Killing Eva (2 page)

‘Take it. Read it. And then we will meet again. I believe that this is the final step for you.'

After some hesitation, the man across the table reached for the memory stick. He held it up in the air and waited. A second man rose from a chair at a table behind. Silently, he took the memory stick, sat down and reached under his chair for a slim laptop case. He opened the zip, flicked up the screen on the machine and inserted the stick into the side of the brushed metal.

‘Unless you can back up your boldness you will not leave here alive.'

The younger man was surprised. He had not expected such an immediate test. Nevertheless, he refused to allow his face to betray him. He waited.

The associate with the laptop stood and deposited the machine in front of the older man, who spent several minutes scanning the information.

‘What do you want in exchange for this?'

‘I want to work with you. I want to be part of it. Use me where you can.'

‘And that is all?'

‘That is all.'

Suspicion in the eyes of the older man. ‘That is never “all”. What else is it you want.'

‘I am ambitious. I want to progress. Nothing more.'

It was plausible. Just.

‘You could not have a position of authority.'

‘I understand.'

A second silence, deeper than the first, settled on the area around the two men. The air of hostility had faded but a deep distrust remained.

‘I still do not understand how you came upon this.'

‘You do not need to know.'

‘I wonder whether that is the case.'

‘It is genuine.'

‘That's not something I can verify without knowing its origin.'

‘Scott.'

The older man glanced up quickly at the younger man, who was about to play the trump card.

‘Scott,' repeated the younger man, ‘Jackson Scott.'

TWO

The next morning
, Eva struggled even more than usual to push herself through the daily commute. Whether it was the cigarettes from the night before or the two hour run through a heavy rain shower, her cheeks were flushed and feverish and she felt uncharacteristically shaky. She left her flat, slamming the door and pulling up the collar of the thick blue oversize coat she had bought in a fit of fashion. An Investment Piece. The quality material was solid and warm and she felt comforted as she went to the mobile coffee cart under the glass canopy next to the station. As she stood in the queue, she watched the hordes of people flowing into the Underground, heads down, eyes glazed, the odd angry shove or curse when personal space was breached.

When she had bought the biggest, strongest coffee she could, Eva began to walk down the hill, through the busy high street, towards the nearest bus stop. It would take her along a circuitous route to work but she could not face Waterloo today. Besides, the bus offered better thinking time. After her experiences in Paris and Paraguay, she had tried to figure out her life and had concluded she needed to do something vaguely ‘worthwhile'. The job at the environmental NGO had appeared from nowhere. She almost couldn't remember whether she had applied for it, or whether it had applied for her. It had seemed the perfect option – a worthy cause, a better salary, a role that sounded just about challenging enough. Whilst she may not have achieved some other ‘adult' milestones – the husband, the house, the pension, the baby – she did at least have a ‘grown up' job. Whether she herself was happy about that she hadn't yet worked out. She wasn't even sure how much the concept of ‘adult' appealed.

And then there was Sam. Much like the job, he seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and, before she knew it, she was tentatively taking first steps towards something more than her accustomed-to flings. Or was she? Eva was unable to shift the feeling that, deep down, she had opened up nothing, that she remained as shut off from Sam emotionally as she had done from every other man she had met in the last ten years. What she struggled to understand was why.

‘We have a new project for you – algae.'

Eva looked up, surprised, from her seat opposite her line manager. Janet had a nasal tone of voice that was coma-inducing and she had been half asleep.

‘Algae?'

‘Yes, an outbreak in an area around London.'

Eva's heart began to thud. The genetically engineered strain Daniel had developed to spread his virus had begun its release like this.

Eva realised she was sitting forward in her chair. ‘Is it serious?'

Her line manager laughed, sneered a little. ‘Relax Eva, it's just a little algae – all we need is someone to write a report on it.' She pushed a file across the desk.

Eva sat back. She was one of the few people in the country who knew how many people the PX3 algae could have killed in the name of commerce. Were it not for the fact that she couldn't prove any of it she wondered whether she would still be alive. Cleaning up that mess quietly had posed only a temporary inconvenience for the powers that be, more important to hide what had happened than show the vulnerability it revealed. Who really cared about algae anyway? A strain of bird flu that claimed a number of lives and coincidentally appeared at exactly the same time got much more coverage. It was expert media-manipulation, using one already established fear to cover something much worse.

