Vessel Read online

  He groaned as the predicament rolled around in the wash of his mind, and in a single frustrated moment, he decided what to do. Hauling himself to his feet, his heart spiked as he realised his stun gun, which he was about to get, was drained flat; he had forgotten to recharge it. Shit. Rethinking his plan, he went to the kitchen, listening out for Grigory's truck. He took the biggest knife he could find, the one Grigory was using to carve up musk deer the night they had met. It was weighty, imbalanced by the long, thick blade. Along its cutting edge it shone bright, the metal sharp and gleaming only where it needed to be.

  The crunch of tyres on the loose road and the chug of an engine sent Sean running to the window, heart thundering, knife in hand. Peering through the blinds, he saw Grigory's truck pull up to the kerb outside. He and Aleks got out. Sean unlocked the bolt and backed up, grasping the heavy knife in both hands. He held it out in front of him like an axe, ready to drive it home the moment he was provoked. The handle turned and the door opened. Aleks walked in. He was chatting with Grigory, who was following him up the footpath, laughing. When Aleks saw Sean, his face dropped, wide eyes moving from the knife, to Sean, then back again. Grigory pushed past Aleks, and also stopped when he saw Sean. They all stared at each other, locked in an unspoken stalemate, and the silence that held them apart grew longer. It made Sean tired, his heart beating fast and his limbs moaning with a dull ache. He wanted to say something, but he didn't want to be the one to push the first domino.

  'What are you doing?' Aleks said, breaking the unsteady truce.

  'I'm protecting myself,' Sean tried to say with force, although his voice came out flat and thin.

  'From what?'

  'From you.'

  Aleks' face was one of shock, of confusion, but it wasn't a look his brother shared; Grigory had the same expression he'd worn when Sean had first met him: suspicion.

  'I don't understand …' Aleks said, his wide eyes unblinking.

  'I'm not sure you've been telling me the truth.'

  Something changed on Aleks' face. 'Everything I've told you is the truth,' he said, taking a step towards Sean.

  Sean retreated back, thrusting the knife out further in front of him. 'Stay where you are!' he yelled through gritted teeth. 'Don't come any closer!'

  Aleks lifted up his hands, palms outward, but the instant Sean glanced at them, Grigory pounced. Sean slashed with the blade, but Grigory countered, knocking back against Sean's arms with his own. Then Sean felt a large, hot hand clasp his wrist, and a sudden agonising pain shot through it. Grigory retreated. Nursing his empty hand, Sean stumbled back, quivering with pain and shock. Grigory passed the knife to Aleks. He then reached into his jacket and retracted a handgun, matt-black and snub-nosed, which he cocked and pointed at Sean. He walked over to Sean, gun levelled at his face, and stopped with the muzzle inches from his forehead. Sean shut his eyes, his tightening throat suffocating him, forcing his breaths to become fast, ragged gasps. All at once he felt numb, distant, as if he were buoyant and weightless. He waited, but the pain never came, nor the flash, nor the thunder.

  He opened one eye, and then the other. Grigory was still standing in front of him, still holding the gun inches from his face, but now it was reversed, pointing the other way. Grigory jiggled the weapon, making Sean's insides squirm, but he realised that Grigory had done it in a, here, take this, kind of way. Sean lifted his hands, moving them towards the grip until his fingers met cool steel. As he took the gun, Grigory released the muzzle, and backed up next to Aleks. Now Sean was pointing the gun, which was shaking in his hands. He moved it to Aleks, whose eyes looked back deep into his, and then to Grigory. Neither of them spoke. Sean didn't know why he did what he did next, but he did it anyway: he lowered the gun and put it down on the coffee table. Then he fainted. He didn't know how long he was out for, but when he came round, it was because a shadow was hanging over his face.

  'Sean, are you okay?'

  Pain smouldered in a pocket behind his eyeballs, and as he opened his eyes, it seared with vicious agony. 'Eurghhh …' he gurgled as he sat up, reaching for the source of the pain, the back of his head. When he looked at his hand, there was blood, but not much. 'What happened …' he groaned.

