Revolution (8 page)

Listening to all this information, Harry
suddenly felt a sense of uneasiness. Things were coming far too
fast and far too easily. Anastasia touched him on the shoulder,
making him start. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s too easy. It’s like this Szabo
wants
us to find him. He’s practically giving us this
information.”

“You think it’s a trap?”

The thought had crossed Harry’s mind more
than once. It also affected Istvan. At the mention of the word
“trap”, he started to back away and his body began to quiver. “I do
not wish to go back to my country,” he said. “I am not human, not
now. I do not wish my parents to see me. I do not wish anyone to
see me.” His lower lip trembled violently. “I will not go.”

“You have to,” Anastasia said and squatted
down beside him. “We need you.” She looked up at Farrell. “When
this is all over, he can stay here, can’t he?”

Farrell’s mouth set in a straight line.
“You’re going to have to understand that what we’re doing is off
the books. This is for our eyes only, you understand?”

“Yeah,” she answered in a sour voice. “I get
it. Hide the freaks away from the public.”

A look of indecision appeared on Farrell’s
normally stoic face. “It’s not that. It’s for your safety. Did you
forget the fact that lynch mobs went after you last time? Did you
forget how hard we had to work in order to call them off?”

His voice rose with each passing sentence.
“The Chief of Police still doesn’t believe me. The CIA and NSA are
also on my back. Only the President knows, and he knows the bare
minimum. It’s called plausible deniability. Trust me on this. We’re
doing this for you.”

There it was—that trust thing again. Harry
trusted Farrell—up to a point. At the same time, he remembered the
looks on the faces of the lynch mobs. Fear, hatred and a lust for
blood—they all showcased the worst humanity had to offer. The first
group of citizens, people he thought were normal and average, had
trapped him and Anastasia in a warehouse. Armed with knives, guns
and baseball bats, they’d almost succeeded in their lynch attempt.
They’d barely escaped with their lives.

As for the second group, a band of
subterranean homeless people, they’d tried to do the same. Much as
he hated to admit it, this really wasn’t the ideal situation to
reveal their presence, not yet.

“At any rate,” Farrell continued, “that’s for
the attorney general to decide and for the State Department as
well. But,” he added, “I’ll do what I can.”

“Can you give me safety over there?” Istvan
asked in a pleading tone.

Far from sounding tough, Anastasia said in
the gentlest of voices, “We’re not the ones you should be afraid
of. But if we find others like us, then we’ll need you to
translate. I don’t speak Hungarian and neither does Harry. We also
need you to show us the way. We won’t let anyone hurt you. We
promise.”

Istvan still looked doubtful, but finally he
gulped and nodded. “I will go,” he said in a low voice. “I am
afraid of what I might find, but I will go.”

“We’ll stick with you,” Anastasia said and
shot a glance at Harry. “We’re doing this together, right?”

A sudden stab of uncertainty hit Harry and
hit hard. Fighting it down, he replied, “We have to stick
together.”

Farrell observed the proceedings with nary a
muscle moving in his face. Finally, he rubbed his hands together as
if sealing some kind of contract. “Then I guess we’re going to
Hungary.”

Forty-eight hours later, Harry sat next to Anastasia
on a private jet bound for Budapest. Farrell sat up front with the
pilot after telling them that they’d stop in Iceland to refuel.
“Just for an hour or so,” he said. “We can’t fly commercial class,
you know.”

The answer came as no consolation to Harry.
It didn’t matter which way he went. This was uncharted territory.
On American soil, he felt semi-comfortable defending his turf, as
it was his turf. Now... he wasn’t sure of anything.

Istvan napped in a seat three rows away,
snoring noisily, grunting as a pig would and occasionally muttering
something in his sleep. Harry wished he knew Hungarian, but outside
of the word
goulash
he was out of his depth.

The flight was uneventful, but as they neared
Hungarian air space, Anastasia whispered into his ear, “Don’t get
too close to Istvan. Something isn’t right.”

Surprised by her comment, Harry stole a look
at their companion. He was still sleeping. “I thought you said that
he was one of us.”

