The Phoenix Variant: The Fifth Column 3 Read online

  A light rain dusted the surface of her poncho. The sound reminded her of thunderstorms rattling her roof when she was young. She drifted to sleep.

  *

  The blizzard swept flakes of snow into Nasira’s eyes. She pulled the hood on her waterproof jacket to one side, compensating for the angle of the wind. The snow was hard underfoot, crunching and sliding with each step. At 6,000 meters above sea level, she walked among the mountaintops—peppered with snow like choc chip and vanilla ice cream—drawing closer to her final destination. The cold air made her cheeks sting and her head painfully numb. She checked the touchscreen on her GPS, grateful she could use it with gloves on.

  She stopped.

  It should be right here, she thought.

  But there was nothing. Just snow, mountaintops and more snow. And the blizzard.

  She ran her gaze in full circle, returning to find thin gray shapes ahead of her. The blizzard rippled through the air and the gray shapes took sharper form. At first she thought they were pillars, the remains of the Incan fortress rumored to exist in these mountains. But they were irregularly shaped and their tops were bumpy. She realized she was looking at the heads and shoulders of people. Three of them standing before her, hooded and cloaked in dark gray to protect them from the blizzard. They didn’t say a word. They didn’t move.

  Nasira reached for her knife. She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t find her breath. She didn’t know her legs had given way until her face hit the snow. She couldn’t feel the cold anymore.

  Darkness.

  Then snow again. She was being rolled over. The blizzard was a soft pattern of white and gray. She breathed. Something plastic fogged in front of her. She noticed a small oxygen tank next to her.

  White became gray, black.

  *

  Light danced across the wooden beams in the ceiling. Nasira sat upright and noticed a fireplace burning before her. She felt strange. It took a moment for the details of her surroundings to soak in. She tried to gather the threads of what had happened up to this point but her head ached and the threads fell loose.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  Nasira looked over at a woman standing in the doorway. She was twice Nasira’s age, with dark chocolate hair and concerned lines drawn around glacial blue eyes.

  ‘Been better,’ Nasira said.

  Nasira’s voice warmed in her chest as she checked her clothes. She had everything on her except her knife and ruck. The woman noticed her concern and pointed to a corner of the room. Her things were there, almost hidden behind other satchels and rucks.

  ‘Your knife and other belongings are here,’ she said. ‘You are very lucky.’

  ‘What the hell happened?’ Nasira said.

  ‘Hypoxia,’ the woman said. ‘Oxygen deprivation.’

  She stepped into the room and nudged another ruck with her mountain boots. ‘You’re lucky because I always carry an oxygen tank.’ Her blue eyes focused on Nasira. ‘You wouldn’t have lasted for long.’

  Nasira rubbed her eyes. ‘I was feeling fine.’

  ‘It comes on quick; there’s no warning.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Nasira said. ‘I owe you one. Uh, you have a name?’

  ‘Lucia.’

  Nasira blinked. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You asked for my name,’ she said. ‘It’s Lucia.’

  Nasira nodded slowly. ‘Gotcha.’

  Lucia approached Nasira and the bed she had been lying on. Nasira realized she was waiting for her name.

  ‘I’m Nasira,’ she said.

  ‘Now tell me, Nasira, why have you come here?’

  Nasira stood slowly and found her balance. ‘Where is here?’

  ‘Our village.’

  Nasira moved for her ruck, her socks almost slipping on the polished concrete floor. She found her GPS and checked the coordinates. The woman who called herself Lucia watched with growing curiosity.

  Nasira confirmed the coordinates of her location. She lowered the GPS and met Lucia’s gaze.

  ‘I’m here,’ Nasira said.

  ‘We’ve established that,’ Lucia said. ‘But what do you seek?’

  Nasira felt overwhelmed. Just the thought of why she had come, weighed on her.

  ‘I came … I came to speak with the relatives of a young woman,’ Nasira said. ‘Another Lucia. Lucia Carpio.’

  Something twitched behind the woman’s eyes. ‘This Lucia, what are you to tell her relatives?’

