The Perfect Assassin, page 4
“Enough,” she called out. “I don’t want you pruning up on me.”
I turned off the tap. When I opened the shower door, she was gone. I reached for a towel and patted myself dry. I got dressed. My cell door was open. I stepped outside and immediately smelled something wonderful.
Meed reappeared. She was holding two bowls of freshly made popcorn. Was this a reward for good behavior, or some kind of trick? Popcorn did not seem like something Meed would allow on a strict training diet. She handed me a bowl.
“Organic, gluten-free, and non-GMO,” she said. “Also excellent roughage.” She headed across the loft toward the living room area. “Follow me, Doctor,” she said. “We’re going to the movies.”
I followed and sat down next to her on the thick leather sofa across from a massive flat-screen TV. I started to relax a little. I took a handful of popcorn. It tasted amazing. I thought maybe she was actually giving me a break. I thought maybe, for once, we were actually about to do something normal.
“What are we watching?” I asked.
“You,” she said.
Meed clicked Play on the remote, and the screen lit up. Sure enough, there I was. The footage was a little shaky, like it was taken with an iPhone. The first scene zoomed in on me walking across campus in the middle of winter. I looked gawky and awkward. I could tell I was trying not to slip on the sidewalk. The first scene dissolved into a shot of me in the aisle of Shop & Save. I was wheeling a mini-cart down the cereal aisle, picking out oatmeal.
Next came a long scene of me sitting at Starbucks before class. Then a shot of me buying a magazine and a pack of gum at a newsstand. There was a hard cut and then I was sitting at a long table in the university library. I had a thick comparative cultures text in front of me. The shot was so close I could read the title on the spine of the book. She must have been shooting from the next table. About ten feet away.
“You were following me?” I asked.
“Surveilling you,” she said. “Every minute. For months.”
“What the hell…?”
“Keep watching, it gets better,” she said. “Actually, it gets worse.”
I put down my popcorn. I’d suddenly lost my appetite. The next few scenes came in quick succession: A long shot of me buying an umbrella during a rain shower. Me walking through Lincoln Park Zoo. Then a grainy scene of me sitting in my recliner in my living room. My living room! I looked over at Meed.
“Needed my extra-long lens for that one,” she said, tossing a handful of popcorn into her mouth. By now, I was used to feeling violated. But this was something else. And it made me mad.
“What was the fucking point?” I asked. “Tell me! You obviously knew who I was. Why didn’t you just grab me the first day you saw me? Why all this Peeping-Tom bullshit??”
Meed nodded toward the screen. “Pay attention. I don’t want you to miss the theme here.”
I looked back to see myself opening my door for a pizza delivery guy. Then riding a rental bike on the Lakefront Trail. Then tossing bread to a family of ducks in a pond.
“See what I mean?” said Meed. “Boring, boring, boring. Also repetitive, dull, and monotonous. That’s what your life was. Same Caffè Americano every morning. Same tuna sandwich for lunch. Same miso dressing on your salad. Your favorite cable channel is Nat Geo. You subscribe to Scientific American and Anthropology Today. You watch YouTube videos of Margaret Mead, for God’s sake! In four months, you went to three museums and not a single rock concert.”
Yep. There I was, walking into the Chicago History Museum. Then the Museum of Science and Industry. Then a night shot of me walking out of the Adler Planetarium. I felt my face getting red. I was starting to feel embarrassed and defensive.
“I live a quiet life, so what? We can’t all be spies and kidnappers.”
Meed leaned in close. I could smell the popcorn on her breath. “Correction,” she said. “You don’t live a quiet life. You live a nothing life. But don’t worry, that’s all about to change. Believe me, you’ll want it to change.” She turned back to the screen. “After you watch this a few hundred more times.”
