the Project, find some comfort purely in the challenge and routine and order of it all, safe in the knowledge that I won’t take it any further, that I don’t ever want to leave here and the sanctuary it provides, and if they don’t find me, I can remain hidden in my villa forever.
I look up at my wall. I study the multiple news articles and anonymous faces and facts and arrowed figures, and just as I am about to reach forward and readjust a pinned article so that it sits neat and straight and in order next to the others, the emergency cell phone shrills into the calm morning silence.
And everything stops.
Salamancan Mountains, Spain.
34 hours and 46 minutes to confinement
I pick up the cell, slamming down the button so the shrill will stop hammering into my head. ‘Who is this?’
‘Maria, it’s Balthus.’
‘You are speaking on the emergency cell,’ I say, fast. ‘Is there an urgent situation?’
‘What? No.’
‘Then why are you calling me?’
‘You haven’t contacted me for three days and I was worried.’
The ring of the cell still bangs in my head. I shake it. ‘Four days.’
‘What?’
‘I have not called you for four days.’ My eyes catch the sunshine dancing a waltz along the curves of the glass panes. I focus on it and, gradually, my head calms down. ‘You said three.’
There’s a pause. ‘Maria, we agreed when we spilt up in London—you’d stay in touch, contact me every day. I got worried when you didn’t call.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I care for you. Because I promised your father before he died I’d look out for you.’
‘Oh. Okay.’ The glass panes twinkle in the daylight. ‘I had another memory today.’
‘What? When?’
‘At 0612 hours this morning.’
I pick up my notebook and proceed to tell him what happened. He listens. This is what he does, Balthus Ochoa—I talk and he listens. When he was the governor at Goldmouth prison in London where I was incarcerated; him listening led me to find an encrypted file that uncovered the Project and my subsequent involvement in it. He has always told me how he promised my papa that he would be there for me, tells me he cares for me, and I catch myself feeling what must be gratitude towards him, but I never know how to express it, do not understand how people say what they feel inside.
‘That’s odd,’ Balthus says now, his voice a layer of gravel, a boulder on a mountain.
‘What is odd?’
‘Well … Okay, so it may be nothing, but there’s something bugging me about the standalone computer the woman in your flash mentioned, but I can’t figure out why it bothers me. Maria—the memory with the woman, with Raven—do you remember which Project facility that was at?’
‘No. I only recall the facility with Black Eyes when I was younger. That was in Scotland. That is the facility Kurt brought me to. Do you not remember this?’
‘Jesus, how could I forget? I bloody well suggested you see that therapist after you were acquitted—and he turned out to be working for MI5.’
‘He was working for the Project.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘No. You said MI5. Kurt—although his real name is Daniel, a Hebrew name meaning God is my judge—when he was meeting with me he was only working for the Project. By then—’
‘By then the NSA prism scandal had been exposed and MI5 wanted to ditch the whole Project because they were scared of a similar blow-up.’
My eyes rest on the wall, on my drawings and newspaper articles and lines of connections and notes.
Balthus sighs. ‘I don’t know, I just … What they did. I still can’t believe the Project framed you for the murder of that priest just to get you in prison and out of the way, so they could then get rid of you.’
‘So they could kill me to eradicate any connection to the Project.’
‘Yes.’ He pauses. ‘Yes.’
The window in the lounge is open, and in the breeze the muslin curtain drifts in and out, the white cotton veil of it brushing the tiled floor as it passes quietly through the room.
‘Anyway, look, Maria,’ Balthus says after a while, clearing his throat, ‘the other reason I wanted to call was just to let you know that there’s been no sighting or word from the MI5 officer who posed as our prison psychiatrist—Dr Andersson. You were asking about her.’
Dr Andersson. Her face instantly springs into my mind. Swedish blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, freckled pale skin. A vision of her making me take apart laptops, timing me to complete a Rubik’s cube—all the tasks she was doing to monitor me without my knowledge. I shiver. ‘She has not approached you or any of Harry’s family?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so. But Maria, listen—how are you about Harry now, since his death? It’s been six months since Dr Andersson shot him on the court steps when she was aiming to kill you. Harry wasn’t just your barrister or even simply your papa’s old friend—I know you had a soft spot for him.’ He pauses, three silent seconds passing. ‘I just worry about you. It’s a lot for any of us to process, never mind for you.’
I am momentarily stuck for words as a strange tightness presses against my chest. ‘The Kubler-Ross grief model says I should be at acceptance stage now.’
‘And are you at that stage, Maria? Do you accept Harry’s death? He cared for you a lot.’ I can hear him swallow. ‘We both did—do.’
I swallow and clench my jaw as conflicting feelings of anger and sadness wash through me. A tear escapes. I reach up, smear my cheek dry.
‘Dr Andersson killed Harry. MI5 killed Harry.’
‘Yes.’
Over on the window ledge, a small bird with golden-brown feathers lands on the white wood. It dips its head once, then going very still, it looks up, free, and flies away. For a few seconds, I watch the now empty, open space where the bird stood then, inhaling, I look back to the cell phone.
‘Did Patricia get parole?’
‘Yes,’ Balthus replies. There is a rustle of paper on the line. ‘I told her you were okay, in hiding from the Project, let her know what you did—sending the texts to MI5 and the Project on Kurt’s phone in London so they both thought you were dead. She understands you’re hiding, that you can’t
