The Killing Files

‘How did you know she was acting odd?’

‘What? Oh, I don’t know, her tone of voice, perhaps? It was like she was under pressure or something, as if there was someone there, maybe. In danger? I really couldn’t say for sure.’

I go quiet, not understanding how a simple tone in a voice can lead to so many unconfirmed conclusions.

I pick up a book, one of many on computer coding and language, a routine, orderly subject, and place it on a tower of other research, and turn to my board. The faces containing different expressions, different photographs of people who I know, sketches of those I vaguely recall from hazy, drug-filled dreams. Ines, my mama, sits there, a photo taken from her Spanish parliament file, her face sculptured and clean, coiffured black hair, gold jewellery, shoulder pads and rouge. Next to her my brother, Ramon, thirty-five now, tanned, lean, a slick of tar-black hair on top of defined cheekbones, the black suit he wears to his legal firm tailored in place. And then my papa, an aged, more lined photograph, yet still I can see very visibly his eye creases, his lined skin, his crisp white linen shirt, and by his side is me, my hair long and dark, and Papa’s arm is over my shoulder, holding me, the only person, back then, I would allow to touch me without instantly jumping or yelling. I close my eyes. I can still smell him—the spice cologne, the ink from his quill where he used to write in his study. I open my eyes and look at an image pinned to the right—a fading picture of Balthus, Harry and me taken just after we won the retrial, after I was acquitted. My fingers trace Harry’s face. His skin is plump and black, and when he smiles, he too, like my papa, has eye creases that crinkle outwards, his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles perched on the tip of his rounded, shiny nose. Next to him is Balthus. Balthazar Ochoa. Name meaning lone wolf. In his picture he is tall, athletic even for his fifty-plus years, his skin washed with the Mediterranean sun, his black hair silver at the tips, his face consumed by two brown pools of eyes. But while Harry and Balthus’s bodies are relaxed and smiling, mine, in contrast, is rigid and tight, flinching at close group contact, my olive skin pale from months of incarceration, hair dark and sawn into a jagged cut that grazes my temple and neck, eyes sunken into razor cheeks. I touch my neck. The Salamancan sun has drenched my skin now into a deep golden hue, my dark pixie cut is bleached blonde and my once-brown eyes are replaced by green contacts. A fake look for a fake world.

‘Maria? Are you still there? Look—I was thinking. The flashback you had, the one with that woman—I think you need to understand where that facility is and get to it—I can help you. If there is information there, it could mean we could put a stop to it all, to all this madness. Maria, it could end the Project.’

Heat rushes to my head accompanied by a clear, frosted image of Black Eyes and his tombstone smile. My eyes go to my villa, safe and hidden. ‘No.’

‘What?’

‘I said no. I do not want to understand where the facility is.’

‘But Maria, why track all the NSA stuff in connection to MI5, the explosion of it all, if not to get at the Project?’ He pauses. ‘Look, you’re not on your own. I know you think you are, but you’re not. You have me. You have Patricia. Jesus, you even have your mother and brother. Maybe they can even help? Ines knows a lot of people high up in the Spanish government—she’s Minister for Justice now.’

Black Eyes. Raven. My tortured, sweat-drenched nightmares that keep me awake in the middle of the night when there is no one to soothe me. I glance to their scratched sketches on the wall. ‘No.’

He sighs. ‘Please. Just consider it. Say if you could connect what I can hopefully remember from a conversation with Ines to what you have told me about this woman—Raven? It may help you know where the memory is coming from. If you know the facility, it will lead you to the file.’

I open my mouth to tell him no then hesitate, but I do not understand why.

‘This woman,’ Balthus says now, pressing on, ‘she said the file she loaded up will give you what you need to know, tells you what you’ve done, that it will help you know who you really are. Why note down all the dreams you recall, Maria, want to know how it’s all connected, if you don’t want to find out how to put an end to it all?’

I look down, confused. I thought the answer was obvious. ‘I have my notebook. I like to record information. That is why I require the details. I just record the data, all of it.’ I glance to my coding books, to the structure and the formality of them.

‘But this woman said the files could help you. Don’t you want to know who she is, find the file? Don’t—’ there is a pause and when he speaks again, his voice is oddly lower, more quiet ‘—don’t you want to know who you really are?’