  Nasira swallowed. ‘Lucia passed away. Last year. She was a friend of mine.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘She was killed in Belize,’ Nasira said. ‘It was a quick death, painless.’

  ‘And who was responsible?’

  ‘The Fifth Column,’ Nasira said. She was about to continue with the story but had to remind herself this woman had no clue who the Fifth Column were. ‘They’re an intelligence agency, sort of. And a shadow government, sort of.’

  ‘Are they American, like you?’

  ‘No, and no,’ Nasira said. ‘I’m not American, it’s just my accent. I was born in the UK. I’m African-Caribbean.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I used to work with Lucia. Do you know her relatives? I’ve been trying to find them.’

  The fire warmed Lucia’s dusty skin, flickered in her eyes.

  ‘I am her aunt,’ Lucia said. ‘She was named after me.’

  Nasira swallowed. She wasn’t good at this kind of thing. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Lucia sat on the end of the bed. ‘What sort of work?’

  Nasira walked to the fire. Embers crackled over chopped logs. ‘This man called Denton,’ she said. ‘He enlisted hundreds of kids into this project. Their parents thought they were enrolled in some cool scholarship.’

  Lucia’s mouth parted. ‘You were one of them.’

  Nasira let the question sink in. She finally nodded.

  ‘My niece—’

  ‘All of us,’ Nasira said. ‘Brainwashed.’

  ‘That is quite a story.’

  ‘It’s not an easy one to tell,’ Nasira said.

  ‘It’s not an easy one to hear,’ Lucia said.

  There was silence for a moment. Then Lucia went on: ‘And you came all this way to tell us what we, in all honesty, already suspected. That she was dead.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you how,’ Nasira said. ‘Sophia warned me off, said you shouldn’t know all this—’

  ‘Sophia is your friend?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nasira said. ‘We had an argument before I left. I wanted her to come but she didn’t—she thought this would make it worse.’

  ‘Do you think it made it worse?’

  Nasira shook her head. ‘Hell no. That’s why I’m here, ain’t I?’ She paused. ‘Has it … made it worse?’

  Lucia seemed to stare through her. She took a long time to answer. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She used to roll through the snow, laughing.’

  Nasira watched tears wet Lucia’s face. She was smiling.

  ‘It was only yesterday. But it was so long ago. Sometimes I have to remind myself that she was a real little girl and that she lived here. I miss her. Was she happy?’

  The question caught Nasira off guard.

  ‘When … when we were deprogrammed, we were free,’ Nasira said. ‘We were happy then.’

  ‘This must be hard for you,’ Lucia said.

  ‘Hard for Sophia,’ Nasira said. ‘We all looked up to her.’ She looked down at the GPS unit in her hand. ‘I should probably be going.’

  That seemed to surprise Lucia. ‘Where?’

  ‘Back to my friends, to Sophia,’ Nasira said. She started for her ruck and paused. ‘Thank you for saving me.’

  She shoved her shoes on, tied the laces and plucked the jacket from her ruck.

  ‘There is a snowstorm outside and it’s past sundown,’ Lucia said. ‘Very bad time to leave.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Nasira said, tightening the ruck over her shoulders.

  She zipped
her jacket and found her own way to the front door of the cabin. She took a deep breath and opened the door, stepped through into a blast of snow and wind. She knew it would be harsh, but she braved it and punched through, pulling the hood over her head.

  Something burned through the sky. For a moment the entire village was illuminated. At first she thought it was a flare, but then she realized it was something much larger.

  The ball of fire plunged through the sky. It seemed to shimmer through the blizzard, passing right over her head. A fiery meteor. She watched it burn silently through the storm and disappear from view. The night was dark again.

  Something crackled Nasira’s ears. She thought it might’ve been the meteor’s impact, but it seemed to come from around her, not a great distance. It overwhelmed her. Her balance was gone. She couldn’t stay upright. She dropped to her knees, hands over her ears. Everything was spinning. Ringing. Buzzing. She screamed into the night. It was soundless in the blizzard.