CHAPTER 13
Eastern Russia
18 Years Ago
MEED, AGE TWELVE, stood on a frozen lake wearing a blue one-piece swimsuit and rubber sandals. Nothing else. She hunched and trembled along with her classmates as they stood in a ragged line about a hundred yards from shore. In front of them were two large circular holes in the ice, exactly thirty yards apart. The holes had been cut before dawn by supervisors with chainsaws. Meed had heard the sound from her bed. The shivering had started then. For weeks, she’d known this test was coming.
Annika was wearing a fur jacket over black leggings and boots. She walked to the edge of the closer hole. Bluish-green water lapped against the opening. The ice that rimmed the hole was three inches thick. Annika turned to the class.
“Keep your wits,” she said. “Swim in a straight line. Block out the fear. Block out the cold. Block out failure.” She looked over the class. “Who’s first?”
Meed glanced sideways as Irina stepped forward.
“Good, Irina,” said Annika. “Show them the way.”
Irina stepped up to the hole. She kicked off her sandals. She knelt on the ice, her knees at the edge of the opening. She raised her arms over her head, leaned forward, and tipped herself into the water. The soles of her feet flashed for a second at the surface, and then she was gone, leaving a swirl of bubbles behind. Annika pressed the Start button on a stopwatch. Desperate and scared, some of the students began to huddle together for warmth, pressing their bodies against one another. Until Annika noticed.
“No clusters!” she shouted. “This is a solitary exercise. You have only yourself.” The girls stepped back, restoring the gaps between them. Annika looked toward the distant hole and checked her stopwatch. Fifteen seconds. Then twenty.
Meed stamped her feet on the ice and stared through the mist. From where she stood, the far hole looked like a small, dark wafer. Suddenly the water in the hole frothed. Two arms shot out. Irina! Wriggling like a fish, she worked her way onto the surface and jumped to her feet. She trotted with small steps toward the class, doing her best to stay balanced. When she got close to the group, Annika reached into a plastic tub and tossed her a thin blanket. Then she turned toward the rest of the line.
“Next!”
One by one, the students made the dive. One by one, they emerged shaking and stunned, grateful to be alive. Meed was second to last, just before Bystro, the Asian girl. When it was her turn, Meed did not hesitate. She jumped in feetfirst.
The freezing water hit her like a hammer, forcing the breath out of her. She surfaced again for a second to take a fresh gulp of air, then started scissor-kicking her way under the ice. Below her, the water was pitch-black. She stayed close to the surface, letting her shoulders and heels bump against the ice roof as she swam. Her lungs burned. Her heart pounded. White bubbles trickled from her nose and mouth.
Just as her air was about to give out, she sensed a slight shift in the light above her. She stretched one arm up and felt cold air. As soon as her head cleared the water, she looked back to see Bystro plunging into the first hole. The terrified girl had waited until she had no choice.
Meed walked quickly back toward the rest of the class. Annika tossed her a blanket as she checked her stopwatch for Bystro’s time. Twenty seconds. Then thirty. She began to walk toward the distant hole. Forty seconds. The students walked forward, too, a few steps at a time, staring down at the ice.
Meed spotted her first. “Bystro!” she shouted.
The slender girl was just a faint shape beneath the ice, yards off course, flailing and twisting. Meed dropped to her knees, pounding on the hard surface. But there was no way to break through. The ice was too thick. Annika was standing over her now. The white of Bystro’s palms showed through the ice, pressing desperately from the other side. Then, one at a time, her hands pulled away. Her pale figure faded. A few seconds later, she dropped completely out of sight. Meed screamed with rage.
Annika stopped her watch.
CHAPTER 14
Chicago
DAMN! I WAS impressed. She never missed.
The target was a male silhouette made of plywood. Meed’s knife hit the upper left chest, right where the heart would be. It was my job to retrieve the knife after every throw. When I handed the knife back, Meed threw again. And again. Overhand. Underhand. Over the shoulder. A kill shot every time.
The next time I returned the blade, she wrapped my fingers around the grip. “Your turn,” she said.
I looked across the room at the target. I squinted. From a distance, it was nothing but a dark blur to me. I felt the weight of the blade in my hand. I did my best to imitate Meed’s stance. I whipped my hand forward and heard the blade clink off the brick wall.
