Revolution (17 page)

Before he could say anything, though, Farrell
dug his smartphone from his pocket, punched in a few numbers and a
small map appeared. “This is Belgrade. The attacks were roughly
fifty miles north of there. We can get into Belgrade if I pull the
proper strings with the State Department and have a guide meet you,
Anastasia and Istvan once you’re over there.”

“I suppose this is another off-the-books
plan?” Anastasia asked. “Covert and quiet, just the way you like
it?” She said this all with a blank expression, but her voice could
have cut through steel.

“What do you think?” Farrell answered,
annoyed. “We have to keep this as quiet as possible. You’ll have
backup, don’t worry.”

A noise at the top of the stairs made them
look up. Istvan stood at the railing, rubbing his eyes and yawning.
In a sleepy voice he asked, “Where are we going?”

After Farrell had made a few calls, they
settled down to wait for their lift to the airport. The two
remaining FBI agents went outside to stand guard duty and Anastasia
sought her own counsel by staring at the window. A car came by and
took Morozoff away. He said nothing to anyone, although he nodded
politely to Harry on his way out. Anastasia merely hissed at him.
As for Istvan, he did what he did best—he ate half of what was in
the refrigerator and took a nap on the carpet.

With the cabin now mostly empty, Harry sat at
the table and hoped that Jason and Tina would be safe. In the
deeper recesses of his mind, he prayed that his program would work
and that they’d be able to do what they did in time.

“Are you going to work on something?”
Anastasia called from her window position, interrupting his mental
gymnastics.

What could he work on? He had no computer and
didn’t feel like going through the equations again. It just made
his head hurt. Right now, he didn’t feel like revealing his
uncertainty to her. It was a sure bet that she already knew. “I,
uh, I’ve got some things to figure out,” he said.

With a series of quick steps, she came over
and draped her arms around his neck. “Then figure things out,” she
whispered into his ear while her hands caressed his face. “I’m
going to take a nap upstairs. You can join me later if you
want.”

That was the best offer he’d had in a long
time. “I’ll be up soon.”

She left him alone then and he sat idly,
doodling on a piece of paper. As he sat and drew nonsensical
pictures, Farrell came over and took a seat beside him. “Sorry to
keep you running all over the place, kid, but that’s part of the
job.”

“Your job, not mine,” Harry answered, feeling
that once again, he and his girlfriend were about to be tossed into
the den of mutant lions. Would they have any backup? Probably not,
but he couldn’t predict the future. Right now, he was too tired to
correct the older man on his use of the word
kid.
It wasn’t
worth it.

“Let’s talk out back,” Farrell suggested,
pointing to the rear door. “The walls have ears.”

Not sure if he was joking or not, Harry
followed him outside. The tableau in front of them, stately elms
and firs, the sounds of insects singing and birds chirping, calmed
him down somewhat. However, this calm could be shattered at any
moment, so he remained on edge and sniffed the air. So far, all was
as it should be—quiet. “What is it?” he finally asked.

Farrell chewed on his lower lip. “I’m sorry
for dragging you into this, sorry for you and your girlfriend. At
the beginning, I really didn’t know about Szabo or Kulakov or any
of this.”

Listening to that explanation, Harry found it
more than a little hard to take in. Farrell had known about the
escapees, all thirty-plus of them, months back. He’d exchanged
information with the Hungarians and the Russians. The only thing he
couldn’t predict was that the enemy would come where they were...
but he should have figured on it. Harry swallowed his anger. “Fine,
so you’re sorry. What else is there?”

“I don’t have much else going except this,”
said Farrell, his voice very quiet now. “You know what I do when
the job is done for the day?”

What was up with the true confessions? Was
this really a time to go into it? Flustered, Harry got out a “No”
answer.

“I usually sleep in my office. Or I go home
and sleep. That’s it. How’s that for a lifestyle?”

He spoke without pity. It was the sound of a
person who’d accepted his lot in life and didn’t complain about it.
Yet the sound in his voice spoke of hurt, relationships irreparably
damaged, and pain. Farrell reached into his pocket and withdrew a
picture of a young blonde girl, late teens, pretty, with an angular
face and a cute smile.

