Quantum

62

Cooper sat patiently in Orlov’s office. Once the deal had been struck and Kilkenny had left to instruct Avvakum on using the decoding program, there was little left to do but wait.

In the twenty minutes since Kilkenny had departed, Leskov remained at his post by the door, distracted from his watch over Cooper only by the status reports he received from the security teams posted around the building. Each time a report came in, Leskov cupped a hand over the earpiece and cocked his head slightly — a habit rooted in years of combat.

The phone on Orlov’s desk rang, and he answered it. Cooper watched, hoping to pick up clues from Orlov as to what he was being told. The man’s brow creased, as if some external pressure were trying to hold the thoughts inside his head. Whatever the news, the look on Orlov’s face told Cooper that it was unexpected.

Orlov tilted his head, cradling the phone with his shoulder, and turned around to face the computer on the credenza behind his desk. He pressed down on the keyboard hard enough for Cooper to hear the impact.

‘Oksanna,’ he summoned without turning away from the video display.

Zoshchenko rose and quickly moved to his side. Orlov struck a few more keys, his growing anger becoming more evident.

Orlov looked up at Zoshchenko, puzzled; she shook her head in reply, offering no answer as to what they were seeing on the monitor.

‘I don’t care how you do it, just stop it!’ Orlov shouted into the phone before slamming down the handset. ‘Dmitri, we’ve been shut out of our computer networks. Have Avvakum’s guard find out what Kilkenny is doing. Now!’

‘Da,’ Leskov said before calling out the order into the thin microphone that curved from his earpiece to the corner of his mouth.

‘What is that?’ Avvakum asked when a tiny animated blinking red light appeared in the lower-right corner of the screen on Kilkenny’s laptop.

‘A message.’

Kilkenny clicked on the blinking light, and a small window appeared in the center of his screen. Two lines of text scrolled up from the bottom of the window.

Kilkenny smiled, relieved.

‘What does this mean?’ Avvakum asked, becoming anxious.

Kilkenny looked at her and saw the fear rendered plainly on her face. He reached over and grasped her hand.

‘What this message means is that two good people are now safe and that Orlov’s people have noticed something terribly wrong happening inside their computers.’

Kilkenny turned back to his laptop and closed the window. As the window disappeared from the screen, Avvakum’s oversize guard opened the door to her office and shouted something in Russian at Kilkenny.

‘I don’t understand what he’s saying,’ Kilkenny said to Avvakum while keeping his eyes on the Russian.

‘He wants to know what the fuck you are doing,’ Avvakum said, translating the guard’s demand literally.

‘Tell him I’m decoding information for his boss.’

As Avvakum translated his response, Kilkenny waved the guard over, motioning with his open hands at the screen to emphasize that this is where he should look. The bulky guard moved around Avvakum’s desk to get a better view. One half of the screen showed a matrix of Wolff’s encrypted characters; the other displayed a slowly growing string of mathematical formulas and German text.

As the guard leaned close to inspect the laptop, Kilkenny reached up with both hands, grabbed two large clumps of the man’s greasy brown hair, and pulled down. In the same motion, Kilkenny sprang up from his chair, swung his right leg back, and then drove his knee up into the guard’s face. Driven in by Kilkenny’s hiza geri knee kick, the guard’s lip mike tore the corner of his mouth and dug a groove into his cheek before it snapped free of the ear-piece. Blood flowed freely from the man’s battered nose and mouth.

The guard groaned, dazed, as Kilkenny tilted the man’s head slightly, then quickly wrenched it as if he were unscrewing it from a socket. The stack of vertebrae that formed a shallow curve in the guard’s neck collapsed, the twisting motion too quick for the neck muscles to counteract.

‘You killed him?’ Avvakum gasped out.

‘It’s not like I had much choice in the matter. Orlov wants us dead.’

Kilkenny laid the guard on the floor, then inspected the damage to his leg. Two of the man’s teeth had ripped through his khakis and were now imbedded in his knee. Avvakum winced as he pulled the two incisors out and tossed them in the wastebasket.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,’ Kilkenny said as he inspected the two punctures in his skin. ‘I just hope he had all his shots.’

Kilkenny then grabbed the guard’s body underneath the arms, dragged it out of Avvakum’s office, and laid it down in the center of the empty lab.

‘Why did you put the body out here? Won’t the others see what you’ve done?’

‘I hope so. This guy is my scarecrow; if his comrades see him lying here lifeless, maybe they’ll think twice before coming in here.’

Kilkenny stripped off the guard’s shoulder holster, strapped it on himself, and quickly checked the weapon. He then patted the guard down and found two more full clips of ammunition.

‘Let’s get back in your office,’ Kilkenny said as he pocketed the extra clips.

Once inside, Kilkenny stood in front of his laptop computer. ‘I guess I can shut this down now.’

He closed the translation program, powered his laptop down, and disconnected the cables. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ Kilkenny said as he shut the laptop and slipped it back into his briefcase.

‘Certainly.’

‘Why did you send me that fragment of Sandstrom’s research?’

‘I am a scientist, not a thief. I wanted to know the truth.’

‘Sometimes the truth isn’t pretty,’ Kilkenny replied, turning to face her, ‘and very soon it’s gonna get downright ugly. Stay close to me, and just maybe we’ll both get through this alive.’