The Girl Who Ran

‘Doc, deep breaths.’

I nod, watching Chris closely as he walks to the counter, orders our drinks, but immediately, this tips me into a panic.

‘I want a black coffee,’ I say. ‘What is he ordering for me? It can only be black.’

‘It’s okay,’ Patricia says. ‘He asked me and I said black coffee. I told him for you.’ She smiles. Soft cheeks, lines opening wide at her eyes. ‘Okay?’

I nod, but inside I am panicking.

Chris is talking to the barista now, easy, light, making random conversation about the bustle of the airport. To give myself something to focus on, I examine his movements, his facial expressions. How easy it seems to come to him, how simple such dialogue appears for him. I try pressing some of it into my memory, the way in which he acts, remember it so I can perhaps use it, mimic it, cover me up. It’s hard to find a place in the world when you don’t know who you’re expected to be.

Done with that yet still anxious, I turn my focus to checking and rechecking the time of our flight to Zurich where Chris has secured us a safe house through his hacking contacts until we can get further away and out of sight. Finally, Chris returns and it’s only then I can be assured that the right drink has been bought. I sip slowly. The liquid is hot, scalding my palate and tongue, but I like it, as if it polishes the tips of my mind so they are ready to be used. Now and then the multiple sights, sounds, smells of the airport hit me, make my body go rigid, but breathing and counting help, and so I do that, run through numbers in my mind, murmur the digits with the tips of my fingers pressed one after the other into my thumb, all the while glancing to my friends, grateful that they are here.

‘Okay, so, I checked my email,’ Chris says, emptying two full sachets of sugar into a latte, ‘and my buddy in Zurich is all set for us to rock up there. All secure. Also, from what I can tell, it looks as if the Alexander woman has read the message we sent her.’

Patricia looks up. ‘What? The Home Secretary?’

‘Yep, Balthus’s wife, Harriet Alexander herself.’ He draws out a computer tablet and taps the screen. ‘About twenty-seven minutes ago. No, wait…twenty-eight minutes ago she read the whole file that reveals the Project Callidus bombshell, from way back in 1973 up to right now.’ He starts listing things off with his fingers. ‘The thousands of Basque blood-type people they’ve been testing on, the cancer drugs for Ines, the Project taking Maria and drugging her, Maria being Balthus’s kid, all of it, all of the stuff we hacked into in Hamburg.’ He grins at us and I wonder if his face has ever, in his life, been fixed into a frown; I resist the temptation to stick my finger into the dimple on his chin.

‘Well,’ Patricia says, ‘hopefully that’ll be it. That’ll be enough for the government to kick-start an investigation into the whole Project bollocks and it’ll finally all be over. No more running.’

‘Can your software connect to her server system?’ I ask.

‘Ah, you’re thinking of hacking into her emails, tracking who she contacts about the subject of our little message. Yep, thought of that. There’s something blocking me at the moment, don’t know what it is yet, but I’m on it.’

We finish our coffee. Chris taps on his computer the whole time and, ten minutes to go until our flight is boarding, he excuses himself to attend the lavatory. I use the spare time to carry out a reassuring check of the contents of my rucksack. One by one, I place them on the table in a neat line: three pay-as-you-go cell phones, two fake passports, money in several denominations, one wash bag, two packets of energy tablets and the other essential items I require to be on the run and hide, all itemised on a list in my head. But it is the last three things that I unpack, that now amid the din and the cappuccino milk steam and the idle chatter around tea-stained tables, that give me the most sense of calm and reassurance: my notebook and two old photographs.

I rest my hand on the worn notebook cover, flick a finger over the dog-eared pages, pages that have housed my thoughts and calculations and mathematical probabilities for years, each spare section crammed with drawings and codes scribbled feverishly after awaking from dreams and nightmares that would jolt some distant, drug induced memory.

Patricia leans in, looks at a page filled with algorithms and coding. ‘I may as well be seeing spots as to understand what on earth all that means.’ She inhales. ‘It’s been hard for you, hasn’t it, Doc? Everything that’s happened.’

I touch the page with my fingertips, let them skim the curve of the equations before me, the lines, the sketches of pencilled memories forgotten and only sometimes remembered. ‘Ines killed Balthus,’ I say, sticking to the facts, unable to express the sorrow I truly feel inside.

‘Yes, Doc, she did.’ Her voice is a soft pillow, a floating feather.

