The Whisper of Stars (26 page)

She heard Nathan in her ear, his voice making her jolt. ‘I have access to the security desk. I’m going to switch your stolen card with a fake ID.’

Her stomach tightened as the two guards approached, pointing and raising their voices.

‘Quickly,’ she whispered, guessing what they were asking her to do. Her face was covered with a scarf and they wanted her to take it off. She nodded but did nothing, her mind battling the urge to run.

‘Nathan, do it now!’ she hissed, her mouth still covered.

Surely they can hear us. This isn’t going to work.

The guards became agitated and repeated the order.

‘Nearly there,’ Nathan said.

Jen saw one of the guards reach down and place his hand on his sidearm. If he pulled it, the others would too, creating a scene that would likely trigger an alert. It could all spin out of control quickly.

The guards inched closer, barking orders.

Jen began unwrapping the scarf, knowing that in seconds her ID would be confirmed by recognition software that was already piecing together the unique shape and contours of her face. She tugged the last of the fabric away and faced them. The moment seemed to stretch out, faces frozen, the atrium eerily silent, seconds feeling like minutes. A droid slid between two guards, stopped close to her face and scanned her.

Chapter 47

The nearest guard waved a small handheld device across her body, jabbed at it a few times and looked her up and down. The device beeped. A good sound.

‘Miss Jade Savoretti?’ the guard asked, as if confirming the delivery of a parcel.

Jen nodded, letting out a careful and private sigh of relief.

‘Sorry about that. We need to be careful, I’m sure you understand.’ The guard finally smiled, it was thin and brief but it meant she was safe, for now. He walked towards the body scanners. ‘Follow me.’

‘You’re a technician.’ Nathan’s voice in her ear. ‘Routine maintenance on chamber four servers.’

Ahead, people were placing bags on a conveyor and walking through full-body scanners. Jen knew that a technician would only be allowed to carry specific and pre-authorised equipment into the vault. There was no way she could smuggle it in. It meant she would need to control the guards on duty. She took a deep breath in through her nostrils and relaxed, rolling her shoulders gently back. She imagined she was on her rooftop, gliding through movements and lost in her own world.

Relax,
she told herself,
breathe
.

She controlled four guards this way, passing through the initial security checkpoints. Each time a screen highlighted a suspect object or doubt crept into a nervous mind, she silently and expertly controlled the situation.

The guard – the one who had scanned her in the lobby – stood waiting. He was young with a bony face and fingers that seemed too long for his hands. He needed to grow into his body and, like most people she’d met since arriving in Russia, looked like he needed a few days of real sun. Jen noted his name tag. Silver uppercase letters on black. LOSEVSKY.

‘May I use the bathroom?’ she asked.

Losevsky pointed to a corridor on her right. Jen entered, locked herself inside a cubicle and attached a tiny camera, the size of a grain of rice, to her lapel.

‘Jade Savoretti?’ she whispered.

‘Jade. Like your eyes,’ Nathan said. ‘Took me hours, which to be fair was a pleasant distraction. This place is bloody freezing.’

Jen screwed up her lip. ‘I sound like an Italian pop star.’

Nathan grunted and she could hear him tapping. Eventually he spoke. ‘Okay, I have visual from your camera and I can see your location.’

‘You sure they can’t hear us?’

‘Relax, it’s fine.’

‘Easy for you to say. I was surrounded by guards in the lobby with you chatting away in my ear. I felt vulnerable.’ She paused a beat. ‘Exposed.’

‘Trust me,’ he said again and Jen decided she had no choice.

‘Nathan?’

‘Hmmm?’

‘Talking of exposed, I do actually need the toilet,’ she admitted.

‘Okay, but Jen?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Lone technician, difficulty getting to the vault. Split from her team. The plan worked.’

She heard a click and hoped it meant he was gone. Her cover story had been his idea and he was clearly pleased with himself. She smiled, sat and urinated. It was a relief. Her nerves felt electrified, she was buzzing all over and wondered if the numb tingling in her fingers might actually be frost damage. She stood and looked down into the bowl. Her urine was dark; she was dehydrated.

‘A doctor would probably tell me to rest for a week or so,’ she whispered to no one and flushed. ‘No chance of that.’

