Safe House — Bucharest, Romania | December 29, 2010 | 23:00
He had been in Bucharest for eleven hours. He had slept for nine of them, which was the longest continuous sleep he had taken in four years and which his body had apparently decided was non-negotiable.
The extraction from the Eastern Slav Republic had been managed rather than clean — the Republican Guard patrol that encountered him on the road six kilometers from the border crossing had not expected to find a journalist walking in the dark who moved the way he moved, and the engagement that followed had been brief and had left him needing three hours and two vehicle changes before reaching the border. He had arrived in Romania with the data drive, two cracked knuckles, and a cut above his left eye that had healed completely during the second vehicle change.
The safe house was a studio apartment on the fourth floor of a building that was slightly better than the Vienna basement. The radiator worked. There was coffee. He lay on the cot with the laptop open on the small table beside him, and Hunnigan was there, and she looked like someone who had not slept since December 27th.
"The data," he said.
"Already transmitted to Miller and Sterling. The analysis is running." She looked at the camera. "Alen, the data you pulled is significant. The Belikova government has been running the Dveri program for eight months. The Plaga modification research — the T-Virus splice attempts — that was phase two. Phase one was establishing the rebel supply chain through the shell company. They built the problem and then built the solution and then built the demonstration."
"The invasion," he said.
"The Americans and Russians have been watching this for weeks. The intelligence from Dveri is going to be the formal justification for intervention — joint operation, probably February. Belikova will be asked to resign before she's removed, because that's how these things are done to preserve the appearance of sovereignty."
"And the Plaga variants. The hybrid research."
"Destroyed in the facility," Hunnigan said. "Or we hope so. The Dveri installation is going on the intervention target list as priority one. BSAA will clear it." She paused. "That part is not your concern for now."
He looked at the ceiling for a moment. He thought about the dominant-strain controller he had never found in the village — the intelligence the Plaga-hosts had shown, the coordination, the waiting in the bell tower. Whoever had been running that from inside the village had evacuated during the church engagement. They were somewhere in the exclusion zone.
He noted this. He noted that Belikova's program had produced personnel who understood field tactics at a level that did not appear in the Dveri installation's research files, which meant the tactical knowledge was not from the researchers.
He noted all of this and filed it as data. He would give it to Miller in the debrief.
"Ingrid," he said.
She registered the name. A slight adjustment in her posture — not surprise, but the specific attentiveness of someone who has been doing this work long enough to understand what it means when an operator uses a first name rather than a designation.
"I need you to understand something about what you saw in the telemetry," he said. "Not the full explanation — I don't have the full explanation myself. But I need you to understand that what you saw is real, and it's stable, and it's been present since before the program found me. It's not a program artifact. It's not an experimental treatment. It's—" He paused, which was unusual for him. "—something I was born with. That I'm still working to understand."
Hunnigan was quiet for a moment.
"I removed the anomalous biometric data from the official report," she said. "CIA doesn't see it. Sterling doesn't see it. What Holloway knows, that's between you and Holloway." She looked at him steadily. "I did that because I've been doing this work for twelve years and I know what happens to assets who present data that makes their handlers think of them as specimens rather than people. And whatever else you are, Alen, you are a person."
He held the look.
In thirty-three years of being alive in the world — in a hidden room in a laboratory, and a pond in Somerset, and a kitchen in Edinburgh, and a sub-basement in Whitehall, and every place since — very few people had said that to him and meant it the way she meant it. The ones who had were: Jessica. Daniel, in his indirect way. Sister Agnes, who had said it without words by holding him through the last hour of his first night.
"Thank you," he said. He meant it.
"Don't make a habit of scaring me," Hunnigan said. "The telemetry during that engagement was—" She stopped. Started again. "The Tyrant that you neutralized. The size of it, the modification level. Alen, I need you to know that what you did in that facility — how you survived — that changed how I understand the threat envelope we're operating in. And it changes what I think this work requires." She looked at him carefully. "The world is getting darker. The Tricell thread, the ESR program, whatever comes after this — you're going to be needed at that intersection. I want you to know that I understand what that costs."
He thought about Jessica.
Your heart is your power. Not your mind.
He thought about the locket, which was on the bedside table next to the laptop because he had taken it off to sleep and had not put it back yet, which was something he almost never did.
"Next year," he said, "the intelligence infrastructure changes. The DSO forms. Kennedy's unit transitions. The operational picture shifts."
"I know," Hunnigan said. "I've been part of the transition planning."
"When you're supporting Kennedy through whatever the new structure requires — we'll still need this channel. The parallel operations. You looking at the thread from your end, me from mine."
Hunnigan adjusted her glasses. "I think that can be arranged. Off-book, probably. The DSO won't have a mandate for Grayweather-class operations and the CIA won't want the DSO to know Grayweather exists. But there are ways to route things."
"There always are," he said.
She almost smiled. "Rest up, Phantom. Debrief with Miller is in seventy-two hours. Get some sleep before then — the real kind, not the two-hour field rest you've been running on."
"I slept nine hours," he said.
That did make her smile. "Good. Then you're ahead of schedule."
The screen went dark.
Alen lay on the cot in the Bucharest safe house and looked at the ceiling and flexed his left hand — the hand that had held a hydraulic claw at the end of a Tyrant's arm and not let go. He felt the knuckles, still slightly tender where they were finishing the final stage of repair. Everything else was complete.
He picked up the locket from the bedside table. Half a circle of gold, the engraved name on the inner face. He held it for a moment in his palm, which was something he did sometimes in the dark when nobody was watching.
He thought about what Hunnigan had said.
Whatever else you are, Alen, you are a person.
He thought about the word
first.
The word Jessica had used. Which had been accumulating weight for three years and would continue to accumulate weight until he was ready to do something with it.
He was not yet ready. He had more work to do first.
He put the locket back around his neck. He lay back. He looked at the ceiling of the safe house in Bucharest, in December 2010, with the data drive on the table and the Tricell thread still open and the world one year away from a DSO that would change the operational picture and two years away from whatever came next.
He thought:
I need to understand what I am before anything else finds out first.
He closed his eyes.
END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Operation WINTER GHOST — concluded.
Chapter Thirty to follow...