Leopov’s brain performed somersaults inside her head. There had always been secrets, things her mother had kept from her, lies she had caught her out on. Could this be another aspect of her lies? She had known so little about the man before the briefing and now, facing him, looking him in the eye and seeing the ghosts there, it was impossible not to think they might be related. He had said that she reminded her of his daughter, Natasha. It was too much of a coincidence to be one, wasn’t it?
Natasha.
There were a lot of names in the world, so why pick that one?
“The creature’s dead. The crazy guy’s gone,” Maddock said.
“Crazy?”
“Some kind of descendant of Rasputin.”
“Ah, yes, that is Yetsic. He has spent too much time with those creatures of his. It was always a mistake to meddle where nature has moved on… recreating those wretched animals from DNA trapped in the ice for millennia… a mistake… He should have left well enough alone. The man is a fanatic. Dangerous and deranged. And now he has stolen my work and plans to use it to stop the world.”
“Your work?” Maddock asked, but the man just shook his head.
Leopov didn’t know how much Maddock had been told about Luber. It wasn’t her place to fill in any gaps about the old man.
“We need to know about your work, Herr Luber,” she said softly. “We need to get you somewhere safe.”
There was a light in his eyes as he took his hands away. “You sound so much like her too,” he said. “It’s uncanny. That lightness in your voice, just like hers. Are you sure that you’re not my sweet, sweet girl?”
Leopov took a deep breath, not knowing if she was about to make things better or worse. “Natasha is my mother’s name.”
He stared at her, seeming to see all the way down inside back through the generations, and nodded, content. “Of course it is. Of course. Is she safe? Tell me she is safe. That is all I ask,” he pleaded, his face full of life again as if the years had been stripped away for a moment. “That was the trade. Her life for mine. They said they would kill her if I didn’t do what they wanted. How could I risk that? How could I think of myself at a time like that, when they had already killed her mother, when they came knocking on the door for her and made me choose? So many years in this place… so many years alone… tell me she is safe. Please. Tell me…”
The questions were tumbling out so fast that she could barely keep up with them, the only one that didn’t was the obvious one from Leopov: are you my grandfather? The old man seemed swept up in a tide of nostalgia and fear, taken back to the day the Red Army turned up at his door and demanded he turn himself over to save the woman he loved… She didn’t have time to answer even half of the questions before more came.
Somewhere a door slammed.
The old man looked up in panic, gripping her arm tightly.
A voice called out.
“The chopper’s coming in. We’ve got to move now.” It was Willis.
“Time’s up. We’ve got to get you off this island” Maddock said.
“He comes with us,” Leopov said. It was a statement not a request. “So do you. Leave no man behind.”
Maddock shook his head. “We can’t risk it. Not when we don’t know what we’ve been exposed to down here.”
“So you just stick around here and wait to die? I don’t think so, Maddock. This isn’t the place to argue. Talk to your Commanding Officer when we’re back on the ship and he’ll tell you that you’ve done the right thing.”
Maddock shook his head, but he wasn’t really arguing, he was trying to make sense of the fact that time had all but run out and they were no further forward. He turned to the old man. He had his own question. “We may have been exposed to whatever it is that Yetsic has got his hands on. Is there some kind of antidote?”
“Yes, yes of course, but if you have been exposed it would need to be administered within the first few minutes. The poor men in the cells next to me died within five minutes when Yetsic carried out his tests. He wanted to be sure it was fast. And painful.”
Five minutes.
The Russian had shattered the Fabergé egg closer to ten minutes ago. The countdown had entered its final few moments. Seconds. Maddock tried to think but felt his brain turning muddy as it became increasing difficult to focus on what he wanted to. Sweat trickled down the nape of his neck. He was breathing faster but had no way of knowing if that was down to fear or the contagion.
“The men in the cells around you were tested… why weren’t you?”
The man smiled. “I was.” He didn’t appear to be ill but that didn’t have to mean anything. Leopov placed a hand over his in the hope that it might comfort him.
“How long ago?”
“Yesterday.”
That didn’t make sense. If the others had been so weak they’d died within five minutes there’s no way he should have been standing. “How is that possible?”
“Because I tested the antidote on myself once I understood what Yetsic intended. There have been enough deaths in this place… because of me… I wanted to do something… to stop the spread of the contagion… I reverse engineered a solution, a hope for mankind. The virus will mutate. It will do everything it can to survive and spread, and without a vaccine it will become a pandemic. So I gave us hope. Yetsic didn’t know. He didn’t understand. He has only half a mind for the science. All he cares about is the killing, manifesting his father’s legacy… how many of you were exposed?”
“Two. Unless the virus could live on in the bodies in the yard outside?”
Hans Luber shook his head. “No. It doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t spread from person to person as an airborne pathogen. Not yet anyway, but there’s a trigger that could change that. The virus is designed to attach itself onto the common cold without too much difficulty. It is a sophisticated contagion, not a replica of Rasputin’s elixir, Romanov’s Bane. But that old chemistry serves as the building blocks to the new biological terror. It can be manipulated to attack certain gene sequences, meaning it can be used to target specific genetic identifiers.”
“Are you saying it can be made to affect only one particular race?” Leopov asked.
Maddock followed her line of thought, realizing they were talking about a weapon of genocide.
Her question didn’t need an answer and it didn’t get one.
“Is there more of that vaccine?”
The old man nodded.
“Get it, then get outside. I’m going to get Bones. We’re going home.”
THIRTY ONE
“Bones? We’re shipping out,” Maddock called as he barreled down the stone stairs. The corpse of the sabertoothed tiger lay where it had fallen, the color from its pelt dulled in the dim emergency lighting. A thick pool of blood had spread out from its wounds as the beast’s heart had pumped out the last of its life, reaching either side of the narrow passage. It didn’t look as if the crazy Russian was playing ball. Bones had him up against the wall and was going through various makeshift torture-threats to try and loosen his lips, but the man continued to babble in unintelligible Russian. Bones had dragged him from room to room, looking frantically for the antidote in whatever shape or form it might take, but with no idea of what he was really looking for it was an impossible task the Russian was only too happy to make harder.
“We’re screwed,” Bones said. There was resignation in his voice, already at peace with his fate.
“Maybe not.” Maddock said. “How long do you reckon it’s been since our friend here shattered that egg?”