Liška swallowed the last of his drink and winced as it burned its way down. “What do you want to know?”
“Why did the birds all just drop out of the sky like that?”
“The birds were exposed to a dust.”
“A dust?”
Liška nodded slowly and looked like he was about to cry. “Yes, a dust, of sorts… Oh God! What have I done?”
“We need to know more about this dust, Andrej.”
Liška sank into his chair and his shoulders slumped down low. He looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there forever. “The dust is not natural, you understand, but artificial — entirely manmade. Smart dust. They call it Perses after the Titan god of destruction. It’s a new kind of nanoparticle which Gabriel and I developed while working together in Sweden. We thought we were working for the Swedish Government with a view to advancing medical science, but the truth is somewhat darker.”
“The truth being, you were making a weopon for this Ministry?”
He nodded glumly. “Indeed.”
As a former MI6 man, Harry Bane knew all about the Deep State, and what Andrej had told him about the Ministry sounded too similar to ignore. A state within a state, the Deep State was something that happened to a country when things were really falling apart. It was when the institutions of the state like the armed forces or other authorities like intelligence agencies went rogue and stopped obeying the elected leadership of the country.
Working silently from within the darkest recesses of the corridors of power, warring factions of anonymous, unelected men and women worked to further their own agendas irrespective of the wishes of the government that was supposed to be leading them. It was as if a coup d’état had happened, only without there ever having been a single shot fired, and without the public having the vaguest idea that it had happened.
The ultimate takeover.
The ultimate betrayal, and what Andrej Liška had described seemed terrifyingly close to a Deep State situation. Maybe, it was even worse — maybe it went beyond the national level and was a state within the international system itself. A shadow power running multiple countries from behind the scenes. A global puppet show. He doubted a man like Andrej Liška, who had devoted his life to scientific research for the benefit of mankind, could even conceive of such a grim state of affairs.
The former spy sighed and rubbed his eyes. “What does this dust do, Andrej?”
“You must remember I thought I was working to help people, not harm them.”
“Please — we don’t have much time,” Lucia said. “I am a physicist too — I understand nanotechnology. You can tell me.”
“As you know then,” he continued, “the dust is so fine it is invisible — this is the first thing you must understand. It is also without flavor and smells of nothing. There is no way for a person to know if they have breathed it in.” He began sobbing.
Lucia put her arm on his shoulder. “Please, you must tell us more if you want us to help.”
He straightened himself up and took a deep breath. “As you will also know, the future of science is nanotechnology — whether that is research, medical or even warfare. The advances made in the field in the last few years have been staggering. They would terrify most people but they simply have no idea what we’re now capable of. The main purpose of the nanodust is to deliver a weaponized agent into a population without their even knowing it, and once it’s delivered they can… do things.”
“Do what?”
“You must remember this is a kind of smart-dust, it has a very basic artificial intelligence. Once a person has breathed it in and it enters their bloodstream then it goes straight to the brain. After that, whoever controls the dust controls the infected body.”
“And this is what happened to the birds?”
“Yes. Once the nanodust was delivered we activated it. In the case of the birds it was programmed to shut down their cerebral cortex completely. We took over their intelligence functions and hacked them. This is why they fell from the sky. We were trying to find a way to reverse it, but we failed.”
Lucia gasped. “Oh my God! That’s terrible.”
Liška nodded glumly and poured himself more whisky. “When science meets warfare, it’s always terrible,”
Harry shot him a glance. “And the scientists I saw at the end of the film?”
“There was a problem at the lab… the dust escaped.”
“It escaped?” Harry said. “You make it sound like it’s alive.”
“It is and it isn’t — it has a kind of basic artificial intelligence, but it’s reliant on a remote controller. The only way to kill it was to activate its function while inside the bloodstreams of the scientists… Gabriel and I were there that day. After that we both knew we could never be part of what they were doing and that is when we decided to leave but not before taking some of the smart dust with us. That was a decision that came at a heavy price.”
“They’re hunting you?”
He nodded. “The events you see on that film were several months ago, and this place is the second I’ve rented in three months. If they find me they will kill me.”
“And you say you failed to find a way to reverse the dust’s effects?”
He frowned. “After we discovered what they were doing we knew we had to work on something to stop it — anything! If they release the dust they can control it like any other remote control vehicle — a plane, a drone — you name it — only in this case, the infected person becomes the vehicle.”
“So if they can kill those who breathe it in,” Lucia said, “the dust’s presence will enable this Ministry to hack entire populations.”
“You are a clever woman,” Andrej said. “I can see why Pablo admired and loved you so much.”
“Hack people?” Harry said. “This is getting out of control. We’re going to need to know a lot more about this Ministry and why they’re manipulating governments into allowing them to make weapons like this.”
“As I said, we were trying to work on a way to disable the dust when inside the subject. We failed totally, as you saw from the film. That is why we stole the research notes, and also on the chip is the activation code for the dust.”
“The long line of numbers we saw!” Lucia said.
Harry frowned. “What are their plans with this weapon — genocide, or this hacking thing?”
“Both. They claim the world has become ungovernable again — too many people. They plan on testing the weapon somewhere big to see if they can control the dust particles, and if they can, then they’re going to put it all over the world and take out ninety per cent of the population. They say this is the only way humanity can ascend to a higher level.”
“And those who survive?”
“They will be hacked and controlled by the Ministry.”
“Turned into zombies, you mean?” Harry said.
“This is hopeless!” said Lucia.
“No — it’s not,” Liška said. “There is one hope… there is something I haven’t told you yet that will change everything.”
TWENTY
Harry fixed his eyes on Liška but the Czech scientist shifted uncomfortably in his chair and broke eye contact by rubbing his face. Body language like that told a thousand words. “So what’s this big game changer, professor?” he asked.
“It’s true that the Perses dust is utterly lethal — its deployment in any dense population would be catastrophic. That is its purpose. That is why it was created… but…”