I blink, turn my attention to the two photographs from my bag.

‘Is that your dad with you when you were young? He has the same dark hair and eyes as your brother.’

‘Yes. Except they were never my biological father or brother.’

‘No,’ Patricia says. ‘No, I know. Balthus was your biological father, and that’s hard – you watched him die when you’d only just found out who he really was.’

I swallow. My eyes are a little blurred. ‘Yes.’

Patricia touches the second photograph, this one more sepia-toned and worn. ‘You were a cute baby.’

I take the second image between my fingers and stare. In it stands a woman, my biological mother, long hair falling in wisps around her face, two grainy, willowed hands on the ends of ribbon-thin arms cradling me – her new swaddled baby. I map the skirt that skims the ground where ten toes on bare feet rest on a bed of gravel surrounding a sprawling, stone hospital-come-nunnery with a crucifix on the door. I blink at the photograph and battle with a feeling inside me, strange and unwelcome. Anger and sadness, a tumbleweed of sorrow that, try as I might, will not go, but instead rolls along the barren land of my heart and mind, leaving behind trails in the sand that vanish with one whip of the wind. Isabella Bidarte – my real mother. I try the phrase out in my head, wear it like a new pair of shoes, walk it up and down the corridors of my mind, but it feels odd, stiff, as if using it for too long would create a blister filled with pus that would burst and seep and hurt.

I turn the photograph in my hands. On the back is scribbled an address and the geolocation coordinates of a hospital – Weisshorn Psychiatric Hospital, the place Isabella was last kept in Geneva, and next to it the date of her death, all etched out by my Papa and hidden from Ines before he died.

Patricia stares at it. ‘He knew she was kept there, didn’t he, your dad? He’d found out about what Ines was doing – getting the cancer drugs to keep her alive in exchange for you.’

Too sad to speak, I trace the address and date with my fingertips as, to the right of the café, a television repeats a news feed detailing the killings at Mama’s apartment.

‘A triple homicide was reported in Madrid, in what is being cited as a cartel crime. Spanish lawyer and member of parliament Ines Villanueva; her lawyer son, Ramon Martinez; and a British prison chief, Balthus Ochoa, have all been implicated in what sources are saying is a decade-long fraud ring stretching into millions of dollars and which includes trafficking in illegal medical drugs. The bodies of the three were found at Villanueva’s central Madrid house this afternoon. Villanueva, who was a likely pick to become the next leader of the right wing, and prime minister …’

Tilting her head so I can see her eye-creased smile, Patricia nods to the television. ‘Same story they’re telling like before, same bullshit.’

‘It is all lies. The deaths did not happen in that way.’

She sighs as the television screen flashes across the faces of Ines, Balthus and Ramon.

We finish our coffees. I carry out a final check of my belongings, secure the photographs in an inside pocket near my notebook and, acknowledging the presence of my passport one more time, in my head I begin to carry out a run-through of the airport journey when Chris runs up to the table, breathless.

‘Jesus,’ Patricia says, ‘what’s with you?’

He swallows, pointing behind him. ‘People…’ He gulps air, slaps two palms to the table and hauls in some oxygen. ‘C-coming…’

‘What d’you mean?’ Patricia says, frowning. ‘You’re not making any sense and we’ve got to—’

‘Shush!’

Patricia opens her mouth on the verge of speaking when Chris raises a hand and finally spits out the words he wants to say.

‘The Project – they’ve found us!’

Chapter 3

Madrid Barajas Airport, Spain.

Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 31 hours and 30 minutes

I turn, stand, focus. ‘Tell me.’

He swallows. ‘So, I was just walking back and looking in the duty-free bit, and they have the mirrors and stuff there and I’m sure there were two guys watching me.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ Patricia says.

‘What? No. I was followed.’ He looks straight to me. ‘I’m telling you – they were different, these guys.’

‘How?’

‘Just, well, I guess they were, like, rigid, you know. Kind of robotic and—’

‘Christ,’ Patricia says, ‘this is the last thing we need, you freaking out on us like this.’

‘I’m not freaking out.’

‘You are, and you’re going to upset—’

‘No!’ His voice is raised. I flinch. The people at the next table stop eating mid-sandwich bite and narrow their eyes.

Chris lowers his head. ‘No. Please,’ he whispers, ‘you have to listen to me. I know they have to be different because I recognise them, from when I was locked up for hacking, okay. One of the two guys who investigated me via the UK, well they were MI5. The other one, I’m not sure…’

‘You have to be sure,’ I say. ‘Now.’ My eyes scan ahead, quick fire.