“Can you hit the side of a barn?” said Meed.
Now I was pissed. I was tired of being a joke. I lost it.
“You’re the one who stomped on my glasses!” I yelled. “How the hell do you expect me to see anything??”
Meed pulled herself up next to me and waved a finger in front of my eyes. She lifted my eyelids one at a time and peered into my irises.
“You have convergence insufficiency,” she said.
“No,” I corrected her. “I have congenital corneal astigmatism.”
She took another look, deeper this time, waving her finger back and forth.
“That, too,” she said. “Your adjustment might take a little more time.”
She flipped the blade over her shoulder. Another kill shot. I could tell without looking.
“Visual training starts tomorrow,” she said. “I need you to be able to hit a target.”
I knew better than to ask why.
By then, it was almost time for lights out. She was very strict about that. I needed my REM sleep, she kept saying. Good for tissue repair and muscle growth. I knew the drill. I walked over to my cell and let myself in, like a trained dog. I pulled the door shut and heard the click of the electronic lock.
I sat down on my cot and watched Meed walk up the two steps to the door of her bedroom. At least, I assumed it was her bedroom. For all I knew, it could have been a passage to another apartment or another whole building. Maybe there were other rooms with other prisoners. Maybe she was assembling an army of mind slaves. Why should I be the only one? Or maybe she had a night job as a dominatrix. I’d gone from a world where everything was predictable to a world where nothing was.
From my cot, I could see one of the big flat-screen TVs that hung from brackets all over the loft. Some were tuned to CNN, some to the local news channel. Usually, the volume was down and the caption setting on, but sometimes during my workouts Meed turned up the sound. I always kept my ears open for news about a missing anthropology professor.
But Meed was right. There was nobody looking for me. I was starting to believe what she kept telling me, over and over. “You have only yourself.”
CHAPTER 15
Eastern Russia
17 Years Ago
MEED, NOW THIRTEEN, felt the blood rushing to her head and with it, the sickening feeling of defeat. She was upside down, bound with thick rope, hanging from a long wooden beam ten feet off the ground. She was wriggling and red in the face, trying her best to get free. But nothing was working. The situation was even more humiliating because she was the last to finish. All the other students had already completed the assignment. She could see their inverted faces below her in the school courtyard. They were looking up at her with eerie smiles.
She saw Annika’s face most clearly, just inches away. Annika reached up and tapped Meed’s forehead with her index finger.
“Time’s up, Meed,” she said. “Do what you need to do.”
Meed sucked in a breath and clenched her teeth. Of course, she knew the last-resort procedure, but her brain was telling her not to do it. Would not allow it. So she simply overruled the warning, pushing past logic and fear and reason, as she’d been trained to do. There was no other way.
She hung limp and then, with a violent twist and flex of her torso, she wrenched the ball of her humerus from its socket. The pain was like an electric shock, stunning her into semi-consciousness. The muscles in her arm spasmed and tingled. Her vision dimmed. But through it all, Meed focused on the next step. As her upper arm dislocated forward, the ropes slackened around her chest—just by millimeters. But enough.
She pushed through the agony and flexed her body upward. She grabbed the middle coil of rope in her teeth and jerked her head back, pulling the rope with it. The other coils loosened. More wriggling and struggle. More excruciating pain. A second later, Meed felt herself slipping down. Then, suddenly, she dropped from the beam, landing on her back on the hard dirt. She was writhing and grimacing, but refused to scream. Her classmates crowded around her. Through a haze, she saw Annika nod to Irina.
Meed felt Irina grab her limp arm and extend it out to ninety degrees. It felt like the limb was being torn from her body. She felt Irina’s foot against her upper rib cage and then a steady, strong pull on her wrist. There was another blast of stunning pain and then a loud click as the joint reassembled. Meed felt her head spin as she fought to stay conscious. A sheen of cold sweat coated her face. She rolled to her opposite side and struggled to her knees, and then to her feet. She set her legs to keep from dropping again and clutched her relocated shoulder.
