Resistance (Nomad Book 3), Page 3

  Massarra pretended to snap awake, affected an eagerness to please him. “Livorno is a major port. Lots to scavenge in shipping containers that must have washed inland. Like I said before.”

  “We can scavenge in the south.”

  “More people in the south. How many others have we seen up here over the past week?”

  “They’re all dead from cold. As we will be. Soon.” He dropped more wood onto the flames.

  Each day they came upon yet more piled corpses, lives stolen by starvation or exposure to the extreme cold. They’d had to clear this building of the frozen remains of a family who had been too slow to react as their bodies slowly submitted to the freezing temperatures. That had been Massarra’s task. Salman had insisted.

  Some of the dead they came across hadn’t succumbed to cold, but to wounds inflicted by others who wanted whatever they had been carrying: food, clothing, fuel, or whatever might offer a few more days’ survival. This concerned Massarra far more than the harshness of the climate, because that unpredictable threat imposed on her a state of constant vigilance. Yet she took care not to underestimate the cold too, watching for signs of hypothermia in herself, as well as respiratory problems from the fine ash in the air. Not much she could do about either.

  “We can survive the cold,” Massarra said. “What we can’t survive is disease. Cholera, typhus, that’s what waits in the south. It’ll kill them, and it will warm up eventually here when spring arrives. This is an opportunity.”

  Truths and half-truths. She was sure there would be rampant disease appearing in any groups of survivors squatting in their own filth further south. At least the cold up here helped keep things sanitary by freezing everything that came out of their bodies. But she wasn’t sure if it would get warmer.

  “So you know this?” Salman’s voice was guttural, with a heavy Italian accent, and his command of English was far from perfect.

  “Positive,” she lied. “I looked at the simulations on Jessica Rollins’ laptop, remember?”

  “Cagna!” The old man spat and kicked at the pile of splinters at his feet. “That bitch.”

  He was furious at being left behind, when the magical machines from the sky had descended at Vivas and whisked Jessica Rollins away. He’d saved her life, he kept repeating and repeating, ignoring that he’d almost killed her in cold blood himself. He had made a deal with Dr. Müller and Iain Radcliffe—the head of security at the Vivas bunker facility—that if he helped them get the data on Jessica’s laptop, he would be taken to Sanctuary as well. A deal he’d been screwed out of.

  But it was a careless bargain he’d tried to make, and Salman knew it. Müller had killed Iain Radcliffe, and would have killed Salman as well, if Ufuk Erdogmus hadn’t appeared to stop what was happening.

  “The clouds will clear; summer will bring back warmth,” Massarra said, trying to reassure Salman. “And then we will have an entire shipping port to ourselves.”

  “And what if it gets colder?”

  “It won’t. I told you. I saw the simulations.”

  Salman watched her in a blank-faced way, then blew on his hands and stuffed them into the pockets of his coat.

  “If you really want to go south,” Massarra said after a few seconds of silence. “Then we have the best chance of finding a boat somewhere outside Livorno that we can use. We could also try Monte Argentario.”

  “A boat?” Salman grunted. “I walked on the ice at the shore, just like you. All the boats were washed miles inshore. And this cold? The ocean will be frozen. Is already frozen.” The expression on the old mafioso’s face turned from sullen to anger. He turned to kneel in front of her. “What are you up to, eh?”

  There was still some cleverness in the old man’s beady eyes, but he didn’t know when he was beaten.

  “Ice will form in shallow water, yes,” admitted Massarra. “But the open Mediterranean will take much longer to freeze. Pancake ice will form in patches, but the Med was a warm sea. This cold will chill the surface water, and this will sink, form convection currents bringing up warm water from the depth. It’ll take months for—”

  “You seem to know a lot about water.”

  “Sailing south is a much better bet than trying overland.”