‘I’m sorry. I recognise both of them, just can’t place the second one.’

‘One of them is definitely MI5?’

‘Yes.’

The cogs in my head, as if tripped by a switch, begin to turn at such a rate, for a second I feel dizzy.

‘Shit,’ Patricia says. ‘Doc, MI5 wanted you dead. If they’re here, this is not good.’

‘Oh fuck.’ Chris rubs his head. ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck.’

As my friends swear repeatedly, I scan the crowds.

‘Maria,’ Chris says now, ‘I’m sorry. I sent that email. MI5 must have tracked it.’

‘Why would you be sorry?’ I ask. ‘This is not your fault.’

‘It is,’ Patricia snaps.

I look between the two of them. ‘We cannot determine with any mathematical certainty why these men are here. We can only assume.’ I pause, my mind firing at such a rate now, the probabilities and conclusions whip out. ‘We can only assume a level of danger which requires some amount of action on our part.’

Patricia blows out a breath. ‘Shit a brick.’

Chris nods. ‘Too right.’

I scan the busy foyer, the noise so loud, my body wincing at the near physical hurt it causes me. Heads, hats, citrus perfume, detergent, the smell of ice cream and pancakes, a series of buckles and trailing laces.

‘I can see them,’ Chris says.

‘Where?’

He gestures to an area by a burger bar thirty metres away. ‘Right… there.’

I follow his line and spot two men, black jackets, casual clothing, no suitcases, no definable baggage, just coffee bean eyes and steady strides.

‘Doc,’ Patricia says, ‘is it them? Could MI5 be back working with the Project now, you know, running it or something?’

‘I do not know,’ I say, sight missile-locked on the two figures. Flickering fluorescent lights, the clatter of suitcase wheels, the hum of a fan somewhere in a nearby store, the oppressive stench of chip fat. It all collides in my head, making it harder to think straight, but even between the chaos, a cold calm descends and a phrase, one drummed into me by the Project, despite my resistance, enters my head as easy as walking through an open door. Prepare, wait, engage.

I turn to Chris. ‘You are certain it is them?’

He gulps. ‘Yes.’

‘Then we have to go.’

He rubs his face. ‘Oh man, oh man, oh man.’

Bags secured, Patricia moves backwards, her feet stumbling a little, Chris following as the three of us slip behind a large silver pillar that houses neat billboards for expensive Parisian perfumes.

‘Doc, what do we do now?’

I glance to the area ahead and watch the two men. They walk five steps then stop and, as they do, my brain carries out a full and rapid assessment of the immediate threat. Each man is approximately one hundred and sixty-six centimetres tall, the right man blonde, the left brown, no distinguishable facial features, no definable scars, and by quick track of their frames, each appears to be built to endure long distance runs over twenty kilometres, yet still bulked enough to carry the weight of a full army training kit on their backs.

Patricia bites her lip. ‘They’re not real travellers, are they? Oh, God.’ There is a shake to her words. She chews on a nail. ‘You think they’ve seen us?’

Chris risks a glance. ‘Maybe… Fuck.’ He slips out his phone, sets up a fast proxy, starts tapping on a screen I cannot see. ‘Let me… Hang on.’

‘What are you doing?’ I ask, but he shakes his head, taps his phone and does not reply.

I scan the shops to calculate the best route forwards. By the entrance of a chain of toilets, a toddler is squirming in a ball on the floor screaming while his mother flaps around him, coils of hair springing up, shored by sweat, the father nearby, scratching his head, tutting into a smartphone that’s stitched into his hand. The noise of it all ricochets around my brain.

‘Doc,’ Patricia whispers, ‘should we get out of the airport?’

‘No.’ I take a breath, try to count the noise away. ‘We must board our flight and travel to Zurich as planned.’

‘You think that’s wise? Won’t they know where we are going?’

‘Negative.’ I swallow. Someone make the toddler be quiet. ‘We look different. Our email tracks have a high probability of being invisible.’

Chris, head up from his phone, points. ‘They’re moving.’

Patricia bites down harder on her fingernail. ‘Doc, I’m bloody shitting it.’

‘If you soil yourself, you could impede our escape.’

She ceases eating her hands.