She heard the sound of distant clapping—but not from a crowd. Just from one person. As she looked up, she saw the headmaster observing from the stone balcony outside his office. Standing next to him was a guest, a tall man in a well-cut suit, with blindingly white teeth. Meed could tell that the guest was impressed. He was the one applauding.
CHAPTER 16
KAMENEV PLACED HIS hand on his guest’s elbow and guided him back into the oak-paneled office. The visitor had a thick mane of black hair to go with his impressive teeth. He spoke in an accent that could have been Middle Eastern or Central European or a blend of both. Or it could have all been an act. Kamenev knew the type well. The guest gave his name as Mazen. But, of course, that could have been made up, too.
“My contacts did not exaggerate,” Mazen said. “Your students are highly…” He searched for the right compliment, then found it: “motivated.”
“They do what is necessary to succeed,” said Kamenev. “As do you, I’m told.”
Mazen shrugged off the transparent flattery. “I sell weapons of mass destruction to self-destructive people. It’s a lucrative business. I never run out of customers.” He cocked his head at his host.
“And what, exactly, is your business, Headmaster Kamenev? Help me understand. What degree does your institution confer?” There was a touch of playful sarcasm in his voice. He knew the school had never handed out an actual diploma.
Kamenev pressed his hands together. In conversations like these, he always picked his words carefully. His guest had been fully vetted, but no need to reveal more than necessary. Just enough to make the sale.
“Thousands of our graduates are already at work in every country,” he said. “Every government. Every agency. Every organization. Every multinational company. We handle intelligence, operational assistance, special assignments.” He was sure that Mazen could translate the euphemisms. “For fair compensation,” Kamenev continued, “we support the right people, and they support us.” Kamenev smiled. “As you say, it’s lucrative.”
“And the price?” asked the guest, with his brows raised.
“Numbers are not the point,” said Kamenev. “Whatever we charge, you can afford.”
The guest leaned back in his chair. He knew it was true.
“As you’ve seen,” Kamenev continued, “our students are highly skilled, with no messy political or religious preconceptions. Raw clay, to be molded to the needs of the assignment. They have been raised here since infancy. They are infinitely adaptable. They live only for the mission.”
The guest appeared to be thinking something over, then revealed the full glory of his brilliant smile. He stood to shake Kamenev’s hand.
“Very well,” he said. “Arrangements will be made.” He rebuttoned his suit jacket and picked up his slim attaché case. “To start with,” he said, “I will require an attractive female.”
As it turned out, he already had one in mind.
CHAPTER 17
Chicago
THE RACKET WAS so loud I could hear it through my cell walls. The treadmill was whining at top speed, and Meed’s feet were pounding hard on the belt. She’d unlocked my cell door and left it open a crack so I could get out on my own. It was one of the few tiny ways she’d eased up on security recently, but I knew cameras were on me the whole time. I still couldn’t even use the toilet in private.
She’d installed a small TV hanging from a bracket near the ceiling of my cell. She ran the movie of my solitary life on a loop, 24/7. Her idea of motivation, I guess. At night, I tossed a towel over the screen.
When I walked out into the kitchen, my smoothie was waiting on the counter. I picked up the glass and guzzled the slime like always, then walked over to a bench near the workout area. I glanced up at the flat screen overhead, where a CNN correspondent was reporting on a mudslide in Ecuador. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Meed. In her black workout outfit, she looked like an Olympic athlete or some kind of superhero.
Her hair was pulled into a bun on top of her head. After a minute, she reached up and pulled out a hairpin and let her curls fly. She was wearing a short-sleeved top, which was a different style for her. I’d never seen her in anything but long sleeves. As her arms pumped, I could see marks on both of her forearms—small red welts, like cigarette burns.
For a split second, I considered asking about them. But I knew better. Wrong question, no doubt. Since she seemed to be a stickler for physical perfection, it felt strange to discover that she was a little less than perfect—which somehow made her even more of a mystery.