  The modified Land Rover they’d stolen still worked on the roads half-cleared by other survivor groups going south, but the snow and ash continued to fall heavily. This part was true. Heading south at this point would mean going on foot, which was the same as a death sentence.

  Salman seemed taken aback. “Sailing? You want to sail in this?

  “A yacht is lighter, better designed for dealing with bad weather, and you never run out of fuel. We should be able to get one out over the ice. They are easy to keep warm. Nice small spaces, and sealed and insulated.”

  All of this was true. Massarra had spent as much of her downtime on water as she had on land. Friends of the Levantine Council had a permanent berth at one of Tel Aviv’s quieter marinas, and she had borrowed the boat as often as she could for expeditions with friends, and even while on missions. From there, she had sailed the peaceful warmth of the Mediterranean, and through the cold roughness of the Indian and Atlantic oceans. If she missed anything in the time since Nomad, it was the joyous freedom her sailboat offered.

  It was true that anything near the coast would be wrecked, but Massarra had a plan. An idea. She always had ideas. It was what kept her alive. “It’s a way to get south. At least it will give us a place to sleep and stay warm.”

  Her explanation of why they should head north to Livorno or Monte Argentario was rooted in truth, as the best lies are, and it was the plan she intended—the only difference being that soon she would leave Salman and his family behind. Monte Argentario was a day’s walk on improvised snowshoes and the time had come to make her move.

  There was risk to everything, in this freezing darkness that waited for her to make a mistake. She would need to make her way north, up into the mountains to Sassal Mason, beside the Lago Palü and the Alp Grüm railway station, or whatever remained of it. Supplies and equipment should be there for her in an alpine hut. Once retrieved, she could make her way into Sanctuary Europe.

  Fifty-fifty odds that the voyage would kill her, despite her cold-weather survival skills, but that was better than staying here.

  Salman took another long look at her, grunted again and turned to stack the fire again.

  Massarra’s huddled posture and the soft moans she gave from time to time added to the impression that she was beaten. In reality, she studied Salman in her peripheral vision. Huddled under the blankets with her were Rita—Salman’s daughter—and his boy. They slept close to each other, curled beneath their own blankets. Massarra remained watchful, ever vigilant. Always thinking and preparing; her mind never restful. That was her tradecraft, drilled into her over many years and saving her life more than once.

  Salman didn’t sleep, either. Instead, he watched her. He was no fool, Massarra knew that. Mafioso like him, experienced criminals, rarely were. A rifle stolen from Vivas rested against the wall next to Salman. A second rifle lay beside Rita as she slept.

  For about two weeks they’d been heading north at Massarra’s suggestion, but making slow progress. Each night, Salman would ask the same questions, and cover the same ground, asking questions about Müller, the Sanctuary system, and Ufuk Erdogmus. Each evening he used the same methods to persuade her, the same creeping violence, and each evening she appeared more compliant to his viciousness. She had ensured he viewed her as useful by demonstrating skills in this hostile environment, beyond his brutal quests for information. She did so in a way that concealed what she was truly capable of, revealing only enough of herself to ensure he wanted to keep her around. She helped them approach settlements off the main routes in ways that protected them, pitched camp in places that allowed them to be alerted to potential threats.

  “I still don’t understand.” Massarra brought her knees to her chest, hunched inward.

&nb
sp; “There is far more to this than you know,” Salman boasted. “Things happening even now that I know, Massarra. You shouldn’t try to keep anything from me.”

  She feigned ignorance when he questioned her, adding a scrap of information here and there, but her submission made him let his guard down. She manipulated his masculine arrogance, his enjoyment of the power he held over her.

  This was the real reason she was here. She was the one that needed information.

  “But you never talked to this Dr. Müller?” she said softly. “Who is he?”

  “I told you, I spoke to Iain only.”

  “And you trust his word?”

  “I am not stupid. I said I need him to talk to them, so I know it was true.”

  “And you were there? You heard them on the radio?”

