The Einstein Code (18 page)

‘Dr Bates, we would appreciate it if you would sit with us,’ said Max. ‘We apologize for what has happened – a misunderstanding.’

‘Misunderstanding?’ Lou shot back. ‘Then why is this ape still pointing his rifle at me?’

The man with the scar signalled to Dubovnich again and the guard at last lowered the Kalashnikov. Lou glanced at Kate, took a deep breath and lowered himself slowly into the chair next to
Fleming, while Kate sat down opposite him.

‘There,’ Lou said acerbically. ‘Sitting down. Now can you tell us what is going on?’

The man with the scar spoke at last. ‘My name is Sergei.’ And he glanced round at Fleming then Kate, ‘You wish to speak to me.’

Lou sighed and shook his head. ‘Nice introduction.’

‘Forgive us,’ said Max. ‘It was a necessary precaution.’

Fleming went to interrupt.

Lou raised a hand. ‘No, wait a minute. Kate and I could have been killed, lost in those tunnels. And what happened to you?’ He glared at Fleming.

‘I removed the rope tying him to you, then took him to a different tunnel before removing his blindfold,’ Max said.

‘What was all this for?’ Kate sounded exhausted. ‘I don’t—’

‘We had to be sure you were not Russian government spies,’ Sergei said.

‘It’s standard procedure. If you were agents you would have called for assistance once you were lost in the tunnel system. You didn’t do that.’ Max waved a hand towards
Adam. ‘Nor did Mr Fleming, who arrived just before you two. He took a tumble. We patched him up. He has a remarkable sense of direction and amazing resilience.’

Lou glanced at the Englishman and turned back to Max. ‘So, you’re saying it was a test?’

‘In a way.’

‘Please, let us move on . . . yes?’ Sergei said, holding court. ‘You must be famished and parched. I have not broken my fast. Would you do me the honour of sharing a meal with
us?’ Sergei’s expression was unreadable. He clapped and a young man appeared beside his chair. ‘We are ready to eat.’

The food was surprisingly good: steak, fruit, crisp bacon, eggs, cereals, coffee and juices.

‘This is wonderful,’ Kate said as her coffee was topped up. It was a strong Brazilian blend with no trace of bitterness. Very different from the stewed workman’s coffee Boris
had given them.

‘You sound surprised,’ Sergei remarked. ‘I am a billionaire after all, Dr Wetherall! What did you expect? Rice and rough vodka fresh from the still?’

‘No, I . . .’

Sergei produced a fulsome laugh. ‘I am teasing you,’ he said. His English was almost without accent, smooth. ‘We try to live well here. This breakfast is nothing too grand. We
eat like normal wealthy people. We try to do everything others do.’

‘But you must miss the space, the air, the sun?’ Lou said.

‘Yes, of course, we have to accept some drawbacks, but no one is forced to stay here and some people do leave after a while. Each to his own. I believe the pros outweigh the cons, for if I
were to be apprehended by the authorities I would be kept in a far more confined space than we have here.’ Sergei extended his arms to encompass his personal fiefdom. ‘And, most
importantly, I would not be a free man. My world here under Moscow may have some limitations but I sleep in my own bed at night, I eat and drink what I wish. I am free to talk to anyone I choose. I
have the latest Internet and telecoms here.’ He waved a hand. ‘This is merely a work space. My home is large and I have a garden watered and illuminated by advanced technology. Most
crucially, it is mine. I spend good time with my children and my wife every day, and if I decide to, I can, and do, travel to the surface incognito. Money buys whatever you wish for.’

‘And you are prepared for us to come here. Aren’t you concerned we could reveal the location of Metro 2?’ Kate said.

Sergei laughed, shaking his head. ‘Hah! You can try! Why do you think we took such precautions? The authorities are quite aware of us and even know roughly where we are, but we’ve
made it extremely hard for them to touch us . . . and believe me, they try.’

‘And you are amenable to talking to us, to arranging a deal over the Einstein–Kessler material?’ Adam Fleming said before taking a sip of coffee. He looked from Sergei to
Max.

‘I am, my friend. But not now. I’m sure you are all exhausted and in no mood to discuss business.’

‘Well, I’m . . .’

‘Good,’ Sergei said and started to rise from his chair. ‘We are agreed then. I apologize again for the very shaky start to our meeting. But I sense you accept that we could do
little else.’