I turned off the tap. When I opened the shower door, she was gone. I reached for a towel and patted myself dry. I got dressed. My cell door was open. I stepped outside and immediately smelled something wonderful.
Meed reappeared. She was holding two bowls of freshly made popcorn. Was this a reward for good behavior, or some kind of trick? Popcorn did not seem like something Meed would allow on a strict training diet. She handed me a bowl.
“Organic, gluten-free, and non-GMO,” she said. “Also excellent roughage.” She headed across the loft toward the living room area. “Follow me, Doctor,” she said. “We’re going to the movies.”
I followed and sat down next to her on the thick leather sofa across from a massive flat-screen TV. I started to relax a little. I took a handful of popcorn. It tasted amazing. I thought maybe she was actually giving me a break. I thought maybe, for once, we were actually about to do something normal.
“What are we watching?” I asked.
“You,” she said.
Meed clicked Play on the remote, and the screen lit up. Sure enough, there I was. The footage was a little shaky, like it was taken with an iPhone. The first scene zoomed in on me walking across campus in the middle of winter. I looked gawky and awkward. I could tell I was trying not to slip on the sidewalk. The first scene dissolved into a shot of me in the aisle of Shop & Save. I was wheeling a mini-cart down the cereal aisle, picking out oatmeal.
Next came a long scene of me sitting at Starbucks before class. Then a shot of me buying a magazine and a pack of gum at a newsstand. There was a hard cut and then I was sitting at a long table in the university library. I had a thick comparative cultures text in front of me. The shot was so close I could read the title on the spine of the book. She must have been shooting from the next table. About ten feet away.
“You were following me?” I asked.
“Surveilling you,” she said. “Every minute. For months.”
“What the hell…?”
“Keep watching, it gets better,” she said. “Actually, it gets worse.”
I put down my popcorn. I’d suddenly lost my appetite. The next few scenes came in quick succession: A long shot of me buying an umbrella during a rain shower. Me walking through Lincoln Park Zoo. Then a grainy scene of me sitting in my recliner in my living room. My living room! I looked over at Meed.
“Needed my extra-long lens for that one,” she said, tossing a handful of popcorn into her mouth. By now, I was used to feeling violated. But this was something else. And it made me mad.
“What was the fucking point?” I asked. “Tell me! You obviously knew who I was. Why didn’t you just grab me the first day you saw me? Why all this Peeping-Tom bullshit??”
Meed nodded toward the screen. “Pay attention. I don’t want you to miss the theme here.”
I looked back to see myself opening my door for a pizza delivery guy. Then riding a rental bike on the Lakefront Trail. Then tossing bread to a family of ducks in a pond.
“See what I mean?” said Meed. “Boring, boring, boring. Also repetitive, dull, and monotonous. That’s what your life was. Same Caffè Americano every morning. Same tuna sandwich for lunch. Same miso dressing on your salad. Your favorite cable channel is Nat Geo. You subscribe to Scientific American and Anthropology Today. You watch YouTube videos of Margaret Mead, for God’s sake! In four months, you went to three museums and not a single rock concert.”
Yep. There I was, walking into the Chicago History Museum. Then the Museum of Science and Industry. Then a night shot of me walking out of the Adler Planetarium. I felt my face getting red. I was starting to feel embarrassed and defensive.
“I live a quiet life, so what? We can’t all be spies and kidnappers.”
Meed leaned in close. I could smell the popcorn on her breath. “Correction,” she said. “You don’t live a quiet life. You live a nothing life. But don’t worry, that’s all about to change. Believe me, you’ll want it to change.” She turned back to the screen. “After you watch this a few hundred more times.”
CHAPTER 13
Eastern Russia
18 Years Ago
MEED, AGE TWELVE, stood on a frozen lake wearing a blue one-piece swimsuit and rubber sandals. Nothing else. She hunched and trembled along with her classmates as they stood in a ragged line about a hundred yards from shore. In front of them were two large circular holes in the ice, exactly thirty yards apart. The holes had been cut before dawn by supervisors with chainsaws. Meed had heard the sound from her bed. The shivering had started then. For weeks, she’d known this test was coming.