I look at Balthus’s photo on the board, stare at all the unframed images and notes and encryptions and news articles, and, after a second, they all start to blur into one solid image of colour. I switch, glance to the turrets of books in neat, multiple piles, to the solitary seat, the makeshift wooden crates for tables, to the single toothbrush that lies on the shelf. I walk three steps to the worn piano by the wall, gently press my finger down on a key, the smooth ivory cold beneath my skin. E sharp tolls out.

‘I know who I am,’ I say after a moment. ‘I am Dr Maria Martinez, a plastic surgeon, born in Salamanca, Spain. I want to remain hidden. I do not want to go back to the Project or to their files or to anyone from there. It is too chaotic. I will record what memories appear, but no more. I do not want to endanger my family.’ I glance to the image of Harry. ‘I do not want to endanger you and Patricia.’

‘I understand that, I do. I really do,’ he says. ‘But they’ll find you, Maria. You know that, I know you do. I worry about you there on your own with no one. You need answers. I can help you. I have a contact. I sent you an email about him. He’s called Chris. He’s a hacker, used to be in Goldmouth. He can—’

An alarm sounds, high, war-siren sharp. My head jerks up.

‘Maria? Maria, what’s wrong?’

I sprint to the laptop, head dipped at the noise, but my feet are so sweaty, I slip on the tiles, toppling into the crate, knocking the computer clean off the upturned box.

‘Maria?’

I shake myself off, wincing at the scream of the siren, dragging the laptop over to me, scanning it fast.

‘Maria? Shit. Can you hear me? Maria? What’s happening?’

Leaning forward, keeping my fingers strong, steady, I click the icon flashing on the screen.

‘Someone is on my property.’

Chapter 5

Undisclosed confinement location—present day

I don’t know how much time has passed. I blacked out, only coming to now as somewhere in the room a noise clicks high in the air, one, two, three, four.

My body instinctively bends forward, brain attempts to gauge the level of danger and then I remember: Patricia.

I call her name, yell into the abyss of black. There is a click, another trip of light mixed with darkness and then, finally, a voice, singular, pure.

‘Doc? Doc? Are you there?’

She’s okay! ‘Patricia?’

‘Doc!’

‘What is your status? Are you injured?’

‘No. No, I don’t think so, but … my leg—it hurts. Help me, Doc.’

I open my mouth to ask her specific diagnostics, but the air is so black and hot, so suddenly suffocating that it feels as if a palm is being pressed into my nose and mouth, an acrid taste of metal poisoning my lips. I struggle hard against it. I have to know where we are, and yet nothing here seems to make sense, but I do it. My conditioning, my training, despite my horror at it, kicks in and I begin to function on cognitive thought.

‘Doc! Doc, where are we?’

Click. The sound, there again on the surface of the room—it makes me halt.

‘Doc—what was that?’

Tap, tap, tap. My heart rate rockets. ‘Patricia, stay still.’

I listen. It’s like the beak of a robin on a window pane.

‘Who is there?’ I ask to the thick stench of the room. Click, tap. Click, tap. My breathing becomes fast, shallow. ‘Who is there?’

But no answer comes back. I slap away the fear and strain my neck, try to catch sight of something, anything, but just as my eyes clear, just as they begin to see through the haze, the click sounds again and something happens inside me.

A heat, a surge of liquid in my veins burns its way through me, scalding one second then freezing the next, and an ice-blade of pain stabs me. I cry out.

‘Doc! Doc, what is it?’

My mouth opens to yell, but I am mute, a primal fear taking over, a tsunami of fight or flight, the words, ‘You are in danger! You are in danger!’ screaming over and over in my head, and I must be moaning, groaning, because I can hear Patricia shouting at me to stay awake.

My eyelids vibrate, brain attempts to calibrate a connection, find an answer to what is happening to me, but the codes, numbers, solutions that instinctively inhabit my head are all jumbled up, as if I have been shaken like some unwanted toy then discarded on the ground and kicked under a bed to gather dust and wither.

‘Patricia,’ I gasp, my chest ready to explode. ‘Escape. I need you to escape.’

‘I don’t … My leg aches, Doc, but I think I can …’ A grunt, a scrape. ‘My hand—it’s free.’