The billboard with the perfume advert on the pillar is a rolling one. I observe it. Every six seconds, there is a change of posters, promoting gilded watches, branded clothing, vintage bottled cognac, champagne and truffles, and each time a new poster flashes, the entire board moves from side to side creating one small yet significant space behind it, a scooped out hole. A blind spot.

I turn to my friends. ‘There is a place to hide, there.’ I point. ‘It will provide us cover to plan the next move. When I say go, we all go. Do you understand?’

They nod.

‘Does that mean you understand?’

Two frantic nods. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. I will count to three. On three, we will run to the billboard.’

‘We won’t be seen?’ Chris checks.

‘No.’

‘Okay.’ His eyes flick ahead then back to me, a breath billowing from his chest. ‘Go for it.’

‘Okay. On my count: One…’

Patricia slaps a hair from her face, mutters, for some reason, what I believe is a slang word related to a man’s genital area. The billboard begins to revolve to the side.

‘Two…’

Chris taps his foot. He shields his phone screen with his hand as his eyes dart left and right in the glare and bustle of the concourse beyond.

‘Three. Go!’

We run. Lights, sounds, sharp slaps of heat and noise. They all fly through my ears as we weave in and out of the crowds. The men do not immediately follow us and yet still there is something about the way they move, about the assurance of their steps.

We reach the billboard. ‘Which way?’ Patricia whispers.

To our right is a concourse of cafés and shops, people spilling out of them in various states of speed and urgency. To our left is the open floor, shining, twinkling in a yellow brick road that leads off to the departure gate announcing cities and flight numbers. My brain photographs it all. Istanbul, Melbourne, Washington, Paris, locations that span the world across data lines that lie hidden underground.

‘They know we are here,’ Chris says. ‘I’m certain now.’

I whip round. ‘What?’

He turns his phone to me and my heart starts to race at an alarming speed.

‘I hacked into the Madrid police database,’ he says. ‘You know, to be on the safe side, get some firm intel. I found this.’

‘Oh, holy fuck,’ Patricia blurts. ‘It says wanted. It’s us!’

There are pictures of all three of us. My mouth runs dry so fast that I have to lean against Chris to steady myself.

‘Hey,’ he says, ‘you okay?’

‘They have us in different wigs,’ Patricia says. ‘Shit – they’ll know what we look like!’

‘I have put you in danger.’

‘Huh? What? Oh Doc, no. None of this is your fault. Doc, it’s okay.’

‘Er, no,’ Chris cuts in. ‘It’s not okay.’

We both look to him, mouths open.

‘Why?’ I say.

Very slowly, he guides his eyes to the left. ‘Because they’re looking right at us.’

Chapter 4

Madrid Barajas Airport, Spain.

Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 31 hours and 13 minutes

‘Oh, Jesus, they’re – they’re looking straight towards us,’ Patricia says, ducking behind me.

I stare now at our faces on the police alert in Chris’s hand, and a feeling wells inside me, one of guilt, of shame and confusion. By making friends, have I done the wrong thing? Is life not easier, better, safer when we are on our own?

‘Doc? Doc, you alright? Should we go?’

My head snaps up, refocussing. ‘Negative. If we move now it will alert the men. They have images of us. We must wait. We must prepare.’

Chris tips his head to the left towards a landslide of bodies approaching. ‘What about them?’

I direct my sight to where Chris points. A pack of students has entered the walkway, flooding the air with chatter in a melody of Italian and French, a river of language rushing forwards amid a sea of brown limbs, all long and lean and clad in assorted patchwork pieces of denim and cotton and hooded drawstring sweats. Tinny music, the tap of phones, beeps, rings. The sounds send my brain into red alert, and I am about to move when two teenage students stop almost next to me and kiss. I find myself staring, unable to look away, and when I inhale I detect bubble gum, washing powder, body odour masked by a sugary scent.

‘Hey, Google?’ A pause. ‘Maria?’

I turn to Chris. ‘What?’

‘They’re all moving – the students. If we move with them, they could be good cover.’

The teenagers pull away from each other, the girls smiling in a way I do not understand. The chatter rises, smacking into my ears, slap, slam. Startled, I look to Patricia.

‘It’s alright,’ she says automatically, trotting off what she’s had to say to me now so many times. ‘Deep breaths. It’s going to be loud and close, but I’ll stay right by you, yeah? Chris is right – the students’ll be good cover.’

I nod, but my eyes are on the moving mass. ‘Their skin, their scent.’