Eva had once felt a passion for politics but now it seemed like a sham – behind it sat the real web of control: money. Global finance, profit motive and the sway of influence held by large corporates defined political policy, whether with respect to global warming emissions targets or food labelling. Most people would believe what they read in the news and never see the world they lived in for what it really was.

‘Read this. Everything's in there. Any questions, just ask Sam.'

Her supervisor Janet smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile. Eva knew Sam – who also worked at the NGO – had been Janet's favourite before Eva had arrived. As Janet was fond of jokingly stating herself, she was now 38, single and ‘desperately looking (lol)'. Eva had endured several weeks of having doors slammed in her face and being cold shouldered in front of other staff after her and Sam's ‘relationship' was revealed. Eva had heard the rumours about Janet and other men in the office but she knew that gossip in a place like this was rampant, thanks to the boring nature of the work, and a nearly-40 single woman always seemed to attract the same kind of slurs. Although she didn't understand why Janet willingly made herself such a caricature. Eva didn't like the woman but, for the sake of sisterhood, had stayed away from bitching about her.

She picked up the file. ‘Thanks.' She stood up. She felt appraising eyes on her back – and lower – as she left the room.

Outside the door, Sam was there.

‘What happened to you last night?'

‘I didn't feel well, sorry.'

They started walking in the direction of the office kitchen that was only a few paces from her desk. Sam lowered his voice. ‘I hope you're ok,' he said and then, very self-consciously, kissed her on the side of the head. She had the odd feeling he was looking at someone else when he did it.

In the kitchen, Eva made yet more coffee. Sam was silent until she sat down opposite at the table. He pulled something out of his pocket.

‘I got you this.'

A small, colourfully wrapped chocolate biscuit in the shape of a heart. She smiled at him, but it was a mechanical response.

‘You're sweet.'

He smiled as if she had declared her love for him. Which she hadn't. Even though he already had to her. After three months. A shaft of sunlight streamed in and illuminated his blond hair, as if it were a halo.

‘I have to go,' he said, suddenly standing up. ‘See you for lunch?'

She nodded and he bent down and kissed her again.

Eva pushed the little heart around the table with her finger. She watched it fall to the floor, sparkling in another shaft of sunlight. She realised she was thinking about Leon.

Eva took a long sip of her coffee and opened the file she had been given. She read the contents once, made herself another coffee and read it again. She sat back in her chair. The information was fluff. It was pointless and groundless. The algae outbreak was minimal, it wasn't even worth a report. She was being given something to write that was essentially a waste of everyone's time.

Eva picked up the biscuit heart Sam had given her from the floor, unwrapped the paper and shoved the whole thing in her mouth. Love tokens when you were not in love… awkward.

She turned the final page of the report and there at the back was a sheet of questions. She skimmed through them. Whether generated by the enormous amount of caffeine she had drunk or the sugar hit of the heart she had just consumed, anxiety plucked at her insides. The questions seemed personal – very personal – and apparently directed specifically at her – despite the ‘hypothetical scenario', she was being asked to record her own experiences of dealing with an algae outbreak ‘for the report' and to give details of everything from the type of algae involved to the eventual resolution of the situation. It wasn't exactly subtle.

She flicked the file shut. What was going on?

All through the expensive lunch with Sam at the local deli (he paid), Eva just couldn't stop thinking about the algae questions in the file. She had drunk far too much coffee that morning – that always made for spiralling paranoia – but, nevertheless, the task felt strange. She generally wasn't asked to produce content but to edit it and it was, on the whole, newsworthy content that the NGO would use to generate a media profile for itself. This algae information was pointless and would do nothing to attract the right kind of attention – it wasn't what they had hired her for.

Was it a coincidence it had ended up on her desk or was it intentional?

She looked at Sam and realised he was waiting for a response.

‘Hmmm?'

‘You're half asleep today, Eva.'

‘I know, sorry, too much coffee this morning, I'm having a post caffeine slump.'

He laughed enthusiastically.

‘Paris this weekend.'

‘What?' Eva looked at him shocked. Paris was where Jackson had died.

‘I-I-I I thought you'd be pleased. It's such a romantic city.'

Eva stared at him.

It began to get uncomfortable.

‘I'm sorry, Sam, I'm really not feeling that well today, I think I might go home.'

‘Want me to come over later?'

‘I think I just want to go to sleep.'