‘Does that mean …’ The searing pain is so hot in my chest now, it burns and I have to force myself to concentrate once more on my eyes. ‘Does that mean, if your hand is free you can be mobile?’ And then I spot something: a lick of light. There! In the corner …

‘Doc, it won’t … I don’t know. Oh, God. My leg feels numb.’

The single sliver of light disappears and I try to reach out, grab where it was but nothing moves. A hazy, grey film is slowly bleeding over my lenses.

‘Something is happening to me …’ I swallow. ‘Drugged,’ I slur. ‘I must be drugged.’

‘Are we …’ Patricia’s words waver. ‘Does that mean we’re at the Project? At their facility?’ There is a shake in her voice, a tremble.

And then I hear it: water. A trickle of water, a rush of liquid. I shake as a terrifying thought tears into me: we are drowning. We are not actually in a room or a cell or in a locked-away facility, but we are drowning, almost dead already and this haze, this grey film, this distant cry of Patricia’s Irish voice that I can only just detect is the last twisted haemorrhage of my lie of a life. The Project have found me, are to kill me and now this is it, here: death.

‘Can you feel any water around you?’

‘What? I … Wait.’ A scream, a gurgled cry. ‘Doc, I’m hurt!’

Panic swells. ‘Drag yourself free. Quick!’

‘I don’t want to die!’

‘Stay awake!’

‘I … I can’t breathe.’

I struggle to cough, try anything—a lick of my lips, a last gulp of oxygen—anything to dismantle the rolling tide as, to my side, Patricia groans.

‘Pull your arms up!’ I shout. ‘See if there is anything you can grip on to.’

‘There’s nothing! Only a … Oh, Jesus, help! It hurts! Doc, help, please …’

Her voice stops, abrupt, a TV being switched off. ‘Patricia?’

Nothing.

‘Patricia! Patricia, shout to me that you are …’

I stop breathing.

My hands form two fists, knuckles white, chest bursting, ribs ready to crack, as my mind prepares, because this is it. The final seconds of me, of my life. Dr Maria Martinez.

Gone.

Salamancan Mountains, Spain.

34 hours and 32 minutes to confinement

I shut down the alarm and haul in a breath.

‘What’s going on, Maria?’

‘Wait.’ My eyes remain locked on the computer screen, but my vest has become sweaty and it itches my skin. I scratch my stomach, up down, unable to stop as the nerves seep out.

‘Maria, for God’s sake, what’s happening?’

‘The red icon is flashing.’

My skin flushes, feels as if it’s burning, nerve endings so sensitive to the change in the fabric. It is too much to bear. I rip off my vest, throw it to the floor. The relief is almost overwhelming.

‘Anyone on the cameras?’ Balthus says now.

I flip open the surveillance programme then pause. The reality of what could happen slams me in the face and I recount Abel’s binomial theorem to focus my mind.

No matter how many times I scan the CCTV film, it comes back blank, eight square, grey, live pictures of the fields and walls around the villa. No trespassers, no intelligence officers, just everything as it was before I stepped inside the house.

‘The cameras are displaying no signs of intruders.’

My body leans back as my mind attempts to get a handle on what is happening, already planning ahead on what I may need to do. As I think, a whip of wind lashes at a funnel of cypress trees outside, sending a swarm of starlings scurrying into the sky, and it is so sudden, so fast and loud that I jump, slapping my hand to my chest.

‘Maria, is everything all right? Talk to me.’

The starlings rush away, their swarm temporarily blackening the sky.

‘Birds,’ I say.

‘What?

The last remaining starling flies into a candy floss cloud. ‘I was frightened by a murmuration of birds.’

‘A mumur-what …?’

I stare at the now empty branches outside, wiping the sweat from my face. The air is static. For a moment, I swear a shadow glides over the sand-coloured earth, its hazy contours rippling over the deep green cypress tree giants that guard the perimeter of the villa, but when I blink and rub my eyes it is instead the tall, scorched grass reeds I see, their long, stretched shadows swaying innocently in the morning air, but each movement of the reeds vibrates in my eardrums. I take the heels of my palms, bang them to the sides of my head to try and dislodge the sound.

‘Maria?’

One more hit and the reed rush will be gone …

‘Maria? Maria, answer me.’

Bang. Done. ‘What?’

‘Did you install the tripwire system I told you about?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it’s not flagging anything up?’

‘Negative.’