  *

  Nasira sat on one side of the bed. She held her hands in front of her, watching them shake. She tried to steady them but it was no use. How could her body go crazy like this? She had things to do. She didn’t have time for this.

  Lucia entered the room from wherever in the cabin she had been.

  ‘You should rest,’ Lucia said.

  Nasira let her hands drop to her knees.

  Lucia handed her a mug of tea. Steam wafted from it so Nasira didn’t try to sip just yet. The smell of mint filled her nostrils.

  ‘Coca tea?’ Nasira said.

  ‘Muña tea,’ Lucia said. ‘My ancestors have used it for thousands of years. For stomach trouble, digestion, energy, circulation. It helps with the altitude.’

  Nasira nodded. ‘I could’ve used that before I passed out.’

  The only sounds now were the fire crackling and the blizzard whistling outside.

  ‘The fire should last the night,’ Lucia said. ‘If you need anything I’ll be just down the hall.’

  Nasira flexed her hand. It was still shaking a little. ‘Thanks.’

  Lucia nodded and left.

  Nasira wanted to leave as well, but that wasn’t an option right now. She’d be fine in the morning, she hoped. And besides, it was the middle of the night. And the middle of a blizzard. She could wait until tomorrow. She had to.

  Nasira undressed herself and climbed into the bed. There were three heavy woolen blankets but she only needed one with the fire burning. She left the other blankets at the end of the bed in case it cooled in the morning. She drifted to sleep wondering if she’d done the right thing coming here.

  Chapter 8

  The light from the fire flickered over Owen Freeman, the leader of the Akhana, etching deep into the lines on his face. He waved an unlit cigarette in the warm night air.

  ‘You’re our Phoenix, Sophia,’ he said. ‘You rose from your own ashes.’

  ‘I never asked what you meant by that,’ Sophia said.

  The lines in Freeman’s face ran deeper. ‘You know what I mean.’

  Sophia was shaking her head. ‘No. Tell me what it means,’ she said. ‘I need to know.’

  Freeman’s face started to flake away before her, glowing like embers and turning to ash. Beneath the peeled face, a new one. Denton’s. His eyes burned into her.

  ‘You’re the lucky one,’ Denton said.

  Sophia woke. Her body shuddered beneath the musty quilt. She gathered her breath and made for the bathroom. She intended to splash her face but ended up vomiting in the sink.

  She showered, checked her ruck, and left.

  The library opened at seven and she was there by five past. She found a computer and checked the address hidden in the webpage—it looked to be an apartment in Williamsburg, New York. The apartment seemed odd. And a bit fancy for Aviary. Usually they would meet publicly, either at a busy diner or an empty subway platform.

  It was only a short walk from her motel to Penn Station in Baltimore. She booked a seat on the Amtrak to New York using some cash from her car fences. With her ruck on her back and her Glock and Gerber knives stowed inside, she boarded the train that would take her along the northeast corridor. To another Penn Station, this one in New York. She wasn’t happy about landing right in the heart of Manhattan. For someone in her position, it was the worst place she could wind up. But she kept breathing: she’d be on and off the island in no time.

  Finding her seat against the window, she kept her ruck between her legs, wrapping a strap around her knee in case she dozed off. Which she never did. The ride would take two and a half hours so she settled in as the train prepared to leave the platform. The woman next to her pecked at a laptop on the fold-out tray. The tray rattled with each key press. Sophia tried to ignore it. Eventually she gave in and reached for Aviary’s iPod, choosing a playlist at random.

  With her earphones in and the volume low enough so she could hear around her, she watched the train pick up speed and tear past the local stations. She wanted to go home. Except there was no home. In the last couple of months she’d travelled through more cities than she could recall, some for just a day, others for weeks, but none of them felt like home. She’d been doing it for so long she’d started to lose focus of what she wanted. America had been a country of changes for her.

  Maybe she’d never feel like she’d belong anywhere. That’s OK, she thought. There was nothing wrong with that. It was just what it was.

  Her thoughts drifted to Nasira, who was somewhere in Peru right now seeking out Lucia’s family. Nasira had become strangely fixated on finding everyone’s family. Well, not her own.