Annika was wearing a fur jacket over black leggings and boots. She walked to the edge of the closer hole. Bluish-green water lapped against the opening. The ice that rimmed the hole was three inches thick. Annika turned to the class.
“Keep your wits,” she said. “Swim in a straight line. Block out the fear. Block out the cold. Block out failure.” She looked over the class. “Who’s first?”
Meed glanced sideways as Irina stepped forward.
“Good, Irina,” said Annika. “Show them the way.”
Irina stepped up to the hole. She kicked off her sandals. She knelt on the ice, her knees at the edge of the opening. She raised her arms over her head, leaned forward, and tipped herself into the water. The soles of her feet flashed for a second at the surface, and then she was gone, leaving a swirl of bubbles behind. Annika pressed the Start button on a stopwatch. Desperate and scared, some of the students began to huddle together for warmth, pressing their bodies against one another. Until Annika noticed.
“No clusters!” she shouted. “This is a solitary exercise. You have only yourself.” The girls stepped back, restoring the gaps between them. Annika looked toward the distant hole and checked her stopwatch. Fifteen seconds. Then twenty.
Meed stamped her feet on the ice and stared through the mist. From where she stood, the far hole looked like a small, dark wafer. Suddenly the water in the hole frothed. Two arms shot out. Irina! Wriggling like a fish, she worked her way onto the surface and jumped to her feet. She trotted with small steps toward the class, doing her best to stay balanced. When she got close to the group, Annika reached into a plastic tub and tossed her a thin blanket. Then she turned toward the rest of the line.
“Next!”
One by one, the students made the dive. One by one, they emerged shaking and stunned, grateful to be alive. Meed was second to last, just before Bystro, the Asian girl. When it was her turn, Meed did not hesitate. She jumped in feetfirst.
The freezing water hit her like a hammer, forcing the breath out of her. She surfaced again for a second to take a fresh gulp of air, then started scissor-kicking her way under the ice. Below her, the water was pitch-black. She stayed close to the surface, letting her shoulders and heels bump against the ice roof as she swam. Her lungs burned. Her heart pounded. White bubbles trickled from her nose and mouth.
Just as her air was about to give out, she sensed a slight shift in the light above her. She stretched one arm up and felt cold air. As soon as her head cleared the water, she looked back to see Bystro plunging into the first hole. The terrified girl had waited until she had no choice.
Meed walked quickly back toward the rest of the class. Annika tossed her a blanket as she checked her stopwatch for Bystro’s time. Twenty seconds. Then thirty. She began to walk toward the distant hole. Forty seconds. The students walked forward, too, a few steps at a time, staring down at the ice.
Meed spotted her first. “Bystro!” she shouted.
The slender girl was just a faint shape beneath the ice, yards off course, flailing and twisting. Meed dropped to her knees, pounding on the hard surface. But there was no way to break through. The ice was too thick. Annika was standing over her now. The white of Bystro’s palms showed through the ice, pressing desperately from the other side. Then, one at a time, her hands pulled away. Her pale figure faded. A few seconds later, she dropped completely out of sight. Meed screamed with rage.
Annika stopped her watch.
CHAPTER 14
Chicago
DAMN! I WAS impressed. She never missed.
The target was a male silhouette made of plywood. Meed’s knife hit the upper left chest, right where the heart would be. It was my job to retrieve the knife after every throw. When I handed the knife back, Meed threw again. And again. Overhand. Underhand. Over the shoulder. A kill shot every time.
The next time I returned the blade, she wrapped my fingers around the grip. “Your turn,” she said.
I looked across the room at the target. I squinted. From a distance, it was nothing but a dark blur to me. I felt the weight of the blade in my hand. I did my best to imitate Meed’s stance. I whipped my hand forward and heard the blade clink off the brick wall.