‘Then what could have triggered the surveillance? Could there have been a system error?’

I consider this but am unconvinced. The CCTV shows no trespass entry, so why the alarm? My mind scans through every tiny detail, yet still concludes that all is as before—the fields are empty for several kilometres, the long gravel drive is free of foreign vehicles and the only car is an old black truck I use on the rare occasions I need to drive into the village in the fading evening sunlight for supplies. So why did the alarm sound? A colony of nerves collects in the depths of my stomach and my thumb taps my forefinger.

‘Maria, do you think you are in danger?’

My eyes flicker to the window then return to the red icon that still flashes on the laptop. ‘I cannot say with certainty until I run a complete check. But …’

Another shadow creeps across the cypresses again, this time more distinct, more clear.

More human.

A bolt of electricity shoots down my spine. ‘Someone is here.’

‘What?’

I grab my notebook, hide it behind a stack of books and run to the window, adrenaline immediately spiking as I slam my back against the wall and count to three.

‘Maria, have you seen someone?’ Balthus calls out, but I ignore him because if I shout now, if I utter one single word, whoever is out there will know my location.

Another shadow passes by. I track it. Breath heavy, heart rate way beyond acceptable, I count my steps as I drop to the ground, crawling to the opposite side of the window then standing again, acutely aware that I am unarmed, and yet instinctively knowing what to do. It scares me, always has. It scares me that if someone came in now, I am trained to not even need a gun to kill them.

Slowly, I inch my head up to the window ledge, one millimetre, two, three, until I reach the edge where the citrus scent from the groves beyond drifts in. If someone is standing by the outside of the wall, then, if I move one centimetre further, they will detect my presence. My cortisol peaks. Taking one bare foot forward, I raise my hands and step to the left, manoeuvring my body so it slips almost invisibly to the side, my brain instructing me, from some hidden training tactics manual, what to do. Prepare, wait, engage. For some reason, the phrase flicks into my mind. Prepare, wait, engage, and I realise, with revulsion, that I am recalling something the Project must have trained me on.

But, despite my disgust, I do it. I track the area, I pause, listen to every minute sound, to each tweet, rustle, bleat, creak, creating a full itinerary, a complete map of the exact scene before me until I am ready. Ready to engage.

I exhale, long, deep into my diaphragm as the sunlight dances across my eyelids, cheeks, onto my forehead, my neck, onto my bare sweat-drenched shoulders as, gradually, one millimetre after the other, I peer over the edge to the glazed window.

There is a face staring right back at me.

Chapter 6

Salamanca, Spain.

34 hours and 28 minutes to confinement

Dr Andersson stares straight back at me.

I yell out her name, alerting Balthus, still on the cell, as Dr Andersson ducks out of sight, running towards the far entrance where the kitchen yawns wide open, exposed to the fields and beyond.

‘Maria,’ Balthus whispers, ‘where is she?’

Panic. Sheer panic and chaos rise now as I look to the cell phone. I need it, cannot have any noise give away my location. Checking left and right, I count to three then, fast, drop down and crawl on all fours, scurrying forward, snatch the cell then scamper back, slamming my body into a corner, hidden by a tower of books and by the lost, cracked crates that scatter the room.

I catch my breath, try to think.

‘Maria? Talk to me.’

I gulp down saliva. ‘She is here,’ I whisper. ‘Dr Andersson.’

‘Oh shit. Oh shit. She’s with MI5 and MI5 want the Project gone. That can mean only one thing, right?’

‘She is here to kill me.’ The words hang in the air, a foul stench jarring against the fresh, fragrant green grass burst from the fields beyond. For a moment, I freeze, not wanting to acknowledge that my peaceful retreat, my quiet hideaway has been shattered.

‘MI5 want all connections to the Project to disappear,’ Balthus says. ‘Kurt—Daniel—he said that to you, right? That’s why he wanted you to stay with him. The Project did not want to disappear, they broke away and wanted you with them; MI5 wanted you gone. Maria, you’re right. Oh Jesus. She’ll kill you—she’s a trained officer.’

I scan the kitchen door—nothing. Yet. ‘I am trained also.’

‘Yes, but she, well, she’s not like you. She won’t hesitate to do what she’s been told.’