  “Why you so interested, eh?” The old gangster didn’t turn as he asked the question, but gazed unfocused into the fire. The question wasn’t so much suspicion as habit. His guard was down. Even he couldn’t imagine someone going to the lengths Massarra was subjecting herself to, but then he couldn’t comprehend the stakes involved.

  “I just want to know,” Massarra whispered. “How I ended up here…” She feigned a sob. “Can you untie me? I’m so tired.”

  “Ha, that, no.” Salman poked the fire. “Maxim, that was who Iain talked to on the radio.”

  “The security man, the one who was with Müller?”

  “That was Maxim? How do you know?”

  “I heard them talking to each other. Nobody else on the radio?”

  The old man shrugged, shaking his head, but then straightened up. “Marshall, I heard them talking to someone called Marshall in the background.”

  Massarra remained limp under the blankets, but her mind raced. “Marshall?”

  “Something like that. I am tired. No more talking.”

  The boy was Salman’s weakness, more so than his daughter Rita. She recognized the way the boy moved as he slept, the soft murmuring. She’d seen it before in young soldiers who came back from fighting in Gaza or the West Bank. When the time came for the boy’s short watch, he would still be tired. Almost every night in the last week she had watched him falling asleep on watch.

  Massarra pulled the blanket over her head with her bound hands.

  Each night, Salman tied her in the same way, his mistrust of her evident in the tightness of the bonds. Each night she worked the knot, probed its stresses and teased out ways to loosen it, never quite going all the way, then tightening again where she could. Her hands were already free now, and she had her sharp blade palmed in her right hand.

  She waited until Salman called the boy’s name.

  Chapter 3

  Sanctuary Europe

  This was it.

  “Office of Judicial Administration” was stenciled in italicized gold letters beside the door. The mapping app on Jess’s tablet had guided her through the complex of pristine white hallways. The deeper she limped into gleaming catacombs—that smelled like a new car—the more the buzz of human conversation in the front offices died down until just the squeak of her new sneakers accompanied her. Left and then right, and then left and right again.

  The glowing dot on her app stopped here.

  She pushed open double glass doors—the magnetic lock on them stuck for an instant before releasing—and approached a white block of plastic that emerged smoothly from the wall, cantilevered ten feet out without a floor support at the other end. She assumed this was the reception desk. Beside the desk to her left were four attending chairs in smooth blue leather, with another glass door beside them that led further inside. Offense-less artwork hung on egg-white walls that glowed bright from invisible lights.

  “Hello?” It didn’t seem like anyone was here. The office was empty.

  Her voice didn’t echo, but was swallowed in the dense silence.

  “Hello?” Jess repeated, louder this time, looking around for a camera. “I’m Jessica Rollins. I was asked to come here to see Michel Durand.”

  “Miss Rollins, yes. Thank you for coming.” A pleasant-sounding female voice.

  Jess glanced behind her, but there was nobody there either.

  On the wall behind the desk appeared the image of an Asian woman in a sharp business suit, with her black hair done in a tight bun. “Take a seat. Mr. Durand will see you shortly. May I get you a tea or coffee? Perhaps some water?”

  Jess found herself too surprised to answer.

  The image of the woman regarded her with patient curiosity. Her smile widened, her eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch as she waited for a response.

  “Ah…tea?” Jess stuttered.

  “Certainly.” The receptionist-projection waited for Jess to take a seat, then strode along the wall—her image flickered across the gap of the doorway—to stop next to Jess. A recessed panel in the wall slid open, and the receptionist-projection pointed a helpful hand toward it. A cardboard cup of steaming tea waited on a metal grate inside.

  Jess took the cup. The panel slid closed.

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” said the receptionist-projection, as her image walked to the interior glass door and disappeared.

  In here, no one carried a scavenged weapon with murder in their mind for whatever a victim might hold. No scrabbling in the ash for every last crumb of food or something that might create heat. No chance of freezing to death quietly during sleep. Jess took a guilty sip of her tea. Chamomile. Her favorite. She didn’t want to know how they knew—and she didn’t have to wait long before the woman re-appeared.