“He
is
one of us,” Anastasia replied,
her eyes darting to the front area of the plane and back again. A
note of caution entered her voice. “But just because he’s the same
as us doesn’t mean that he’s on our side. Remember Piotr and
Lyudmila? They weren’t. So trust but verify.”

Nodding, Harry sat back and said nothing at
first. He believed in his girlfriend, but he’d been thinking the
same thing. Istvan turned up out of the blue, gave his location
away, suffered no memory loss and had seemed only too willing to
tell them everything. Then again, neither Lyudmila nor Piotr had
amnesia. He heaved out a sigh. “Okay, like you said, trust but
verify.”

Something else disturbed him, and that was
the look of their third wheel. Istvan had begun to devolve, a major
problem when animal genes were mixed with human ones. Harry had
managed to solve the problem with Anastasia, but Istvan seemed to
be changing minute by minute. His nose, formerly long, had shrunk
and now resembled a pig’s nose, round and flat. There would be more
changes. Harry only hoped he’d be able to get to the bottom of this
mystery before Istvan devolved too much to be of any help.

Farrell came back to warn them that they were
going to land soon. “We’re going to be met at the airport by Major
General Anton Bartok,” he said. “He’s the FBI’s liaison over there.
It’s just him, a private car, and he’ll do the driving. No one else
is in on this.”

Thirty minutes later, they landed. The pilot
taxied into a private hangar away from prying eyes. As they
deplaned, the hangar was empty save for a lone individual standing
near the doors. “That’s Bartok,” Farrell said as the door
opened.

A massive man in his forties with a head of
short jet-black hair, he wore a light greenish-brown uniform
festooned with numerous medals. With square features and dark eyes,
his face had the look of unmistakable authority, but that look of
being in control faded when Harry and Anastasia stepped down on the
tarmac. Instead, a stare of incredulity replaced the authoritative
mien. It grew more pronounced when he saw Istvan.

Harry felt the man’s stare, somewhat akin to
a scientist observing a rather unusual lab specimen. His mind
flashed back to the convenience store incident, but Bartok
recovered nicely and addressed them. “My name is Major General
Anton Bartok,” he said in flawless English with only a trace of an
accent. “I am attached to and at the service of the Ministry of
Defense in this country.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Farrell said.
Observing formalities, they shook hands and exchanged cellphone
numbers.

Istvan stayed in the background, but squeaked
out something in Hungarian. After blinking his eyes in surprise,
Bartok recovered and gave him a curt nod. Istvan bobbed his head
and remained quiet. “When you contacted me, Agent Farrell,” Bartok
started off by saying, “and told me about one of our countrymen
being, er, transformed, I admit that I was skeptical. I thought
that the news reports about transgenics in Manhattan were nothing
more than a publicity stunt. I was wrong.”

He turned his gaze on Harry. “Your last
name—Goldman—I read about your father after Agent Farrell gave me
some of your background. Your father was a genius. It seems that
you are as well. I hope that you are not the one who has
transformed anyone.”

Harry didn’t see the need to talk about his
practical work with transgenics. He was living proof of the
process’ effectiveness, as was Anastasia. Instead, he nodded at
Bartok. “I just do research, sir.”

“There are more,” Anastasia put in. “My
name’s Anastasia Yakusheva, and I’m from Russia, originally.”

“She’s American now,” Farrell chimed in. “Her
citizenship papers came through only yesterday.”

Anastasia turned around, a pleased look on
her face. “You didn’t tell me. Thank you.” Her tone didn’t sound
sarcastic, though, merely grateful.

“There wasn’t time,” Farrell answered,
shrugging. “We just got the word. I brought along your passport,
just in case.”

Bartok then interrupted the feel-good moment
by waving them to a private army limousine. They got in, Farrell in
the front seat and Harry, Anastasia and Istvan in the back. Bartok
drove off, leading them away from the airfield and onto a highway.
Miles of forest on either side of the highway passed in front of
them. Bartok kept the conversation going with Farrell about the
trouble as they drove along.

