Headcase, p.31
Headcase, page 31
I scrabble around like an upturned beetle for a while, and then manage to get my foot on the gas. I floor it. The engine screams, and the car moves forwards—but slowly. I haven’t released the park brake. I flail around trying to reach it, but my real arm is on the wrong side, and releasing a park brake without a thumb is hard at the best of times. Instead, the car just screeches slowly towards the far side of the lot, smoke pouring from the engine.
My lungs are crying out for air. My vision tunnels. I swing the steering wheel sideways, trying to dislodge the killer.
The car swerves, and there’s a thud from behind me as a human skull hits the window. But the killer hangs on, and worse than that, he adjusts his grip. Now he’s got my artery clamped, not just my windpipe. I’ll be unconscious in five seconds. Four.
I blast the horn, hoping to get the attention of someone, anyone. The response is a swift punch to my right ear. Three. It feels like I’m sinking, down through the seat cushions, through the undercarriage, into the tar beneath the vehicle.
Two. Stay awake! I tell myself.
One. Fight it … Don’t let … Don’t …
Zero.
CHAPTER 40
Which sport involves ladling soup?
I wake up on a hard floor under harsh lights. When I go to sit up, I try to put weight on my missing arm, and collapse again. My head is pounding and my throat is raw. I try to sit up again, and succeed this time. I blink until my eyes adjust, and find myself looking at a bowling ball and a feather, suspended from mechanical claws.
I’m in the hypobaric chamber.
I clamber to my feet, stagger over to the door, and try the handle. It turns, but the door won’t budge. It’s blocked from the outside, something heavy dragged in front of it. I ram the door with my shoulder, but it’s like hitting a brick wall. The impact jars my neck and leaves my head spinning.
I get out Garcia’s phone. No signal.
‘Help!’ I shout, because I can’t think of anything else to do. I’m in exactly the same position Rob Cho was in, and he ended up as a bloated corpse. If a guy from NASA couldn’t think of a way out of this, what hope do I have?
‘Good,’ a voice says. ‘You’re awake.’
The sound is coming from a hole in the wall, next to the door. Metal shavings are coiled on the floor beneath it. This hole has been drilled recently. When I touch the edge, it’s still hot.
I peer through it, and see a fragment of a mouth. A gold-capped tooth.
‘Franklin Anders,’ I say.
Silence for a moment. Then he says, ‘I’m really sorry about this.’
‘Is that what you told Rob Cho?’
Another pause, then he says, ‘They said I’d only have to put a flash drive into my computer. They offered to pay for Emily’s treatment. She was dying. What sort of father would say no?’
I remember what he said in the hospital: There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter.
‘Then they told me to put Rob in this chamber and make it seem like an accident. I refused. So they …’ He chokes. ‘Someone at the hospital was working for them. Emily got the wrong medication. She stopped breathing for seven and a half minutes. They said if I didn’t kill Rob, it would happen again, and this time there’d be no bringing her back.’
He wants me to forgive him for my own murder. I’m not going to.
‘The CIA can protect you,’ I say. ‘And Emily.’ Hopefully he doesn’t realise I’ve been burned.
‘There’s no way to hide from these people.’ His voice hardens. ‘Tell me what you know.’
Anders has compromised the seal of the hypobaric chamber to have this conversation. There’s no speaker in here, and no signal, so I guess he didn’t have a choice. Being an atmospheric composition analyst, he probably knows what he’s doing. He could plug the hole at any time, perhaps by putting a steel plate over it. Then he could flick the switch to depressurise the chamber, and the negative pressure would hold the plate in place while I suffocate.
‘You really got the drop on me in that parking lot,’ I say. Running my mouth, while my brain works on the problem. ‘Pretty embarrassing. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t?’
Anders refuses to be distracted. ‘Tell me what you know.’
‘And then you’ll let me out of here, right?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘But I won’t depressurise the chamber. I’ll just leave you here. Someone will find you and let you out tomorrow morning. I’ll be long gone by then.’
