shook.
“You traded one bully for another,” Mila said.
“Don’t shoot her,” Edward ordered. “I want to talk to her. Did the guards report any problems?”
“Some horses got loose,” she said. “They’re chasing them down.”
He frowned. “I don’t like it.”
Yasmin, gun now to Mila’s neck, hurried her to a wall hanging. Edward pushed it aside, pressed a release, and a door opened. Dim light showed stairs going downward.
“Churchill planned to use the estate as a base for a resistance, if needed,” Edward said. “The resistance is here all right. It’s just not the one he envisioned.”
He shoved Mila through the door.
The explosive felt soft and claylike under my fingertips, and for an odd moment I thought of playing in the mud along a river in Thailand with my brother Danny when we were young.
I heard the sound of a footfall behind me.
“I’m holding high explosives,” I said. “So you probably don’t want to shoot.”
No bullet came. I’d given him room for doubt. I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw the redhead aiming a gun at my back.
“Put the explosives down.” He spoke with a Serbian accent.
“You’re the smartest guy I’ve met here.”
“What?”
“Put the gun down. You’re making me nervous. You don’t want me nervous. You can only kill me. I can kill us both.”
An edge cut his voice. “Put the gear down, stand up, hands on your head.”
The gear was in place and I slid the triggering device into my sleeve.
“Now!” the redhead yelled. He looked at me like I was the prize, a promotion, or a bonus. Normally I applauded ambition. Not now.
Slowly I stood, turned, locked my fingers on the top of my head.
“Move back from the door.”
I obeyed, taking five steps.
“Where’s the trigger?” the redhead asked. He was the smartest, after all.
“In the gear bag.” The edge of the triggering device lay cool against my wrist. I took another step backward, getting the redhead between me and the door. The guy was doing it all wrong but I wasn’t going to correct him. Not my place.
He knelt by the gear bag. Explosives apparently made him nervous, as they would any sane person.
“It looks like a silver cylinder,” I said, and it was true. But the guy didn’t do what I hoped; he picked up the bag instead of searching its jumble and gestured at me with the gun. “Let’s go outside.”
“Don’t jostle the bag.” I made my eyes frantic-wide. “Not at all. Because it’s a sensitive button, it gets pushed, then it’s boom, boom.”
The redhead stopped, so I turned and I pretended to stumble over the outstretched arm of the unconscious African, dropped one hand and the detonator device slid into my palm.
“Then you come find it. Not me. I’m not touching this again.”
“All right,” I said and I covered my ears and head as I dropped to the floor and pressed the detonator.
The blast juddered the heavy door and blew it off its hinges. The noise thrummed my bones as I leaped up and slammed a fist into the redhead’s face. Already concussed and dizzy, the man collapsed.
I bolted through the mist of grit and down a set of stone stairs into the darkened tunnel.
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?”