She rejoined Losevsky, who escorted her through the first of the administrative areas within the vault.

‘Chamber four is quite a long way in,’ he said, his English good. ‘I can take you some of the way.’

Apart from the obvious scale, the admin area appeared to be a fairly standard office set-up. Hundreds of civilian workers sat at consoles, drinking coffee, tapping away, taking support calls. It was noisy and chaotic. Rows of identical booths, each decorated and individualised with pictures and personal items.

Losevsky led her through a large steel door and into the first of many corridors. Jen felt the temperature drop. The tunnel was about fifteen feet in diameter with white ceiling lamps reflecting onto a shiny laminate floor. The limestone walls, irregular in shape, had a luminescent quality not dissimilar to the face of a glacier. Jen thought it was like traveling through the centre of a huge ice sculpture.

They reached another steel door, this one thicker, with a small circular window at eye level. Once through, the next corridor opened up into a large cave roughly the size of a sports hall. Jen felt her body twitch and cramp against the icy coldness creeping back into her bones. Her diaphragm was raised up and her breathing more shallow. It was her body’s way of warning her, the deathlike state of yesterday still fresh in her mind. Inside the cavern, lined up in six neat rows, were servers encased in clear Perspex. Above them, steel struts crossing like an impossible railway network carried cabling and blue lights that pulsed every metre or so. At the end of each stack a single red security light was blinking. Jen could see hundreds of similar lights, tailing off into the distance like a landing strip. There were literally thousands of boxes in here. All active, all alive.

‘Have you been to the vault before, Ms Savoretti?’ Losevsky asked, striding the black vinyl floor towards another doorway in the distance.

‘No, never,’ Jen answered, taking in the scale.

‘This is one of nineteen data halls,’ he explained, brightening up. ‘Most of the world’s conversations are stored here.’ He turned to her and smirked. ‘Bet there’s interesting stuff in here, eh?’

Jen looked back at him. He was clearly excited to be showing a girl around. She understood that, but she needed to be careful. She didn’t want to make a connection, and especially didn’t want to be remembered.

‘Level four is…?’ She didn’t break a smile.

Losevsky’s face dropped a little. ‘This way.’

‘Okay, you’re passing through the last of the level two areas.’ It was Nathan’s voice in her ear again. ‘He’s right, you know. There are nineteen of those data rooms, 25,000 square feet each.’

‘You’re a geek,’ Jen said, quietly.

Losevsky turned and looked confused. Jen looked the other way until he started walking again.

‘I admit it. It’s true.’ Nathan’s smile was obvious. ‘Right, you’re going to take a lift and then more security. Levels three and four. You’ll need to do your
persuade
thing and hope your ID holds up. You work for Synergy, one of the companies on their list of approved suppliers. It should be okay.’

Losevsky didn’t speak again until they approached the security gate.

‘I can’t go any further than this.’ His voice was flatter than before.

Jen thanked him and smiled. He returned the gesture happily, like a puppy. She watched him go. He seemed to have regained some of the spring in his step.

Nice kid.

Jen decided not to think about the trouble he would be in soon. She turned and faced the next corridor in the underground maze. It was smaller than the others, a long tube-like structure, around 30 metres long, with a separate clear section in the centre like a glass room, with four guards, two either side. The nearest two were eyeing her closely, the farthest two were sitting on plastic chairs. It was obvious they didn’t get a lot of traffic down here.

‘It’s a scanning chamber,’ Nathan explained. ‘You step in, they scan you, let you out if you’re cleared. Those doors could withstand a huge blast, you know, wouldn’t even knock a hair out of place on any of those guards.’

‘Thanks for the info.’

Jen approached and connected with the first two guards. She needed to ensure they would allow her into the airlock. They frisked her and only stopped momentarily to check her bag. The other two guards beyond the scanner were up now. A large screen displayed the outline of her body as she entered the chamber. Once inside, the clear doors sealed with a rush of air and deep thumping sound, popping her ears. Machinery kicked into gear. Through the clear wall she could see the guards on the far side processing her scan, which would of course show discrepancies. Jen switched her focus to them, releasing the guards from the entrance.