He’s lying. I’m a dead man. There’s no way out of this. But I can save Thistle, if I’m smart.
‘No offence,’ I say, ‘but what assurances do I have that—’
‘None. You’ll just have to trust me.’
‘You play hardball, huh?’ My throat feels like it’s stuffed with sandpaper. ‘Okay. Can you fit a permanent marker through that hole?’
‘Why?’
The free pens in my pocket aren’t permanent. ‘So I can write your name on my skin,’ I say. ‘That way, if anything were to happen to me, the police wouldn’t have any trouble identifying my killer. You understand.’
There’s another pause, just long enough for Anders to think he’s outsmarted me. The police will never see my body—I’ll be buried in a deep grave or sunk to the bottom of Galveston Bay. It won’t matter what’s written on my skin.
‘Deal,’ he says.
A minute later, a thin marker pen emerges through the hole. I remove the cap. I write Anders’ name on my belly in big, obvious writing. Then I write a message to Thistle on my right shin, and roll down the cuff of my pants to cover it. The message says, Call Reese Thistle at FBI. Tell her there’s an MSS asset at JSC: Franklin Anders.
I already told Thistle this in my voicemail, but Anders doesn’t know that. After he kills me, he’ll read what I’ve written on my leg, and assume I never got the chance to share the information. He won’t see Thistle as a threat. He’ll dump my body, and leave her alone.
It’s too late to save myself. But hopefully this message will save her.
‘Okay.’ I put the cap on the marker and drop it into my pocket. ‘You want to know what I know?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Okay.’ I take a deep breath, and get ready to lie my ass off. ‘Rob Cho discovered you were working for the Chinese government. Maybe he heard you on the phone to your handler, or something—I don’t know that part. So you trapped him in this chamber, and stole Laurie’s card so you could activate it remotely without getting caught. You wanted the death to look like an accident. But then Garcia found the body.’ There’s a chance Anders already knows this, and even if he doesn’t, I’m willing to sacrifice Garcia, if that’s what it takes to save Thistle. ‘Garcia must have already suspected there was an MSS asset here, because he did everything he could to implicate China in Cho’s death. He stole a Chinese spacesuit from the museum, put it on the body, and dumped it somewhere public, hoping to expose the asset in the resulting chaos. You recognised Cho but pretended not to, because your masters decided to pretend he was a fighter pilot.’ I shrug, even though he can’t see me. ‘Have I missed anything?’
Like the best lies, this story is ninety per cent true, but missing a few key details. Anders has noticed the most important omission: ‘How did Cho find out about the spy satellite?’
So it’s a satellite, not a space station. ‘What spy satellite?’
I can’t read the silence from the other side of the hole. I have to convince him of this. The MSS has ordered Anders to kill me either way, but if they think I know about their secret spacecraft, they’ll also kill anyone I might have told. A long list of people that includes Thistle.
Anders still hasn’t said anything.
‘Garcia dumped the body,’ I say. ‘He only made it look like it fell from space. There’s nothing up there. You get that, right?’
‘Stop bullshitting me,’ Anders says. ‘I know you know about the satellite.’
He’s bluffing. ‘There is no satellite,’ I say. ‘I talked to Garcia—it’s impossible. OPIR would pick it up.’
‘I’m going to push the button,’ he warns.
‘Don’t!’ I try to sound panicked. It’s not hard. ‘I’m telling you the truth!’
There’s another long silence. Then a clack. I peer through the hole again, but this time I see only darkness. He’s covered it with a steel plate.
I’ve convinced him I don’t know anything important. Now he’s going to kill me.
‘I’m telling the truth!’ I scream, because that’s what he’d expect. It’s what I would do if I really had told him everything. I need to keep the act going, right up until I’m dead.
There’s a hissing sound, like a snake. A breeze tickles my arm hairs as the air is sucked from the chamber. My ears pop. There’s a pressure in my sinuses, getting more and more painful. I pinch my nose between my knuckles, trying to equalise.
Stumbling towards the window, I pound on the glass. Anders is over by one of the computer terminals, not looking in my direction. He doesn’t want to watch me die.