Eva left work without bothering to make excuses. She had to get out and, besides, she knew that Sam would make them for her. Back in her flat, she changed out of her work attire and into her running clothes. She took to the streets for two hours and, by the time she returned, she had quelled what was probably caffeine-induced paranoia. More than once when she had tried to draw some conclusion in terms of what to do about Sam, her thoughts had turned to Leon. The ex-addict, her brother's friend and a self-admitted mercenary, he had both assisted and saved her life in Paris and then, at the end, tried to kill her. When she returned to London, she had no idea if he was still alive. It troubled her and it excited her. And the fact that it excited her troubled her even more.

When she had showered after her run and changed into comfortable clothes, Eva decided to make a phone call. She called Irene Hunt's office – if there was one person who could put an end to this gnawing paranoia, it was her. The phone was answered by her secretary.

‘She's on indefinite leave.'

‘But I spoke to her two weeks ago and she didn't mention anything about that – has something happened?' Irene and Eva stayed in regular contact. Eva was never sure whether it was motherly or monitoring.

There was a clicking sound on the other end of the phone. The secretary took too long to answer.

‘Family affairs, I think.'

‘Right, ok. Thanks.' Eva hung up.

Something wasn't right.

Perhaps he knew something was wrong when he left the research lab that night. But Stefano Cirza was simply too preoccupied with the intricate details of his research to be troubled by instinct. He was excited by the leaps forward he had made in recent months – the project he was working on was virtually complete. Two projects, interlinked, although one he preferred to talk about more than the other. The first (and the more citizen friendly) was an ingenious key that allowed an individual to use their own unique genetic code as a ‘lock'. A simple blood sample could be used to create it and he had even come up with a way of ensuring that, when it came to using the blood key to open whatever it was required for, this could not be done under duress. The second project was still in trial but used a combination of drugs, cranial implants and face mapping technology to give one person the power to change their appearance in the eyes of another. It was not yet complete but, when it was, it would give the technology-user the ability to appear to be whoever they needed to be to convince a specific person to trust them. Trust – that most fragile of things – could be established artificially.

Stefano would not be feted for curing an incurable disease, or wiping out famine, but what he had done was still important. Not just important, but lucrative too.

His mentor had been a great man, a renowned scientist whose work had done much for the world. But he had died almost penniless, troubled by the heavy burden of debt until his very last day. And with nothing to leave his daughter or ex-wife, he had died with disappointment in his eyes.

Stefano was as yet unmarried and had no children, but he did not intend to go the same way. Which is why he had chosen an area of genetic science he knew was marketable.

But also pioneering.

There would be acclaim as well as money. When he was approached about developing the key he had hesitated but the Englishman who had later become his business partner was convincing. So convincing, in fact, that they had been friends. At least, until the man disappeared.

When Stefano had made the decision to work on the project, he comforted himself that at least he was not working on genetics that could cause loss of life – biological warfare, for example. Far worse causes existed to which he might have applied his very considerable skills for a significantly larger sum of cash. There was little chance that his coding could be used for anything ‘bad'. It was important security technology. And it was inevitable progress.

In fact, neither project had been much of a leap from technology that already existed but there were few people in the world who really understood it – at least outside the scientific sphere – and it was in such technology that the money lay. If he had not produced this, someone else would have done it.

He had initially struggled with the idea of finance backing science, of monetising his research. Just like every other area of life, as soon as there was a profit motive, only those who could afford to pay would benefit. As a scientist and medical professional, Stefano knew there should be no barriers to anyone accessing medical innovation – especially if it related to life or death – but, as a person, he was not sure the future of the world would be positively influenced by such an approach. Everyone surviving everything. It was unsustainable. If we all survived every disease, the drain on resources would be too much. Some had to die. And perhaps the easiest solution was simply to offer survival to those who could pay – it was something people could work for, they could create their own opportunities to have the lives they wanted, to afford treatment they needed. As long as you didn't believe in luck, that is – or bad luck to be more precise.

Anyway, Stefano thought to himself as he began to shut down his equipment for the night, he was becoming distracted. For both projects there had been only one live test subject so far. That first test had been a bad decision, perhaps his only one recently – using someone so completely unknown who had offered himself up for the testing. And testing the two products together… Stefano had allowed his ego to get the better of him and accepted the volunteer because he claimed to be a fan.