  'You fainted,' Aleks said, helping him to stand. 'You knocked your head on the table.'

  Bit by bit it all came back to Sean. The knife, the gun … the fainting. Shit. But he was still alive.

  Aleks helped him to the sofa and lowered him down. 'I'll clean you up and get you some pain killers,' he said. 'It doesn't look too bad. You'll be fine.'

  The pain in Sean's head had begun to subside already, but in its place came nausea at the thought of what happened before he fainted. 'I'm sorry. I didn't know what to do.'

  'That's fine,' said Aleks, who had returned with a damp cloth. He mopped the back of Sean's head with it. 'I can understand your position. But I hope there will be no more knife waving from now on.'

  Sean shook his head, which reinvigorated the pain, and he winced. Not that there was any point in threatening him with a knife — Grigory had plucked it from his hands without so much as a thank you.

  The front door opened and Grigory himself walked in, carrying a bag of shopping. 'Food for tonight,' he said. 'You're not going to stab me over it, are you?'

  An embarrassing stupidity burned on Sean's cheeks. 'No,' he mumbled. 'I'm sorry.'

  'It's fine,' Aleks said, chuckling. 'Here, take these.'

  Sean took the pills and water and swallowed them down. He handed the empty glass back and shut his eyes to stop the room from spinning. 'So, what next?'

  'I don't know,' Aleks replied from the darkness.

  Sean didn't know either. There were a few ideas floating around, but when he tried to think about them, it hurt his head. There would plenty of time to think about them tomorrow — but first, sleep.

  * * *

  It was strange being alone. Not that Sally was unused to being by herself, but isolation at this magnitude was a whole new experience. It wasn't creepy, but it was … quiet. Even during her most sedentary times as a researcher, she'd still swapped the occasional hello with other staff. Here, she had no one. As the days passed, she noticed herself talking out loud, and although it was a concern at first, she began to embrace the sound of a human voice — even if it was her own. At one point, something she'd said aloud triggered a spore of a memory, and she'd realised she sounded just like her own mother. The thought had made her sad.

  She busied herself with her research, and even found the time for more: those little experiments she had always wanted to do. Deep space radio waves, big bang evidence — the kind of things she really enjoyed. They were the sort of activities that helped keep her mind off the cold fact that she was over two hundred miles away from anyone, floating alone in lifeless space. She had even been down into the MLM on occasion to look at UV One, which still tracked behind the station as it had done since its arrival. Nothing strange happened, even when she stared at it. She began to believe that her previous experiences had been amplified by contagious hysteria. Space wasn't the domain of the action hero — it was the working environment of the mentally accelerated, and that was bound to have consequences.

  Shoulder elastics pulling each long stride into the treadmill, Sally wiped a towel across her sweaty face as she finished the last ten minutes of her two-hour fitness regime. As she warmed down, she thought about where she was going to take her experiments next. With no idea how long it would be until the next Soyuz came to collect her — and she presumed it would be soon since the ISS had been left manned by an astronaut with only three weeks' training — she needed to make the most of the time she had.

  'I'll probably finish the deep space pulses, then move on to a broad range scan of that neutron star, erm … what was it called?' She snapped her fingers. 'R X J one eight five six point five dash three seven five four. That's it.'

  Her memory was something she prided herself on, and she grinned at her achievement. Sometimes, it w
as the small things that made her happy. She slowed and stopped the treadmill, took a moment to catch her breath, unfastened the straps and dabbed herself with the towel. It had taken her a while, but she was getting used to the fitness routines, and she was even starting to enjoy them. A run and a wash left her feeling fresh and invigorated, ready to study.

  * * *

  'How is he?'

  Evgeny Novitskiy stood over the bed of Chris Williams, who was still sedated and had his entire head bandaged. A clutch of tubes poked out where his mouth should have been.

  'He's not doing well I'm afraid,' the nurse tending to him said with a sad smile. 'He's got damage to his trigeminal nerve, so he's in a lot of pain. We can't wake him — the agony would be too unbearable.'

  'And Gardner? Any change?'

  The nurse shook her head.

  'Thank you.'

