When the text “READY FOR COMMAND” appeared on the screen, I went no further with the ritual. Instead, I began closing the briefcase down again, each step in reverse, so that it would not go into lockdown.
All the functions were in order, it seemed. But without Alpha, whoever or whatever it was that controlled the whole chain, I would not be able to get further. So I stayed there and waited, in what was both shelter and prison, locked in behind ten-inch-thick ramparts of welded sheet metal.
I let my eyes scan around me. Everything in here followed the regulations to the letter. The floor, the walls and the ceiling were covered with the same metal. The edges of the outer doors sealed with copper plate, so as to minimize the electro-magnetic pulses. The whole room was also mounted on springs, so that it would sway rather than be crushed when the big bang came.
It looked just like any one of our top secret shelters under the bases in the endless plains of the Mid West. Yet I had never seen anything like it. Here, of all places: a doll’s house-like hideaway built to withstand a direct hit of the strength of the Hiroshima bomb. In this insignificant country, midway between Moscow and Brussels.
Even the color-coding of the different small sections followed the international standard. The section of the wall behind the control panel with the light-emitting diodes had been painted purple for “Command/communication”. The border of the wall around the inset cupboard was pale yellow, indicating “Stores”. Continuing clockwise, facing the doors, the wall was first orange for “Passageway” and then blue for “Restroom/hygiene”.
This last consisted of two parts. First there was the decontamination area, not much bigger than ten square feet: you were meant to screen yourself off with a lead-lined plastic curtain and rinse away what you could of the radioactive fallout using a hand-held shower. Behind the same curtain there was also a sort of electric waste grinder sunk into the floor, surrounded by the same welded steel plate and copper plate. But this state-of-the-art toilet seemed to have stopped working.
The fallout shelter had already become an unbearable place. The drain in the floor near the hand-held shower was blocked by the last of the vomit which I had spewed out after the extreme violence of our escape. There were more bodily fluids some hours later. The usual reaction to an extreme adrenaline rush, however much you train, try to prepare. The stench made me catch my breath, inhale as little as possible through my nose, inside this strange little space.
The rest of the shelter was brilliant red, the color for “Emergency Exit”, which was ironic given that I was locked in with little chance of escape. Only the lower part of the wall, directly opposite the entrance, had been painted green for “Sleeping Quarters”.
On the floor the Nurse drew my attention again, the sound of her occasional whimpers. She must have been one of the “support functions” behind the scenes. I had seen her for the first time only a few days ago, I could not recall having so much as heard her voice. Yet I had inflicted severe injuries on her. The scent of her perfume—cloying, penetrating—was overwhelmed by the stench of blood and urine. Her uniform was also now more red than green, her garish, dyed-blond hair a mess of blood and dirt and glass splinters from the headlamps, the shards looking like a crown of thorns. Her whimpering grew a little louder, she almost seemed to be coming to, before falling back into her darkness. Once I had my own strength back, I would be her nurse, carrying out the emergency surgery which we had been taught in the sealed wing at West Point.
For now, exhaustion began to wash over me. It was two days since I had had even a brief sleep, in addition to lying mostly awake during the period just before our departure. Another dwarf spider came creeping along my left arm, in the direction of my wrist, climbing over the security strap of the briefcase. It moved with science-fiction-like speed given how small it was. As it reached the skin over my artery, I killed it with my pencil. Felt my skin freeze, shivered, as if I had a fever.
But I had to get a grip on myself, not let panic carry me away. The complete lack of activity in here became harder to bear with each passing hour. I had no information. I checked the depth meter on my service watch once more: it was a normal altimeter, but our technicians had adapted it to provide underground readings. And it did say 253.3 feet, just as in the encrypted message Alpha had sent to the cell phone at the playground. Twelve hours had now passed since I broke away from the Team and took the Nurse with me—and I still had no idea where everyone else was. All of our pursuers. Or rather: the chosen few.
According to instructions, no search bulletin would have been sent out, no digital message about my escape, not even in the most encrypted form. A very small circle would have been kept informed, and that would be it. Apart from the Team, I guessed only the President himself—unless Edelweiss had decided just to inform him that the alarm had turned out to be false, a minor technical hitch, as with so many other supposed nuclear weapons attacks in the course of the decades, and that the situation was now back to normal. Plus, a couple of our most senior military commanders. Probably not even the First Lady—and certainly not my own family.
So if Alpha did not come for me, fetch me from this escape-proof underground prison, nobody would ever know what had happened.
Tiredness continued to creep through me, like a drug. I shook my head and stood up to take a look at the Nurse. She felt chill, as if already dead, even though her pulse was ticking weakly in her wrist. I huddled up close to her, my pistol in my right hand and the briefcase in my left, the security strap on my wrist. I had to get a few minutes of rest.
Over the years, it had become increasingly difficult to distinguish dream from reality, step by step they had slid into and out of each other. So I did not really know if I slept at all, or if I was still doing so when the diodes in the control panel by the door started to whirr. I noticed no difference when I pinched myself in the arm. The message on the panel really did say “OPEN”.
I got to my knees, using the Nurse’s more or less lifeless form as a shield, and tried to steady my weapon. I pointed it at the height of the heart. The mean height of men in the U.S. is five feet ten, here in Scandinavia presumably a bit more. The door handle began to be pressed down. There was a mechanical click. I undid the safety on the gun.
I heard the voice before I saw the face, that melodic intonation which had made me sweat through sleepless nights. It was also the voice that caused me to release my index finger from the trigger.
The surprise made me recoil against the green wall. That it should have been her, of all people. Through all those years.
1.07
She had wanted us to call her “Ingrid”, but among her students she was only ever referred to as “Ingrid Bergman”. Even though she did her best to hide her beauty—with her long straggling hair, even then graying, falling to her shoulders—the Swedish movie star’s classic looks were etched into her face. At night we used to watch the movies over and over. Always in the same order, from light to dark: “The Bells of St Mary’s”. “Notorious”. “Spellbound”. “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”.
You must understand. But you won’t.
That even I had once been an ordinary young person with no clear direction, pretty much the same as anyone else, with deep but not yet incurable wounds from my childhood. That I became obsessed with mathematics and physics at an early age, ciphers, numbers theory. But that I then, for one reason or another, felt that I needed an overview of the history of ideas, of mankind’s thinking throughout the ages, and some optional courses in moral philosophy. Constructive thought as some sort of compass, a map out into the world, maybe even as therapy.