Something felt different immediately.

Of the two guards, the one on her right was going to be a problem. She knew it straight away. He looked up and frowned at her, fighting, reminding her of the agent in the car park when she had first met Nathan. Jen was surprised by how long ago that felt. Mac had still been alive. It felt like a different life.

Jen concentrated. The ‘problem’ guard explained to his colleague that Jen was carrying unauthorised equipment. She closed her eyes.

Don’t panic. Stay calm.

She felt her heart swelling against her chest and her lungs being squeezed as if under pressure. This fatigue appeared to be cumulative and dependent on the target’s ability to fight the Histeridae. Jen was inside their minds and seeing with their eyes now. She could see herself standing in the chamber, eyes closed, and the screen with the offending objects highlighted in red. To her right a large red button, a panic button… which was begging to be pressed. The ‘problem’ guard wanted to hit that alarm.
This woman isn’t authorised,
he was shouting in his mind.
Something’s wrong!

Jen pushed the breath from her lungs and concentrated. The guard’s name was Andrei Shulga and he was very strong-minded. Always had been.

< Andrei, there’s nothing wrong, >
she told him, guiding his thoughts. She went deeper, to a place beyond suggestion, a place where she could become his thoughts. It felt like diving into the ocean and the water was darker here.

< This woman isn’t here to do any harm. She is a technician and has full clearance. >

She turned Andrei’s head toward his colleague, who looked confused and worried.

‘Are you okay, Andrei?’ the guard asked, his voice sounding slow. He was speaking Russian but Jen could understand him somehow, the Histeridae working at a deeper level of her brain, deeper than language.

Andrei Shulga finally spoke.

‘I thought something was wrong, but it’s fine,’ he said and felt better as the words left him. Andrei knew that if he said something, then he meant it, he didn’t waste his breath otherwise. He worked the situation through in his mind again, unaware that it was Jen planting the seeds and controlling the outcome.

The storm and the lack of staff are making me twitchy,
Andrei thought.
Yes, that’s it. It’s fine. It’s all fine.

‘She’s clear,’ he said confidently.

Time returned to normal. Jen stepped from the chamber and nodded at them both. She asked for directions. In Russian. With the route explained, she continued past them. Although her locks of red hair were pushed under a black cap and she hadn’t worn makeup for days, the guards watched her a little longer than they would most technicians.

It was quieter down here, the kind of silence that only exists deep under the earth. Even the machines were quiet, tucked away inside sealed rooms, the place deserted. Five minutes went by and she didn’t see anyone.

‘Not far now,’ Nathan said suddenly, making her jump.

Not far. Owen Powell had been drowning down here. A dream created by Jen with one purpose: reveal where Baden kept their secrets. Chamber 457B held the answers – Jen was sure of it – and she was close.

‘Nice work, by the way,’ Nathan said.

‘Thank you.’

‘When did you learn to speak Russian?’

Jen shrugged. ‘Until today, I didn’t know I could.’

Chapter 48

‘You’re close now.’ Nathan watched the small red dot move across his screen. ‘You should see the chamber just up ahead.’

The large, cavernous server rooms and manned security checks were way behind them now. Nathan was relieved. There was only so much he could do if they raised the alarm. Since then he had watched her dot move through what seemed like miles on his three-dimensional blueprint. The final
assembly
was still incomplete in places, chunks of rooms and corridors missing or sketchy, but it wouldn’t matter – her route was clear.

‘There’s a door.’ Jen’s voice was calm but accusing.

Nathan beamed the blueprint into the room. It appeared, its glowing lines reaching up to the ceiling and out to the walls. He stepped into the projection and began exploring, zooming into the tunnel and looking for clues. The map was cobbled together from millions of sources, each one assigned and colour-coded, a kaleidoscopic depiction of weeks of work. He positioned himself in her exact location, bringing the map to almost life-sized. There, right in front of him, was a missing section of wall.

He frowned. The assembly was incomplete.

‘Nathan?’

‘I don’t see the door,’ he replied.

‘I can assure you, it’s here. Big, solid and locked.’

Nathan spun the map again, looking for alternatives. There wasn’t another obvious way through.