30
PlatnéÅ™ská 110, Prague, Czech Republic
November 29
Sestak took a step back towards the door, eyes wide with fear. Eva pointed the tip of the letter opener against the plastic sheet between them, pushing slightly, but not breaking the seal.
“Don’t even think about calling for help,” Eva said.
Sestak eyed the plastic carefully.
“You’re here to kill me?” he asked, defiant.
“I’m here to talk,” Eva said. “But if you give me one hint of trouble, and I’ll cut the seal and spit in your face.”
He watched the tip, then Eva.
“What are you infected with?”
Her face didn’t twitch.
“Wait and see.”
Sestak exhaled slowly, then nodded and walked to the edge of the room, grabbed the arm of an old wooden dining chair, and pulled it in front of the plastic. He sat down carefully, his expression calm, serene almost. He thought a moment, then looked Eva straight in the eye.
“I suppose you’re Ms Kolikov,” he said.
Eva fought back a twitch in her face, grit her teeth.
“You met my mother,” she said.
“I was under the impression Inspector Sobokta had you contained.”
“I’m not easy to pin down,” Eva replied.
“I’d think not, or they’d have stopped your little killing spree in Germany.”
Eva pushed the blade tighter against the plastic. Sestak’s facade faltered, and he nodded with a controlled anxiety.
“I met your mother, yes.”
“About what?”
He lowered his gaze, licked his lips.
“It’s a complicated subject.”
“Then get talking. Why are the police after her?”
“You should know as well as anyone.”
Eva pushed the letter opener through the first sheet of plastic, and Sestak’s eyes jumped up. Now the second sheet was being pressured, and Eva’s face was dark with determination.
“What did you meet about?”
“The last time I saw her was three weeks ago. A routine status update about recent outbreaks and how to stop them.”
“You… you worked together?”
His eyes narrowed.
“Certainly you know this already.”
“Indulge me.”
“Yes, we worked together,” Sestak said, leaning back in the chair. “Your mother was our WHO liaison, overseeing the classification and treatment of strains found—”
“Stop stalling. What happened three weeks ago?”
Sestak thought a moment.
“We were discussing a smallpox outbreak in Pardubice,” he said. “A minor affair. She was reading the report, and her face went white, and she excused herself.”
“What was in the report?”
“Nothing of note. Two hundred casualties, well-contained, and there was no threat to the city here.”
“You’ve followed up on it?”
“My dear, Pardubice is over one hundred kilometres away. I have enough on my plate already. I don’t need to be adopting someone else’s troubles.”
“So that’s it? She just left? Then why did you send the police after her?”
“The police found their evidence quite independent of me, I’m afraid. If I’d had an inkling of what she was involved in, I never would have given her access to our containment practices. My biggest fear is that she can use my own strategies against me now.”
“She’s not a terrorist.”
“You would say that, wouldn’t you?”
Eva nearly punctured the second sheet. Her grip on the handle was making her hand shake.
“You think she was behind the outbreak in Pardubice?”
“By the way she reacted, no. She seemed genuinely concerned about it. Which frankly makes it all the more stunning, knowing what she’d been up to all this—”
“Save your whining for someone who cares. If she didn’t make the virus, who did?”
Sestak folded his hands on his lap, paused a long while.
“When we deconstructed the strain, we saw it was signed by the authors.”
“What, actually signed?”
“In the code, yes. Incidental protein strands. Crude, but effective. They call themselves ‘ex-facto’, I believe.”
“Are they local?”
“It’s impossible to say. I think your mother suspected they were Russian. She rambled off something when she read the report.”
“What did she say?”
“I’m afraid I don’t speak the language. All I caught was ‘repa’, but still—”
“Where would she have gone?”
Sestak sat forward, brow wrinkled with bemusement.
“I would think you would know better than anyone,” he said. “Didn’t you have a plan in case either of you was caught?”
“I keep telling you people! We have nothing to do with this outbreak! I’m an artist and my mother is a hero! She saves people, she doesn’t kill them!”
He smiled serenely.
“We all have our tipping point,” he said.
Eva set her jaw, tightened her grip on the opener, and pushed it through the second sheet of plastic. Sestak’s body went rigid, pressed back into the chair, and he met her eyes again. She took a long, slow breath.
“Call off your dogs,” she said. “You’re wasting time hunting us. You’re going to lose the city, and it will be on your head, not mine.”
He said nothing.
A knock at the door drew both of their gazes. Sestak turned back to Eva, anxious. Her face betrayed no fear.
“Director?” called the assistant feebly. “Sir, it’s getting to be that time.”
Sestak opened his mouth to speak, but Eva shook her head slowly, twisted the blade in the plastic so it made a perfect hole. Sweet air rushed from one side to the other, and the sheets rippled from the change in pressure.
Sestak held his breath, his face twisting in an effort to stay calm.
The assistant knocked again, more urgently this time.
“Director? Is everything okay in there?”
Eva nodded towards the door, a slight smile creeping across her face. Sestak’s teeth rattled, but his lips stayed sealed, his lungs tightening with pressure.
He doubled over, fighting to control himself, but it was too much. Panic gripped him, and he bolted from the chair, toppling it, stumbling back towards the door. The assistant fell back at the sight of his Director collapsing into the hallway on his hands and knees, sweat pouring down his face. The old man gasped for air, wheezing with every breath.
“Sir? Sir, what happened?” asked the assistant, peering back into the room. It took him a moment to see the hole in the plastic, and the absence of the clocksmith’s daughter.
“It was… Kolikov,” Sestak gasped. “Seal this hallway, quarantine everyone inside. I want that air tested for everything we know.”
“She… she was infected?” the assistant asked, blanching.
“She said she was. I can’t trust a word she said, but I’m not taking any chances.”
“No sir. Should I have the men detain her before she—”
“Leave her. Inform Sobotka, and let her follow the trail. And warn her not to give the leash so much slack next time.”
* * *
Eva met Pyotr back at the corner a few minutes later, eyes gleaming and a smile so wide and frantic that he couldn’t help but look worried.
“You made it?” he said in disbelief.
“Not only that, I know where to go next.”
“Wait… you actually saw Sestak? And he told you what you wanted to know?”
“Not intentionally, no. But he mentioned she said the word ‘repa’ last time she was there.”
“She was talking about Russian turnips? I don’t get it.”
“It’s not turnips. It’s Stepan. Stepan Krejci. An old friend of my parents, back when I was a toddler. I couldn’t pronounce his name, so I called him Repa, and it stuck. He must know something about what happened to my mother.”
Pyotr shook his head.
“But even if that were true, how would we find him? We don’t know where he lives, and there’s no way to find out!”
Eva’s smile got even bigger.
“We’ll look the same place my mother would have: his office in the biology department at Charles University. He was the head of their epidemiology department.”