“Can you hit the side of a barn?” said Meed.
Now I was pissed. I was tired of being a joke. I lost it.
“You’re the one who stomped on my glasses!” I yelled. “How the hell do you expect me to see anything??”
Meed pulled herself up next to me and waved a finger in front of my eyes. She lifted my eyelids one at a time and peered into my irises.
“You have convergence insufficiency,” she said.
“No,” I corrected her. “I have congenital corneal astigmatism.”
She took another look, deeper this time, waving her finger back and forth.
“That, too,” she said. “Your adjustment might take a little more time.”
She flipped the blade over her shoulder. Another kill shot. I could tell without looking.
“Visual training starts tomorrow,” she said. “I need you to be able to hit a target.”
I knew better than to ask why.
By then, it was almost time for lights out. She was very strict about that. I needed my REM sleep, she kept saying. Good for tissue repair and muscle growth. I knew the drill. I walked over to my cell and let myself in, like a trained dog. I pulled the door shut and heard the click of the electronic lock.
I sat down on my cot and watched Meed walk up the two steps to the door of her bedroom. At least, I assumed it was her bedroom. For all I knew, it could have been a passage to another apartment or another whole building. Maybe there were other rooms with other prisoners. Maybe she was assembling an army of mind slaves. Why should I be the only one? Or maybe she had a night job as a dominatrix. I’d gone from a world where everything was predictable to a world where nothing was.
From my cot, I could see one of the big flat-screen TVs that hung from brackets all over the loft. Some were tuned to CNN, some to the local news channel. Usually, the volume was down and the caption setting on, but sometimes during my workouts Meed turned up the sound. I always kept my ears open for news about a missing anthropology professor.
But Meed was right. There was nobody looking for me. I was starting to believe what she kept telling me, over and over. “You have only yourself.”
CHAPTER 15
Eastern Russia
17 Years Ago
MEED, NOW THIRTEEN, felt the blood rushing to her head and with it, the sickening feeling of defeat. She was upside down, bound with thick rope, hanging from a long wooden beam ten feet off the ground. She was wriggling and red in the face, trying her best to get free. But nothing was working. The situation was even more humiliating because she was the last to finish. All the other students had already completed the assignment. She could see their inverted faces below her in the school courtyard. They were looking up at her with eerie smiles.
She saw Annika’s face most clearly, just inches away. Annika reached up and tapped Meed’s forehead with her index finger.
“Time’s up, Meed,” she said. “Do what you need to do.”
Meed sucked in a breath and clenched her teeth. Of course, she knew the last-resort procedure, but her brain was telling her not to do it. Would not allow it. So she simply overruled the warning, pushing past logic and fear and reason, as she’d been trained to do. There was no other way.
She hung limp and then, with a violent twist and flex of her torso, she wrenched the ball of her humerus from its socket. The pain was like an electric shock, stunning her into semi-consciousness. The muscles in her arm spasmed and tingled. Her vision dimmed. But through it all, Meed focused on the next step. As her upper arm dislocated forward, the ropes slackened around her chest—just by millimeters. But enough.
She pushed through the agony and flexed her body upward. She grabbed the middle coil of rope in her teeth and jerked her head back, pulling the rope with it. The other coils loosened. More wriggling and struggle. More excruciating pain. A second later, Meed felt herself slipping down. Then, suddenly, she dropped from the beam, landing on her back on the hard dirt. She was writhing and grimacing, but refused to scream. Her classmates crowded around her. Through a haze, she saw Annika nod to Irina.
Meed felt Irina grab her limp arm and extend it out to ninety degrees. It felt like the limb was being torn from her body. She felt Irina’s foot against her upper rib cage and then a steady, strong pull on her wrist. There was another blast of stunning pain and then a loud click as the joint reassembled. Meed felt her head spin as she fought to stay conscious. A sheen of cold sweat coated her face. She rolled to her opposite side and struggled to her knees, and then to her feet. She set her legs to keep from dropping again and clutched her relocated shoulder.
