fingers into his palm and withdraws his hand to his lap. ‘I’m sorry for that,’ he says. ‘We are on a tight deadline today.’

I strain my eyelids, force my sight to stare straight at him, but it is hard, hurts, almost in an uncomfortable way, as if opening my eyes to his, to anyone’s, would allow them to see into me, see into my thoughts. In the end, I only manage to make contact for two seconds then have to look away, exhausted.

He inhales. ‘For the next few hours, I want you to practise making eye contact for half a conversation. This will help you slip more seamlessly into a regular situation if you ever go operational. Make you appear more … normal. Yes?’ He smiles and I think I see tiny eye creases crinkle out on the corners of his face, but I am unsure. ‘Yes, Maria?’

‘Yes,’ I respond on autopilot.

‘Good. Look at me.’ I do. ‘One second longer, that’s it. Two, three, four … Good. You can lower your eyes now.’

I drop my gaze, shattered, as he takes notes in green ink on a yellow page. Behind him, a woman walks over, petite, a tattoo of a cross on her brown neck, hair so closely cropped to her scalp, it appears to shine. The woman stops and whispers in Black Eyes’ ear. I cannot hear them so I bend forward a little, yet, when I look down at my thin, gowned body, the probes sticking out, it is merely crumpled, having barely moved at all. Beside me the heart rate monitor beeps faster.

My body shifts on the bed. Black Eyes is nodding now to the woman who has appeared in the room and at first, the words they whisper fade into the squashed air, but after two then three seconds, their sentences filter through as, slowly, my ears switch fully on.

‘The programme is showing her skills are improving, Dr Carr,’ the woman whispers. ‘Her handler at the church is communicating very positive results.’

‘Such as?’

‘He gave her a complex code to crack and she did it within thirteen seconds.’

‘Good. Good. What else?’

She consults her notes. ‘The subject’s IQ is exceptionally high, photographic memory sharp—she is obsessed with classical composers, tracks all their family details, their names, all their pieces—’

‘Has she learnt to play the piano yet?’

‘Yes. Self-taught, Trinity College London, Grade Eight standard within three weeks. Further information: the way in which she can sense acute sounds and scents is exceptional—I know you were concerned about that.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘And her dexterous skills, her technical assimilation—it’s getting faster. She can take apart and reassemble a radio clock, for example, within three minutes now, last time it was five. Her handler at the school recorded that.’

There is a nod from Black Eyes as he turns and provides me with a narrow stare. ‘We have been operating for twenty years now and this is our breakthrough. She’s the only one the conditioning appears to be working on.’

‘Yes.’

He looks to her. ‘MI5 will want to hear about this.’

The woman hands him a slip of white paper. ‘Done. Here are the results we sent over to our contact there.’

Black Eyes scans the data, his fingers pinching the page, each a spindled vine of pale flesh. ‘All these people we have conditioned and tested, and none of them are quite like this test child, this Maria Martinez. What is her confirmed subject number?’

‘375.’

‘Subject 375. Yes.’ He taps the paper. ‘We have some scenarios I would like to use her for, see what she can do. MI5 are pressing us to assist them with unusual security threats—cyber elements, computers etcetera. Let’s see how she can help us.’

His head dips and, without warning, his skeletal fingers creep forward so that they skim my calf. I instantly flinch, but he doesn’t appear to notice, instead seems in some kind of trance. ‘It’s okay,’ he says to me. ‘It’s okay.’ Then he turns to the woman. ‘She is strong, but not yet old enough to fight, but soon …’ He lifts his hand, knuckles and flesh hovering in the air, and the thought occurs to me that he may hit me. ‘While she is here, we will ask her what she knows.’

The woman frowns. ‘But won’t that stay in her memory, the covert details are just that—covert. What if she recites them when she is back in her normal environment?’

He shakes his head. ‘We will give her Versed as we always have, administered before she is dispatched home to Spain. It has worked well so far.’ He looks to me. ‘It will wipe her immediate mind so no secrets are divulged—she will simply believe she has visited the specialist clinic with her mother because of her Asperger’s.’ He hands the woman the paper. ‘The Versed drug means she will be unable to recall fully what she has or has not done, but enough remains in the subconscious for her to be useful until she reaches an age where she can be fully operational. It is important that you learn this.’ He folds his arms. ‘The subject may recall things, facts, but they will be hazy—like dreams. But we need that. We need this data, this training we give her, to remain stored in her brain somewhere so we can use it when the time is right.’

‘Maria?’ He is talking straight to me now. A rush of heat prickles my entire body and I don’t know what to do. My eyes search for a way out but there are no exits, here, anywhere. ‘Maria,’ he says, voice unusually soft, low, ‘where are we?’

But nerves rack me, and instead of speaking, I press my back into the bed, the cold cotton of the gown skimming my knees, goosebumps popping out.

‘I want to go home.’

‘You will. But first—that’s it, look at me, good—answer me: where are we?’

I look between the woman and Black Eyes. When I open my mouth, my voice trembles. ‘I am in a Project facility.’