“There have been a number of wild animal
reports,” he said while navigating. It was roughly two in the
afternoon and Harry struggled to concentrate. Jet lag could do that
to a person. Being enhanced didn’t make him immune to it. He’d
slept on the airplane, but all the same, he couldn’t wait to sack
out.

Traffic remained surprisingly light and
Bartok continued his stories of mayhem. “Stories of people in the
countryside being savaged, ripped apart... at first, we thought it
the work of a madman. However, when we saw the bite marks and our
coroners confirmed that no knife or human hand could have done...”
his voice shook briefly... “Done such savage things, we began to
think otherwise.”

He fished around in the glove compartment and
brought out a file. “These are some photos our police took. The
picture on top is the latest, only three days ago.”

Bartok handed the file to Farrell who leafed
through it. Wordlessly, he passed it to the back seat. Harry got a
look at the victims. There were five pictures, all with massive
bite marks to the neck and claw marks to the bodies. All of the
victims had been rent limb from limb. Anastasia took the pictures
and began to growl. “This one,” she said, referring to victim
number three, “looks like it was torn apart by a bear. I recognize
the bite marks.

“But this one,” she held up a picture of the
first victim, “it looks like a bird’s talons tore into her.”

Istvan declined to look at the pictures and
stayed huddled in his seat. Anastasia passed the pictures back.
“Are we going to the forest now?” she asked.

“No,” Bartok replied. “We are going to the
coroner’s office first to look at the victims and then discuss what
to do. We shall look tomorrow morning, first thing. I promise you
this.”

Privately, Harry thought they were wasting
time and Anastasia obviously felt the same way, for she growled her
disapproval, but Farrell turned around in his seat and shook his
head. “It’s how things are done here. Remember, we’re guests.”

That settled the argument. Shortly
thereafter, they arrived at a two-story mid-sized brick building in
downtown Budapest. People walked by, seemingly unconcerned with the
limousine driving along the road. Harry peeked out the window and
wondered what the ordinary citizen would think of him and his
companions. He then squelched the thought. He knew.

“This is where the bodies are,” Bartok
announced as they swung into an underground garage. He parked the
car and gestured for them to exit. “We shall take the service
elevator. Ordinarily, there are five people on duty, but our
ministry has asked them to take time off. Any new arrivals come
in,” he chuckled, although Harry found nothing funny about it,
“they will go somewhere else. For now, I do not wish to provoke a
scene or cause any undue fear. We will be left alone there.”

“Hey,” Anastasia said with a note of
indignation. “How are we making a—”

“We won’t, but that’s how it is,” Harry
interrupted and put his hand on her arm to quiet her. “We look how
we look and people aren’t going to be used to that.” He glanced at
Bartok. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Correct,” Bartok nodded. “I am sorry.
Despite my surprise when I first met you, I now know why you look
as you do. However, others won’t. You must understand that when the
attacks began, the civilians were understandably frightened. There
were mobs, riots, and innocents were hurt. Please forgive their...”
he stopped to search for the right word, “ignorance.”

Anastasia shook Harry’s hand off and sat back
in her seat, muttering non-sequiturs. They took the elevator to the
basement and walked down a quiet corridor with Bartok in the lead.
Five doors down, he inclined his head to the left. “They are in
here. The upper levels are for the administrators and the
technicians. There is no one else around. For now, your secrets
stay with me.”

The room was large, white-walled and sterile
smelling. As Harry walked in, he automatically took in the details.
A large wooden table stood in the center of the room with a number
of chairs around it and ashtrays on top. A few laptops sat on the
shelves in the far corner. Three glass cabinets that contained
surgical instruments. That was it for the furniture, with the
exception of the receptacles for the dead.

A heavy odor of disinfectant hung in the air.
“Ordinarily, we don’t need disinfectant, but this is summer and the
bodies have begun to decay,” Bartok said.

He walked over to the wall where the deceased
were ensconced in their temporary metal shells. He pulled one open
and removed the sheet. Half a man was on the slab, the right side
of him. The left side was missing, all of it, from head to toe.
Dried blood kept the intact half stuck to the cold metal. Istvan
immediately turned away and Harry suddenly experienced a bout of
nausea. He fought it down. Tossing his lunch wouldn’t help
things.