I open my mouth to respond to Balthus when I stop. The image of Raven floats to my mind. They will make you kill me. I have no recollection of what I actually did to her, no tangible evidence of whether I ever hurt the woman or not—no real idea of who I am, of what I am, in truth, capable of.

I glance to the window. It is open. Another bird sits there now on the wooden ledge, head jerking right and left. I can see its feathers soft and shining even from here, a brown and black sheen shimmering in the morning sun.

‘There is no sign of her,’ I say, turning to the phone. ‘She may have a map of the dwelling.’

‘How did they find you?’

‘What?’

‘MI5,’ Balthus whispers. ‘How the hell did they find you? You’ve been off radar.’

I think for a moment, uncomfortable. Have I made a mistake in my encrypted file tracking? In my proxy ISP emails? ‘It is possible they may have infiltrated some files if they have the right technical people to carry out the hack.’ My eyes glance to the laptop open on the crate. ‘I need to hide my notebook.’

‘What? Maria, get out of there!’

A clatter of crates rings from outside, followed by a shatter of glass. Every single part of me drops still.

‘What was that?’ Balthus whispers.

My eyes dart to the side, unable to answer Balthus as I focus, every part of me on fire, desperately pressing back the guttural fear that surges upwards. I need to move now, get to the laptop then leave, but if I go to the right, I’ll have to open the door to the bedroom where my bag is stored, yet if I turn to the left and head past the kitchen where Dr Andersson may be, then I have no chance of grabbing the laptop and notebook.

My instinct is to go into meltdown, to curl up into a ball and slam shut my eyes and plead for this all to go away, so hard is it for me to cope. Yet even as my brain shouts at me to run, gradually, like a rainbow appearing on a stormy day, something happens—a change, a simmering, butter-coloured difference: I become calm. A coolness crackles over me as, in my head, an instinctive knowledge takes control, and over and over in my mind one phrase shoots across the shadows of my thoughts: prepare, wait, engage.

Up ahead, the kitchen door, before closed, is now swinging open.

My hairs stand on end. ‘She’s here.’

‘What? Get … you …she …’ The phone crackles, Balthus’s voice dipping in and out of audio.

I grip the cell tight, telling myself that if I do so, maybe, somehow, I won’t be on my own.

Every muscle in me becomes rigid, ready, suddenly not caring about the illegal means in which I was trained by the Project, because, right now, I want to know it all, want desperately to remember every tiny detail of what I was taught, because it could save me. My eyes land on the lone toothbrush on the shelf by the wall.

The phone flickers again.

‘Maria? Maria, are you okay? Are you there?’

Balthus. The sound of his voice, the familiar curve of it floods me, for some reason, with relief.

‘I am here.’ I keep my volume low—there are sounds creaking from the kitchen.

Prepare.

I do a rapid assessment. I am wearing my running gear. I am fast, fit, but even when I calculate the time and trajectory at which I can sprint, I know that if Dr Andersson has a gun and surveillance of her own, I will never escape unless I can get to the bedroom.

‘Can you get out?’ Balthus says.

‘The bedroom door opens onto the shed where the truck is parked—it is my only safe route out.’

‘Good! Can you get to the door?’

I look to the kitchen, calculate the angles and trajectory. ‘I cannot determine if I can be seen.’

‘Well, is there another way?’

I think fast when my eyes, scanning the area for Dr Andersson’s face, see something, something long, thick, rusty—solid.

An iron bar by the cabinet, one I use for the fire pit outside, now sits discarded, tossed to one side after I got distracted from obsessing over tracking every tiny detail about the NSA scandal.

The kitchen door suddenly sways, a waltz, one, two, three, one, two, three, dancing in and out of the room. Is she here? I look to the iron bar then back to the door, and even though it screeches when it swings, too loud for my ears, for my senses, I slap the aggravation it causes aside because it offers me something, that unbearable noise: it offers me cover.

I drop like a stone. Flat to the floor, I scurry along the tiles so fast, so quick that by the time the second creak sounds, my fingers are handcuffed to the iron bar and, on the third creak, I am hauling it up and crawling back to where the window sits.

The cell phone crinkles and Balthus’s voice trickles in. ‘Where are you?’

‘Home.’

‘No, I mean … Oh, it doesn’t matter. Have you got the laptop and book?’

‘No.’

‘But you can get them?’

‘Yes.’ I glance to where they still sit. Right now, it is all a matter of timing.