‘And who are the Project?’

‘It is a covert group linked to MI5.’

‘And what do we do?’

Despite myself, despite my resistance, the words trip from my mouth, as if they are preset, robotic. ‘The Project is a covert programme formed in response to a global threat of terrorism and, specifically, cyber terrorism. It trains people with Asperger’s to use their unique, high IQ skills to combat security alerts. Only MI5 knows the organisation exists.’

‘And the UK government?’ he asks. ‘What of them—do they know who we are?’

‘Negative. They have no knowledge of the Project’s existence.’

‘Good.’ His chest puffs then deflates as his head bobs up and down, a smile snaking in to his face. ‘Good.’

The woman nods once to Black Eyes then leaves via a door that has no handles or hinges. Black Eyes waits for her to exit then turns to me, perching himself on the end of the bed. I grip the sheets tight. At first he does not speak, but then, after two seconds, he opens his mouth and a precise, metallic voice strides out.

‘You will not remember being here, Maria. You won’t recall this conversation, you won’t recollect the details of the tests we carry out on you. But know that we are always watching you, are always … here for you. We are everywhere.’ He leans to the side and, from a metal trolley, picks up a loaded syringe. My heart rate rockets.

‘You are at school now, yes?’

I swallow, confused. ‘No. I am not at school now. Now I am here.’

He pauses, one second, two, three, his teeth appearing to clench. ‘Your teacher next year,’ he says finally, exhaling, ‘he will be working for us, helping us to watch you. These people you see nearly every day—they are your handlers. Even your family priest. But of course, you won’t—’ a strange mewed laugh emits from his mouth—‘you won’t remember.’ He sighs. ‘I cannot believe I am telling you this now—you’ll only forget. But Father Reznick, your friendly Catholic priest—he’s one of us.’ My eyes go wide. The priest? But I saw him kissing Mama. ‘Oh, the big brown eyes! Maria, I am growing to know you well now. You do remind me of my own daughter …’ He drifts off, momentarily looking downwards, the needle resting in his fingers, and I glance to the door and wish I could run. ‘Anyway,’ he says after a moment, ‘do not worry. When you go on to university and work, we will have our people there, too, Project people like me and you, people who will watch over what you do, even though you won’t, at the time, know they are with us.’ He flicks the needle with a finger. Sweat beads pop out all over my face. ‘Oh, there’s no need to fret,’ he says now, leaning in, studying the sheen on my forehead. ‘We are friends, aren’t we?’

I recoil. ‘I do not have any friends.’

He halts, tilting his skull. ‘No. No I don’t suppose you do.’ He drifts off again for a second, then, checking the needle, he handcuffs my wrist with his fingers and pulls my arm towards him. ‘Your mother, Ines—lovely woman, isn’t she?’

I say nothing, instead watch his eyes narrow as they inspect the vial for air bubbles. Vomit wells in the base of my throat.

‘Shame she is on her own now after your father, Alarico, died. Loneliness is a terrible thing. Car crash, wasn’t it?’

Alarico, my papa. Hearing his name makes my head spin a little, my heart ache. The vomit rumbles.

‘Still,’ Black Eyes says now, his Scottish lilt dancing on the cold air, ‘she’s a strong woman, your mother, a lawyer like your father, but, well, more forthright. She’ll make a good politician when she hits the Spanish parliament after she’s got over her little … illness. Your brother, too—Ramon, isn’t it? Seems like he’s following in their legal footsteps what with his fondness for debate club. Quite the family. And family, Maria, it’s important, keeps us together …’

Black Eyes is leaning in to me so close now, I can see the faint shadow of stubble on his chin, feel the hot garlic and tobacco of his breath on my neck. I want to scream. I want to run a million miles away, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot bring myself to move, and even if I did run, where would I go? Where would I ever go?

‘You though, Maria—my … our test child,’ Black Eyes says now, ‘for you we have plans. We would like you to become … a doctor. Try and press that into your subconscious, hmmm? Even though this will make all of today fade away. A plastic surgeon, specifically. We need to test your dexterous skills, hone them so they can one day be of use to us. Study in Madrid at the University Hospital there—that’s where one of our handlers resides.’ He smiles, a flash of crooked, tombstone teeth. ‘Do you understand?’

I nod.

‘With words.’

‘I understand.’

‘Good. Because you are the one our conditioning is working on and we wouldn’t want all these trips your mother takes you on to be wasted now, would we?’

‘Mama believes she is taking me to an autism clinic,’ I say, an unexpected flash of defiance streaking through me. ‘She does not know what you really do. You are lying to her.’

He stares at me. He levels his black, bottomless eyes at me and delivers a look so chilling that, even with my emotionally challenged brain, I get a shiver of fright.

‘We have a bit of terrorism to fight out there,’ he continues now as if I had never spoken. ‘Pesky little terrorists trying to break into our computer networks, into our global infrastructures. But now—’ Black Eyes taps my arm, lowers the needle to my skin ‘—now, my dear, sweet Maria—now you will forget …’