‘Deep breaths.’

Chris starts to move. ‘Let’s go.’

We dart in and out as, ahead of us, the boarding gates appear. People, limbs, spit and sweat. Announcements hanging from the ceiling with flashing orange letters and numbers declaring the areas our flight is leaving from. Our feet brush the tiles as we surge forwards amid the slippery mass, sliding across the mirrored thoroughfare where the shoes of the students clomp down in hooves of plastic and leather, jostling, laughing, bumping into me. Head down, I bite my lip and try not to scream.

Hidden by the human cloak, we remain out of direct sight. Some metres nearer now, the men move rapidly, steady, their presence two dark monoliths against the landscape of pick-a-mix colour. My heart rate rockets. We duck, weaving, as Chris keeps watch and Patricia spreads five fingers on her thigh, but every time someone’s arm or leg grazes me, I flinch. Every time I smell their burger breath, feel the heat of their perspiring skin near me – deodorant, talcum powder, flowers and musk – I want to scream at the top of my voice, curl up into a tight ball. It is impossible to switch off.

We finally approach the flight gates, Patricia to my right, Chris to my left. We drop our speed as the students slow down lolloping and laughing at each other, and as I risk a small glance, I find myself fascinated by their ease with each other, their calmness, happiness even, transfixed at the way in which their limbs seemingly absentmindedly intertwine, vines of arms and fingers interlinking as if all branches from the same tree. They oscillate and flutter, and I imagine a shoal of clownfish swimming over into a new anemone, relaxed, loose, just another day hanging in the reef.

I unpick my gaze from the students and inspect the two men. They are talking to each other.

‘They’re calling our flight,’ Patricia says.

The entrance to our boarding gate is drenched in sunlight from a vast glass and steel dome above. Glass, steel, huge masses of heavy concrete. I do the maths in my head.

‘If a bomb went off here, the glass would shatter and kill and maim the people beneath it.’

Chris stares at me. ‘Seriously?’

‘Of course.’

‘Oh shit. Shit!’ Patricia whispers. ‘They’re looking this way.’

She’s right. ‘Walk.’

We stride, not running, not wanting to create attention. Backs straight, footing as sure as we can make it, we mimic three busy work colleagues eager to catch their business flight. Soon we reach the gate. Patricia’s face is pale. Chris’s fingers are tapping his phone.

‘Good afternoon,’ the flight attendant says, his eyebrows two tapered caterpillars. ‘Boarding passes, please.’

We hand over our travel documents, fake IDs, as from my peripheral vision I see the two men searching through the students, casting them to the side, one after the other. The lights above shine bright, a traffic of chatter and laughter pummelling the air. I count to stay calm.

‘Hurry up,’ Patricia mutters, but, just as the line begins to move again, everything stops.

The flight attendant looks to us. ‘Could you step aside for a moment please?’

‘But we’re getting on the flight,’ Chris says.

My teeth start to grind. Breathe. One, two, three. One, two, three. The men are moving towards us in the pile of students washing up near the gate.

‘We have to run,’ Chris whispers.

‘Negative.’

‘Yes,’ he insists, stronger now. ‘The attendant’s stopped us.’

‘They are nearer now,’ I say.

Patricia’s eyes go wide. ‘Oh God.’

‘God has nothing to do with…’ I halt. Something is not right. The men have stopped. Their movements – why are they now so still? Keeping my head as rigid as I can, I check the CCTV cameras, their small domed lenses, dark black caps, blinking in the nearby areas. All seems as it should, all cameras facing the correct way, all security staff, in the immediate zone at least, carrying on with their duties as before.

Patricia shuffles from foot to foot. ‘Shall we peg it? This is fecking MI5. Shit.’

I trace the outline of the officers. They may have been trained, like me, to prepare, wait, engage. Is that what they are doing now? If I were them, what would I do next?

‘Doc? Doc, I think we should move.’

‘Holy fuck,’ Chris says.

I look to him. He is staring at his phone. ‘What is it?’

‘I’ve just…’ A shake of the head. ‘No way. It’s—’

‘They’re coming!’

We look up at where Patricia is staring. The second man, the one with the slightly narrower shoulders, is touching his ear, scanning to his right and moving slowly forwards. I track his eye line, wincing at the sharp clatter of some tray that is dropped in the distance, my assaulted brain just about keeping it together. What is he looking at, the man? What can he see?