‘Let me out!’ I shout. He shows no sign that he can hear me. Even in here the words sound muffled, either because my ears are already damaged, or because there’s not enough air in the chamber to carry the sound.
Steam rises from my flesh like I’m being cooked, though there’s no heat. Every instinct screams at me to hold my breath, but when Cho did that, his lungs exploded. I force myself to exhale, letting the chamber take the air. Feeling the terrifying emptiness in my chest. The saliva boils off my tongue. I’m already getting dizzy.
Cho’s decompression happened so quickly that his blood bubbled. Mine seems to be taking longer, perhaps because of the damage Anders did to the wall. This will be a slow, agonising death.
I wish I was the kind of person who could go peacefully to his grave. Who could accept that he did his best, even though it wasn’t enough.
But that’s not me. Even as I get too dizzy to stand, and collapse, my brain is still churning through ideas. There has to be a way out of this. Has to be.
I reach into my pocket—and find something better than a pen.
The auto-injector. The fucking auto-injector is still there!
I dig it out and hold it up to the light with a shaking hand. It’s still full, Laurie’s lifesaving formula sloshing back and forth inside. I use my teeth to roll up my sleeve.
I’ve never injected myself with anything before, but I’ve seen plenty of executions. I know where to put the needle. My veins are already bulging, maybe because of the reduced pressure—but it’s going to be hard to do this one-handed, especially when I’m so woozy. I could pass out at any moment.
I bend my wrist forwards, like I’m making a shadow puppet of a swan, so the tip of the needle is against my forearm and the plunger is against my fingertips. Then I push. There’s a sharp sting as the needle enters the vein. Laurie’s formula floods into my bloodstream.
Like magic, the dizziness starts to fade. My head clears. I heard somewhere that it takes less than a minute for blood to travel the whole way around the body, but I never believed it before now.
Laurie said her formula would keep an astronaut conscious for sixteen minutes. It’s hard to think—the pain from my eardrums is agonising. With nothing in my lungs, I still can’t equalise. I chew the tip off one of my silicone fingers and stuff it into my right ear. I plug the left with a human fingertip. It helps, a little.
There seems to be no air at all, now. My skin feels like it’s being pinched all over. Looking down, I see my body reddening, roasted by the negative pressure. I look delicious. But my vision is blurring. I squeeze my eyelids shut. My lips seem puffy, like I’m allergic to the vacuum.
My lungs burn. I’m still trying to keep them deflated. It’s nauseating and surreal, being unable to breathe but somehow staying conscious.
Anders has no hope of disguising my death as an accident. Unlike Rob Cho, I have no reason to be in the chamber, with messages scrawled on my skin. Anders won’t leave me overnight to be found by someone else—he’ll open the door to collect my body as soon as he’s sure I’m dead.
I lie on my side and curl into a ball, heart thudding, the syringe clenched in my fist. The needle is tiny, but it’s the only weapon available.
Or is it?
Through half-closed eyelids, I look up at the bowling ball. The only sport you can play with three fingers. I stand up, wrap my arm around it, and wrench it free of the dangling claw. The metal tines snap shut. I lie back down, facing away from the window, hugging the ball to my chest. Then I wait, eyes squeezed shut. My heart is thudding like a panicked animal in a cage.
My ears hurt. My lungs hurt. Everything hurts. I’d be sobbing with pain, except that I can’t breathe. Instead I lie frozen on the floor.
I assume I’ve only got a few more minutes before the life-saving chemicals in my blood run out. What if Anders decides to leave me here for an hour, just to be on the safe side?
I can’t take this. I find myself wishing the oxygen in my brain would run dry, so I’d lose consciousness. I’m in hell, unable to breathe but unable to die. I lie there for a horrifying minute. Then two. Then three. And then—
A hissing sound. It’s probably very loud, but to my damaged ears, it’s faint. I would assume I was imagining it, except the pain from my sinuses has begun to retreat. The chamber is repressurising.