‘I’m sure—’ Fleming tried again.

‘I hope you find the accommodations to your liking. Shall we meet again here this evening? Seven p.m.?’

Lou and Kate were so tired they took little notice of the journey to their quarters. They noted without comment that the rooms were spacious and comfortably furnished, the bed
large and welcoming, and they fell asleep to the sound of birdsong piped through hidden speakers.

Lou awoke first, feeling refreshed. He glanced at a bedside clock and saw that it was almost 6 p.m. He crept out of bed leaving Kate asleep while he looked around.

The suite reminded him of an old movie he had seen as a kid –
Planet of the Apes
– in which the ruling caste of orang-utans lived in luxuriously appointed caverns. The
bedroom led on to a large living area, which he had no memory of passing through some ten hours earlier. It was furnished with two modern leather sofas, a widescreen plasma TV on the rough stone
wall, and in the corner stood a desk, a Mac and a printer. Curious, Lou flicked on the TV with a remote and surfed through the channels – everything from local Moscow TV to BBC World and CNN.
‘Amazing,’ he said under his breath.

Kate appeared in the doorway to the bedroom. She stretched and yawned.

‘How’d you feel?’ Lou asked.

‘Like I’ve just had a great sleep after a week of insomnia.’

‘Me too.’ He waved around the room. ‘Sergei wasn’t kidding when he said that they had everything normal wealthy people took for granted. I’ve just tried the TV,
they have CNN.’

‘Oh, well fancy that!’ Kate replied and looked at him as though he were a four-year-old before stepping forward and kissing him affectionately on the cheek.

*

At 6.55 a man in a green paramilitary uniform knocked on the door. He did not give a name and spoke abruptly in accented English. ‘Come with me, please.’

Lou and Kate followed him along a series of passageways. They passed people going about their business: two repair men fixing a fluorescent strip light, a young mother scolding two small
children who were clearly not keen to learn that it was their bedtime.

Emerging from a wide corridor, they entered a spacious courtyard – lines of single-storey apartments with curtained windows and flowerpots outside. Seeing these, Kate looked up and noticed
three large circular lights recessed into the roof. Each of them was at least four metres in diameter and they gave off a soft orange light. She pointed them out to Lou as they followed the
anonymous guard. ‘Must give out a broad spectrum including UV; simulated sunlight, basically.’

They arrived at a set of double doors. The guard knocked loudly. The doors opened inwards and he ushered them inside before retreating without a word.

‘Good to see you both,’ Sergei said, moving away from where he had been talking to Adam Fleming and Max and walking across a smooth stone floor towards them, a hand extended.
‘I trust you slept well.’

‘We did,’ Lou replied.

‘Come, sit,’ Sergei said and led them to an arrangement of sofas and chairs around an ornate coffee table. Adam settled into a chair to Sergei’s left. Kate and Lou made
themselves comfortable on a wide sofa. Sergei looked relaxed as he reclined in a modern wingback chair and ordered coffee from the same young man who had served them breakfast that morning.

‘So,’ said Fleming, turning and considering Sergei. ‘Where should we begin?’

‘I understand you have had the inconvenience of an impostor, this Zero character.’ Sergei gave Fleming a hard look. ‘You won’t have any such issues with me.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

The coffee arrived and they were distracted as it was poured and the cups handed out.

‘We each have something the other can provide,’ Sergei said, bringing his cup to his lips and surveying the faces of his guests over the rim.

‘Zero was talking about absurd amounts of money.’

Sergei waved away the remark. ‘I am a businessman, Adam . . . may I call you Adam? But, and this is very important, although I like money – like it very much – it is not the
only thing in my life. You would have learned already that I am not the most conventional man you have ever met, no?’

He turned to the scientists, then pointed to Lou. ‘What do you think matters to me almost as much as money, Lou?’

‘I would say, Sergei, that you like to stick it to the authorities. With this document you have something your government would like to get its grubby hands on, and although you are a
patriotic Russian, love for your country goes only so far. Getting one over on the Kremlin and the promise of greenbacks into the bargain is a serious temptation.’

Sergei laughed his heavy bass laugh and clapped, smacking his big meaty hands together like slabs of beef on a butcher’s block. ‘Right on target!’ he exclaimed and drained his
coffee cup. ‘So, make no mistake, I do want to be paid for what I have for you, but I will also derive great satisfaction from denying our beloved leaders upstairs access to the
information.’