  Damien and Jay, on the other hand, were busy doing babysitter work. Guarding moderately wealthy and powerful clients. Without an official military history it was of course difficult to prove their skills and experience, so the work came from other places. Organized crime, not-so-organized crime. Anyone who was paranoid enough to require outside protection, if they trusted that outside protection.

  She thought of DC. Not for the first time either. He wasn’t on her side, but she treated him as though he was. And she wasn’t sure why. Not that it mattered—she hadn’t seen him since she put a round through him in Denver. She doubted he’d be pleased to see her again. Not that he ever has been, she thought, recalling his impromptu rescue in a Tokyo shipping yard. She hadn’t needed his help, but he had been there and it was nice having it.

  It wasn’t long before the train got to the tunnel and then emerged in New York’s Penn Station. Sophia hit the street and headed east for a subway line that would take her closer to Aviary’s meeting point. The buildings around her seemed impossibly high and dense. It was fractionally cooler in New York than in Baltimore and she appreciated the warmth her jacket offered.

  As she cut a path through the crowds, everything looked the same as it had during her last visit. She had to remind herself this country was in a state of seemingly permanent catastrophic emergency. The nation’s regular government had been discreetly replaced by an ‘enduring constitutional government’, which she supposed was just a more direct line for the Fifth Column. But as she walked the streets, no one seemed concerned by this. Or at least not aware.

  Sophia didn’t stop until she reached Thirty-Fourth Street–Herald Square station. A flatscreen was perched above the subway entrance, advertising a crime TV series. She had trouble telling them apart so she assumed they were all the same show that her motel neighbors watched over dinner. She took the stairs and purchased a new MetroCard from one of the ticket machines. She didn’t know how long she’d need it, so she inserted a twenty-dollar note to be safe.

  The train was packed and she stood near a man who made duck noises for most of the ride. After the train crossed the Williamsburg Bridge to make its first stop, he stood, looked at his hat, and said, ‘Really?’ And then he left.

  The next stop was hers. The walk to Aviary’s meeting point was short. She’d arrived almost an hour early so she used the time to check the building. It
was a new apartment building with eight levels. Maybe Aviary just moved in, she thought.

  It had a car lot underground with one entrance at the front and one exit at the back. The lobby had three elevators and a door to the stairs that would connect with the car lot below and the levels above. She circled once, stopping to watch for surveillance—a simple matter of looking for anyone who was stationary for too long. Satisfied no one was, she moved for the lobby.

  A woman not much older than her walked a few paces ahead. She swiped her fob and opened the glass lobby door. With half an hour to spare, Sophia decided to follow her in. There weren’t any cameras in the lobby or the elevator. She got out of the elevator on the same level as the woman but moved in the opposite direction. Once Sophia was sure the woman was inside her own apartment she doubled back for the stairs. Above the lobby, she didn’t need a fob for anything. She climbed two more levels until she reached the apartment Aviary had specified. She listened out the front for a few minutes but heard nothing except the muffled clang of kitchen utensils from next door. She reached under one arm, unzipped her ruck and found the grip of her Glock. With no cameras in the passageway, she moved the Glock to the front of her jeans.

  She thumbed the lockpicks from her waistband and got to work seating the pins. The lock wasn’t terribly secure: she raked most of the pins and tapped the last one into place within a minute. She heard the cylinder turn so she gently tried the handle. The door opened.

  Aviary’s apartment was larger than she expected. The living area was more a study area with two desks lined along the wall. She counted three laptops, their cables strewn across the desks and carpet underneath. One desk looked to be used primarily for electronics work. It was cluttered with smartphones, a digital multimeter, soldering station, pliers and tweezers. In the corner, a thick gas pipe ran from floor to ceiling, heating the apartment.

  The couch and coffee table were bare, the television starting to collect a fine layer of dust. There was a balcony on her left, although there was really only enough room out there to stand. On her right, a neat kitchen, also with bare surfaces. There was a bookcase that ran along one side of the apartment, with no books in it. One shelf was dotted with ornamental candles, unused, but the others were empty.