  Novitskiy left Chris and the nurse be, and, walking stick in hand, took a stroll around the corridors. He was at a hospital in Moscow — where exactly he didn't know — along with Chris and Gardner, having been flown in direct from Kazakhstan. He hadn't seen Gardner since their arrival — he was in a closed room with the curtains drawn. The nurses kept him up-to-date with his progress, which was minimal.

  It had taken Novitskiy a few days to gain the strength to walk again after the weightlessness of space, but now he was mobile — if a little unsteady — he had been restricted to his floor. All the other rooms were empty — it was just himself, Chris, Gardner and the staff occupying the whole level. Quarantine, perhaps? They wouldn't tell him. They said it was an order from above, but wouldn't say from who. He'd asked to talk to someone from NASA or the RFSA. The nurses kept telling him soon, but soon didn't seem to be coming. He aimed himself for the ward desk and pottered on.

  'I hope you're not thinking of escaping?' the nurse at the desk said, giving him a warm smile.

  'No, sir.' Novitskiy replied, hobbling over to him. 'You don't know when I'm going to be debriefed, do you? It's really important I speak to someone.'

  The nurse sifted through his paperwork, shaking his head. 'I'm sorry — we still haven't heard anything. I'll make sure to let them know you asked.'

  'Thanks,' Novitskiy said, and hobbled back down the corridor to his room.

  'Hey, Novitskiy?' the nurse called after him.

  'Yeah?'

  'No running in the halls.'

  Novitskiy rolled his eyes, grinning, and carried on walking while the nurse chuckled to himself. The smile faded as the thought of Sally Fisher panged in his chest.

  The next day, he awoke early to the warmth of the sun poking in between the blinds. He felt tired, even more so than usual. His dreams had jarred him awake again and again, leaving him before he could remember what they were. He sat up, stretched and yawned, and when he'd finished he saw a nurse wheeling a trolley though the door with his breakfast on it.

  'Here you go, Captain,' the nurse said as she lifted the tray onto his lap.

  'Thank you, very kind.'

  'And this came for you, too.'

  The nurse handed him a letter. It had a US Department of Defence logo on it. He took it, but didn’t open it. 'Thank you.'

  'Enjoy your breakfast.'

  The nurse smiled, then left. Novitskiy watched her, and when she was gone, he tore open the letter. It was short.

  Dear Captain Novitskiy,

  You have been summoned to a meeting with Major General John Bales.

  Other than the time and date of the meeting and a note to say a car would come to collect him, that was it. There wasn't even a signature. He looked at the bedside clock — the meeting was tomorrow. He turned the letter over to see if there was anything else written on it: there wasn't. Major General John Bales? He'd never even heard of this high-ranking man, let alone met him. This was very strange.

  Chapter 20

  'Hello — is this the NASA press centre?'

  The person on the other end of the line — in her middling forties by the sound of it — confirmed that, yes, it was the NASA press centre. 'And can I ask who you might be?'

  'Ah, yes — my name is Steve Philips. I'm the foreign affairs and technology correspondent for the New York Times.'

  Steve Philips was indeed the correspondent for foreign affairs and technology at the New York Times, but that wasn't making the pretence of being him any easier. Sean transferred the bulky satellite phone from one ear to the other, and gave a thumbs-up to Aleks and Grigory, who were sitting on the back of Grigory's pickup truck, watching. Although Sean had explained his plan to them as they drove out into the wilderness, the expressions on their faces didn't suggest they were convinced by it. Whatever, Sean thought. I think it's a good idea. The plan was simple: dig up as much information on Sally Fisher and Robert Gardner as possible to try and prove their present whereabouts, thus forcing NASA to make a new statement. And sometimes — just sometimes — the easiest place to get that withheld information was via the very people trying to withhold it, so that's what Sean — now also known as Steve Philips, foreign affairs and technology correspondent for the New York Times — was doing. As Professor Klein had often repeated to his class during journalism school: it was all about confidence.

  'Mr Philips, thank you for calling. And how might we be able to help you today?'