She heard the sound of distant clapping—but not from a crowd. Just from one person. As she looked up, she saw the headmaster observing from the stone balcony outside his office. Standing next to him was a guest, a tall man in a well-cut suit, with blindingly white teeth. Meed could tell that the guest was impressed. He was the one applauding.
CHAPTER 16
KAMENEV PLACED HIS hand on his guest’s elbow and guided him back into the oak-paneled office. The visitor had a thick mane of black hair to go with his impressive teeth. He spoke in an accent that could have been Middle Eastern or Central European or a blend of both. Or it could have all been an act. Kamenev knew the type well. The guest gave his name as Mazen. But, of course, that could have been made up, too.
“My contacts did not exaggerate,” Mazen said. “Your students are highly…” He searched for the right compliment, then found it: “motivated.”
“They do what is necessary to succeed,” said Kamenev. “As do you, I’m told.”
Mazen shrugged off the transparent flattery. “I sell weapons of mass destruction to self-destructive people. It’s a lucrative business. I never run out of customers.” He cocked his head at his host.
“And what, exactly, is your business, Headmaster Kamenev? Help me understand. What degree does your institution confer?” There was a touch of playful sarcasm in his voice. He knew the school had never handed out an actual diploma.
Kamenev pressed his hands together. In conversations like these, he always picked his words carefully. His guest had been fully vetted, but no need to reveal more than necessary. Just enough to make the sale.
“Thousands of our graduates are already at work in every country,” he said. “Every government. Every agency. Every organization. Every multinational company. We handle intelligence, operational assistance, special assignments.” He was sure that Mazen could translate the euphemisms. “For fair compensation,” Kamenev continued, “we support the right people, and they support us.” Kamenev smiled. “As you say, it’s lucrative.”
“And the price?” asked the guest, with his brows raised.
“Numbers are not the point,” said Kamenev. “Whatever we charge, you can afford.”
The guest leaned back in his chair. He knew it was true.
“As you’ve seen,” Kamenev continued, “our students are highly skilled, with no messy political or religious preconceptions. Raw clay, to be molded to the needs of the assignment. They have been raised here since infancy. They are infinitely adaptable. They live only for the mission.”
The guest appeared to be thinking something over, then revealed the full glory of his brilliant smile. He stood to shake Kamenev’s hand.
“Very well,” he said. “Arrangements will be made.” He rebuttoned his suit jacket and picked up his slim attaché case. “To start with,” he said, “I will require an attractive female.”
As it turned out, he already had one in mind.
CHAPTER 17
Chicago
THE RACKET WAS so loud I could hear it through my cell walls. The treadmill was whining at top speed, and Meed’s feet were pounding hard on the belt. She’d unlocked my cell door and left it open a crack so I could get out on my own. It was one of the few tiny ways she’d eased up on security recently, but I knew cameras were on me the whole time. I still couldn’t even use the toilet in private.
She’d installed a small TV hanging from a bracket near the ceiling of my cell. She ran the movie of my solitary life on a loop, 24/7. Her idea of motivation, I guess. At night, I tossed a towel over the screen.
When I walked out into the kitchen, my smoothie was waiting on the counter. I picked up the glass and guzzled the slime like always, then walked over to a bench near the workout area. I glanced up at the flat screen overhead, where a CNN correspondent was reporting on a mudslide in Ecuador. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Meed. In her black workout outfit, she looked like an Olympic athlete or some kind of superhero.
Her hair was pulled into a bun on top of her head. After a minute, she reached up and pulled out a hairpin and let her curls fly. She was wearing a short-sleeved top, which was a different style for her. I’d never seen her in anything but long sleeves. As her arms pumped, I could see marks on both of her forearms—small red welts, like cigarette burns.
For a split second, I considered asking about them. But I knew better. Wrong question, no doubt. Since she seemed to be a stickler for physical perfection, it felt strange to discover that she was a little less than perfect—which somehow made her even more of a mystery.