‘OK, what is it you have for us, precisely?’ Fleming said. ‘You have the Kessler Document?’

‘You mean the etched metal sheet secured within the piping system of SS
Freedom
?’

Fleming didn’t flinch. ‘Well at least we know you are not an impostor. But how did you know about that? You have the original?’

‘Ah, all in good time.’ Sergei placed his empty cup on the table and stood up. ‘Come, drink up. I have something to show you.’

‘Sergei,’ Max said, ‘I will see you later. I have to do my regular inspection of the periphery with my men.’

Sergei nodded and Max turned to the others. ‘I hope I will see you later.’

The four of them boarded a vehicle that closely resembled an oversized golf cart. Another man in paramilitary uniform lowered himself into the driver’s seat and released the brake. It
glided quietly along the corridors. People stepped smartly out of its path. None of the passengers spoke as they travelled perhaps four hundred yards before pulling up outside the entrance to a
tunnel. Sergei disembarked and strode ahead. At the end they stopped at a massive door. Sergei leaned in to a combination lock positioned in the centre of the door, turned the dial anticlockwise,
paused, twisted it further another few notches, paused, flicked it clockwise and then back again. A low clank came from a lock on one side and he pulled on a handle easing the door outwards.

Nothing prepared Kate, Lou and Fleming for the sight that met their eyes. The door opened onto a room the size of an aircraft hangar. Beyond a small clear area close to the door thousands of
yards of metal shelving in dozens of rows stretched into the distance. The ends of the racks stood at least a hundred yards away, close to the far wall. Each row of shelving stretched to the
ceiling some thirty feet above their heads. From where they stood, they could see that the shelves were filled with thousands of boxes, files, ledgers and books. All three were struck dumb.

‘Impressive, no?’ Sergei said unnecessarily.

Along with the soldier who had driven them, they followed Sergei into the room, dwarfed by the sheer dimensions of the place, their boots echoing around the cavernous space.

‘What
is
this place?’ Kate asked, gazing around at the gigantic stacks. ‘It’s incredible.’

‘Metro 2 was originally built by Stalin’s people. You probably know that. It was meant to be a vast fallout shelter for the glorious leader, his ministers and their families. There
was a direct rail link to it from the Kremlin. I had that sealed up before moving here and I have constructed a decoy system to stop the authorities opening it up again. Stalin’s successors
kept up the maintenance of the entire network, but, and I’m not sure why, they lost interest in it during the 1970s. It was then the party technocrats realized that if they kept storing paper
in the Kremlin and other archives at the rate they were, Moscow would soon be submerged in triplicate! They remembered Stalin’s folly and well . . .’ He waved a hand around.

‘This is one of a dozen and a small one at that. But it is the most interesting for our purposes.’

‘Why?’ Lou asked. ‘What sort of documents are kept down here?’

‘A vast range.’ Sergei stopped, turned to the nearest rack and pulled down a box. It was cardboard and coated with grey dust. He blew across the lid before lifting it. Inside sat a
pile of papers. He pulled out a sheaf and scanned the top page, rifled through a dozen pages and tossed them back into the box. ‘Merchant shipping schedules from January 1948 for Zone 3;
that’s the Baltic shore.’

‘Fascinating!’ Lou responded.

‘So, are you telling us the documents we are after are in here somewhere?’ Fleming asked and held Sergei’s gaze.

‘Well, I wouldn’t be so cruel as to just dump you here and leave you to it. There is a system.’

‘You can’t just point us to the document?’ Kate said.

‘And how do we know it’s actually here? I assumed you had it to hand.’ Fleming could not disguise his irritation.

‘Why should I make it easy, Adam? Whenever is anything worthwhile easy?’ His smile vanished. ‘I’m really not in the business of making things easy for Western
Intelligence agencies!’

‘But . . .’ Lou began.

Sergei raised a hand. ‘I’m not trying to be deliberately obtuse. The Kessler Document is not here.’

Fleming exhaled loudly.

‘But that does not mean you will leave empty-handed. Far from it. I know where it is. However, it would be much better for you if you followed a paper trail and discovered what happened to
the document yourselves. And besides, that’s what you two do, isn’t it?’ He turned to Kate and Lou. ‘Research? Exploration?’