“Is that your daughter?” Harry asked, after
doing the polite thing and examining the picture.

Farrell pocketed it again. “Yeah, she lives
with her mother on the West Coast. We got divorced three years
ago... haven’t seen her much. I’m, uh,” he shuffled his feet,
suddenly at a loss for words, “not much on conversation.”

“How about doing the old reconciliation
thing?”

A harsh chuckle came from Farrell’s mouth.
“No, no that isn’t in the cards. I’m too involved in this job.
That’s the reason she left me, because I had my work, twenty-four
seven, and now this, and...”

His voice trailed off, but Harry heard the
loneliness and regret in it. He also regretted his earlier,
lonelier years, but time was something you could never get back.
Once it was gone, only the memory remained. A person couldn’t live
in the past forever. Farrell picked up a handful of pebbles and
flicked them away one by one. “I’m just sorry that you and
Anastasia won’t have the chance of living normal lives.”

With a quick move, he chucked the other
pebbles away. “Do you want to change back, I mean, to being human?”
he asked.

Offended by the question, Harry snapped his
head around and responded, “I
am
human. I eat, go to the
bathroom, shave—a lot—and do everything you do. Don’t box me into
one of your departmental categories. Don’t do that to Anastasia,
either.”

Farrell put up his hands as a sign of backing
off. “Sorry, that came out wrong. I mean, you chose to become, uh,
how you are. Anastasia didn’t. If that plan of yours works out, are
you going to use it?”

The expression on his face read sincere all
the way, so Harry dropped the anger act. Farrell had asked an
honest question. It required an answer, but Harry didn’t have one.
If his plan worked and if the engineers could build a proper
Genesis Chamber, if... he stopped thinking about it. Being as he
was, it didn’t bother him, but the very fact that he
was
different seemed to bother everyone else.

Yes, he had chosen to take the serum.
Anastasia hadn’t, and he wanted her to have the chance at being
what she was. She’d been denied a proper life. He felt it only
right to give her the chance of one. That was, if his formula
worked. It always came back to the formula.

Finally, Harry decided to let whatever
happened, happen. He wasn’t the one to decide for anyone. “It’s her
choice,” he said, “and why are you telling me all this?”

Farrell spread his hands wide as if to lay
out the facts of life in a few sentences. “Because I don’t want you
winding up like me. You’ve got a future. You’re the smartest person
I’ve ever met. Age is not a factor, and I’m not butt-kissing. I,
uh, just want you and your girlfriend to be safe... and to be
happy.”

He turned away then and walked into the
cabin. Touched by Farrell’s sincerity, Harry thought about what had
just been discussed. Right then and there, he promised himself that
no matter what anyone said, he’d always be true to himself and to
his girlfriend... and to no one else.

He went inside and up to where the rooms
were. Anastasia lay on a bed, her eyes closed. He thought she was
asleep. She wasn’t, as she turned over in a flash, her eyes
glittering in the semi-darkened room. “Is everything okay?” she
asked.

What to tell her—that they were about to
become cannon fodder for one maniac and possibly two? Perhaps she
knew, for she reclined on the bed and said softly, “Talk to me. I’m
here for you. I always have been.”

He went over to the bed and she held him
tightly. “I’m worried about what might happen,” he confessed,
feeling ashamed of what he thought was weakness.

Anastasia’s touch, gentle and soft, soothed
his soul, if only for a while. “Whatever’s going to happen, there’s
nothing we can do about it. If anything does happen, I’ll be there
for you. I’ll never leave you,” she whispered. “You can never leave
the one you love.”

The same evening, they set out for Serbia. Harry
contacted Jason by email and asked him to be careful. Guards or
not, he wrote to keep a sharp eye out. Jason wrote back in five
minutes.
Maze and I are still on duty.
We’re going to
keep track of what’s going on by satellite. Take care, man.

As for Szabo, there was no point in Harry
leaving a message. He doubted that the man-shark had stuck around
long enough. He might be crazy, but he wasn’t stupid enough to risk
his life over a letter or stay on unfriendly shores.