I’m desperate to breathe, but I don’t move a muscle. Anders is probably watching through the window. If I even twitch, he’ll just hit the button again, and suffocate me some more. I just lie there, playing the role of a corpse. Giving the performance of a lifetime.
I don’t hear the door open, but I feel it—the air rushing in, ruffling my hair. I still don’t move.
The floor vibrates. Thrum, thrum. Footsteps coming towards me.
A shadow falls across my closed eyelids.
I uncoil like a spring, and swing the bowling ball at Anders as hard as I can. My vision is still blurry, so I don’t see his expression—just the flash of movement as he leaps back, startled.
He doesn’t get far enough. The bowling ball hits his ankle with a satisfying crack, hard enough to take the whole leg out from under him. He cries out, falls, hits the ground next to me.
I drop the ball, scramble to my feet and head for the open door. Something grabs my leg. I shake it off and keep running. Anders’ ankle must not be broken, because a second later he’s right behind me—I only realise that when his arm snakes around my throat, like he’s planning to choke me out again. But he’s taken off the jacket, so I dip my chin and take a bite out of his forearm. He shrieks and lets go. I flee through the door, finally out of the chamber and into the museum.
I swerve right, towards the main exit, but only make it a couple of steps before Anders trips me. I sprawl across the shiny floor, spitting blood and flesh. I roll over in time to see him raising a leg to stomp my lights out.
Listen to me, I shout, without a clear idea of what I want him to listen to, just hoping some more convincing bullshit will come out of my mouth. Just listen! I can’t even hear myself. One of my eardrums feels ruined.
Anders doesn’t listen. He drives his shoe down at my face. I grab it and shove him backwards. As he stumbles away, I stand up again—but a second later he’s back in my face, a wild-eyed madman, swinging punches. For the third time tonight his fist crashes into my ear. The world spins and I stagger sideways. I hit the door frame of the hypobaric chamber, ending up half-in, half-out of it.
Seeing this, Anders quickly slams his palm down on the depressurise button. Suddenly air is rushing past my skin, and the massive door is swinging closed, about to crush me, or cut me in half.
I leap aside and snatch my arm out of the gap just in time. The door slams shut, and I don’t lose even a fingernail. By my standards, this fight is going well.
Anders swings another wild punch. I dodge aside, and his fist bangs against the steel outer shell of the chamber. He snarls and spins towards me again. I go to kick him inside the knee, but he’s faster—he drives a knee into my balls, and I feel the shock all the way up to my stomach. I find myself falling into him. I grab part of his body for support, and it turns out to be his face. We fall together, me forwards, him backwards, and I shove his head against the steel outer shell—right over the drill hole.
I don’t hear his skull crack against the metal, but I can feel it. Something gives way, and his whole body goes rigid like a bow that just loosed an arrow, but the back of his head stays against the wall, glued by the negative pressure. His face twists against my palm, a scream making my whole arm vibrate, but then he goes suddenly limp.
After a moment, I let go. His body stays in place, his skull fixed to the wall. I tap the side of his head. His cranium feels as hollow as a gourd.
I peer in the window. The walls of the hypobaric chamber are pink and grey, sprayed with Anders’ brilliant brain. Hard to know what the police will make of this. I plan to be gone before they get here.
I look back at Anders. His face is slack now. His eyes are sad. Air whistles quietly through his nose, an endless inward breath, like he’s preparing to shout at me. Actually, the whistling probably isn’t quiet. I’m still ninety-nine per cent deaf.
He sold out his country, and killed Rob Cho, and tried to kill me. But he did it because he loved his child, and didn’t want to let her go. I know what that’s like.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter.
Then I take the cash out of his wallet, because I’m like that.
CHAPTER 41
Who murdered the Cheerios?
Zara looks different when she walks in the door of the safe house. Her hair is shorter, and dyed grey. She’s wearing a baggy dress, rather than the flesh-hugging clothes she usually favours. She might even have a new name now.
She’s startled when she sees me sitting on the floor in the corner. But she hides it quickly.