  'I'm doing a piece on the relationship between America and Russia, and the joint program on the International Space Station. You know, astronauts working with cosmonauts, that sort of thing. Quite the teamwork story, don't you think?'

  Too much information, Sean, too much information. Keep the lie simple. He could almost hear Professor Klein's voice in his head.

  'Yes, that does sound very good.'

  Keep it simple.

  'I'd like to interview some of the team on the ground. I understand Sally Fisher, the communications expert, and Robert Gardner, former astronaut, were both recruited as consultants on the matter. I’d like to interview them if I can.'

  The woman didn't reply. Sean felt hot, his shirt tight and clammy around his chest and neck. Perhaps he had triggered some kind of keyword? Were they trying to track him down, trace the call? They were miles out into the woods, but were they far enough away from civilization? He listened for the thump of helicopter blades over the trees, anxious, but —

  'Would you like to do a telephone interview, or interview them in person, Mr Philips?'

  The response stunned Sean, and he regrouped his thoughts to speak. 'In person, please.'

  'Would you like to interview any of the Russian team, too?'

  He hadn't thought of that. 'Er … okay.'

  'Who would you like to interview?'

  Think, Sean, think.

  'The surgeon and CAPCOM, please.'

  Shit. CAPCOM was sat opposite him, looking concerned.

  'I'm afraid the CAPCOM isn't available for interview at present. I'm sure you understand. You can most certainly interview his cover and the mission surgeon, though. When shall I arrange that for, Mr Philips?'

  'Is tomorrow too soon?'

  'Not at all. Shall we say ten thirty?'

  'Yes please.'

  And it was done. He thumbed the call disconnect button, and took a breath. His heart was pounding. Who'd have thought the most intense phone call he'd ever make would be to a middling forties woman?

  'Well?' said Aleks, gesturing for Sean to reveal all.

  'We're in. I don't believe it, but we're in.'

  Aleks hopped down from the truck to give him a slap on the arm, which in his present state of nervous shock nearly toppled him over. He was thankful that Grigory only gave him a smile.

  Back at Grigory's house they fired up Grigory's computer and set a search running for the terms Sally Fisher and Robert Gardner. Sean was convinced there was something more to find online, and while they waited for day to become night to become day again, he wanted to use the time to scour the web for more clues. He routed the searches through proxy servers to prevent them being traced, and left the compute
r to whizz through billions of fragments of data, sorting, disposing, sorting, disposing, hunting until it found a piece that might be of interest. When it did, it flagged it up. So far all the flagged data had been irrelevant, and Sean had dismissed it, leaving the computer to continue its digital treasure hunt.

  'This soup is really delicious,' Sean said after a mouthful. 'How do you get it so thick?' He dunked the spoon in again, waiting for Grigory to finish his own mouthful and reveal the secret.

  'Potato,' Grigory said. 'Mashed.'

  'Huh. As simple as that?'

  'Yes. Always use good potatoes.'

  Sean nodded, his mouth full of creamy soup. It struck him that the three of them could have been friends on one of those character-building wilderness trips, were it not for the undercover journalism and criminal fugitive.

  'I think the computer's found something,' Aleks said, putting his bowl down to go see.

  'Anything useful?' Sean asked.

  'I'm not sure. Come and have a look.'

  Sean finished his last spoonful and went over. It was obvious why Aleks was uncertain: the computer seemed to have pulled a result from a long-since abandoned conspiracy site.

  'This page doesn't exist any more,' Aleks said. 'It found this in the cache of an online search engine. It's six years old.'

  Underneath a header consisting of B-movie graphics and some text that read The Vault of Mystery in a slimy font, there was an article about extra-terrestrial visits to Earth. It described incidents such as Roswell and the Bermuda triangle, linking them to a theory about unmanned space probes and alien abduction. It all seemed far-fetched and tenuous, but knowing what he knew about UV One, Sean had a hard time laughing it off. There was a time when he would've scorned it as second, even third-rate journalism, but now it was a gold mine of possibilities. He skim-read the rest of the article, which continued to talk about present day sightings and abductions, and featured a few snippets from astronaut Robert Gardner. Seeing that name made Sean's stomach lurch with excited anticipation.