  The interior glass door clicked and opened. “This way,” said the receptionist-projection, re-appearing on the front wall behind the desk.

  Jess took another sip from her steaming tea, then followed the woman’s image as it slid along the wall and down an interior hallway as white and featureless as the ones outside, but even more claustrophobic-feeling. They passed three closed doors before the woman’s image stopped at the fourth.

  Inside, behind a beaten old wooden desk—that looked outlandishly out of place in the white cube office—sat an older man. Sixty-ish, with a full head of well-groomed silver hair and a weathered face that had an owlishness to it that was accentuated by his wire-rimmed glasses. His blue suit looked finely tailored, but was oddly matched with a speckled green tie that looked almost as out of place as the desk.

  “A gift from my daughter,” the man said, flipping the tie up to have a look himself. He smoothed it down. “She would have been your age,” he sighed. The man stood, his body tall and slender and slightly stooped. He extended one hand. “Michel Durand.”

  Jess balanced her teacup in her left hand to shake his hand with her right. “Jessica Rollins.” She gripped and pumped firmly.

  “Thank you for coming. Shall we sit?”

  He settled back into his chair. Jess took the only one opposite. Durand picked up a tablet and began dictating preliminary introductions into it.

  Jess craned her neck around the open door. “Is that…I mean…”

  “Not a real person? Stephanie is my digital assistant. You’ll get used to them. I’m afraid I’m the only real person in the Office of Judicial Administration.” His bushy white eyebrows knitted into a frown. “Honestly, nobody thought we’d need much of a high court. My office was intended as more of an academic sort of—”

  “When will Müller be sentenced?” Jess blurted out.

  Durand seemed to blink himself fully awake. “There is quite some way to go before we reach that point, Miss Rollins. The Examining Justice can only issue a recommendation in the case of a member of the Administrative Council. The Executive Orders which govern the Sanctuary system are quite specific. Perhaps you could think of them as a more complex version of your American Constitution. Anyone offered the opportunity to come here was first required to accept those Orders.”

  “I certainly did no such thing.” A tingling numbness crept down from Jess’s scalp. This was the guy who was tasked with defending the
world—and herself—against the mass-murdering Müller? She understood the individual words coming out of the man’s mouth, but couldn’t piece any meaning together from them.

  “You are something of a special case,” Durand said after a pause. “I mean, in not yet taking an oath to the Orders.”

  “And who exactly was given the opportunity to come here?”

  Durand leaned back in his chair. “It is not my place to question how the system came about, Miss Rollins. My task is only to oversee the administration of justice within it.”

  “That sounds like an excuse.”

  “You may think so, but I see the matter differently.”

  “This isn’t even a trial, is it?”

  Durand regarded her, then said: “As I said, the Examining Justice makes a recommendation to the Administrative Council. If there is considered to be sufficient evidence to warrant a judicial finding, then sentencing will follow dependent on the result of—”

  “He admitted to bombing the goddamn Vatican!” Jessica spat the words out, unable to control herself. “He killed tens of thousands of people. If anyone was ever a terrorist—”

  “An inquiry such as this one takes time, Miss Rollins. Probably months, and I hadn’t expected to have to start this office so soon. We’re still in a great deal of shock.”

  “We’re all in shock, Mr. Durand.”

  Jess only noticed now that she’d spilled her tea all over her hand, which shook. She moved to put the cup down but hesitated, not wanting to place it on the wooden desktop. Durand provided a coaster from a top desk drawer.

  “I understand your frustration,” he said. “But there is a great deal of evidence to collect, and all of it must be analyzed. Conclusions must be drawn from each and every document and image. There is considerable pressure from influential quarters to allow Dr. Müller to continue his work. This is a very difficult time. A dangerous time.”