At eight that evening, a car picked them up
and they drove to the airport. “Stop for no one and nothing,”
Farrell instructed the driver, a compact bald man with a grim,
unsmiling face. “If anyone tries to slow us down, shoot him.”

Along the way, Farrell passed out three small
capsules to each of the travelers. “What is this?” Istvan enquired.
“Do I eat this?”

“It’s a transponder,” Farrell replied. “You
swallow it. It attaches itself to your lower intestine and will
remain there for up to five days before your body gets rid of
it.”

Harry had read about these things as a high
school student, a home schooled student, that is. He’d never
attended a public high school, as he’d outperformed even university
professors by that time. “I thought these transponders didn’t have
a great range, something like five hundred meters,” he said.

“Most of them do,” Farrell said while
clicking something on a remote control type of device the size of a
cellphone. “These are prototypes, developed by our people as well
as some of our friends in the armed forces. They’re designed to
bounce a signal off a satellite. The signal is then relayed through
other satellites and we can pick up your location via a tracking
system.”

It sounded workable, so Harry took his
capsule and swallowed it. Anastasia and Istvan did the same and
Farrell clicked the remote on. “This is my portable tracker,” he
said. “We’ll use a more powerful one at a safe location in the
States once you get over to Belgrade.”

Safe... was anywhere safe? Harry wondered.
“How are Jason and Tina taking all this?” Anastasia asked, cutting
into his thoughts.

“For now, they’re being guarded at their
houses,” Farrell replied. “I doubt they’re targets, but we’ve got
plainclothes agents on watch and we’ll keep them there until this
is over.”

“If it’s over,” Anastasia muttered.

Her comment caused Farrell’s lips to tighten,
but he said nothing. Instead, he swiveled around in his seat and
remained quiet until they got to the airport. Once there, Harry,
Anastasia and Istvan got on a plane in a private hangar. Farrell
saw them off. “You’ll be met at in Belgrade by a man named Dobrilo
Ilic. He’s a commander in the Serbian Armed Forces. Outside of you
two, he’s the only person who’s ever survived a close encounter
with those things. He’ll be your guide. Listen to him.”

It seemed like a plan. The airplane was a
small, bare-bones deal, just seats and not much else, but it did
have a television screen, and the pilot had been kind enough to
rustle up a few sandwiches to tide them over on their trip to
Belgrade. The flight from JFK to Reykjavik and then to Nikola Tesla
Airport took roughly eleven hours. During the flight, Harry tried
to sleep, but couldn’t. His heart raced with the possibility of
meeting more of his kind—and not liking them.

Istvan, as usual, curled up in his own seat
and passed out, while Anastasia whispered, “It’s just you and me.
If you’re into talking, then we can talk.”

Tongue-tied at the possibility of being
rejected, Harry decided to ask the question that he’d been thinking
of. He’d mentioned it earlier on, but never got a definitive
answer, as something always seemed to pop up at the last second.
Still, he was too much in love with her not to ask and he didn’t
want to wait. “Uh, I just wanted to ask you a question.”

She leaned closer to him, her breath warm and
sweet. “Yeah, I’m listening.”

“Are you into, I mean, do you,” he stuttered
out, “do you want to get married?”

Her eyes widened. “Are you really
serious?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

For a change, she had no snappy comeback.
Instead, her jaw dropped open and she wet her lips with a delicate
pink tongue. “I didn’t think you were serious about it when you
asked me before,” she said.

“I am.”

An eternity passed and he saw the scales of
marriage and single life being weighed in her eyes. The eternity
ended when her lips parted in a smile, something he hadn’t seen in
a long time. “The answer is yes,” she said. “Yes, I will marry you.
And we’ll have kittens, you’ll see.”

She said it with such a serious air, he burst
out laughing. The sound woke Istvan up and he blinked. “Are we
there yet?”

“Go back to sleep,” Anastasia commanded. He
pouted, but lay down and soon passed out.

Once he did, Harry whispered, “Are we going
to name them Huey, Dewey and Louie?”

“Those were ducks,” she answered, regarding
him with all the imperiousness of a princess eyeing an underling.
“I was thinking of something more aristo...”