The Girl Who Ran (The Project Trilogy). Nikki Owen
To: Maria Martinez
Subject: Re: The Project
Dear Dr Martinez,
Thank you for your email. I’ve had your message decrypted and have verified the details contained within it. This information now is for our eyes only and has been seen by only the most trustworthy members of my immediate staff. You managed to find my private email address, so I am responding directly from that – given the nature of the situation you have brought to my attention, I believe it’s our most secure method of communication at this time.
Firstly, you have my gratitude for informing me of the true cause of death of my husband, Balthazar. Balthus was a dear husband and, while I did not know of your existence, I am sorry for the sadness I am sure you must be feeling at this moment.
I have reviewed your files on this organisation called Project Callidus. Please be assured that I was unaware that this group existed. I am currently seeking to set up talks with the Chief of MI5 with a view to beginning an investigation, but, as I am sure you understand, timing with these things is everything and I have to be very careful and measured with what we do next. Your safety, Dr Martinez, is paramount.
To that end, I would be grateful if we could meet. I understand this may be a complicated request. However, I strongly believe that, after reviewing the initial data you relayed to me, a meeting between us would aid in the investigation in the Project and MI5’s involvement in it.
Please do consider my suggestion. In the meantime, there is one more thing. After hearing of Balthus’s status as your biological father, I was naturally curious about the woman he had a baby – you – with. You asked in your email about her grave and its location. I thought it only right and fair to share the information with you as to her status.
Her name, as you know, is Isabella Bidarte. She is from Bilbao, Spain. The last known location of her is Weisshorn Psychiatric Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland. She was born in May, 1968. I, first, after your grave location request, also assumed she was dead. However, after a confidential investigation by my closest team, I can tell you that Ms Bidarte is indeed still alive, her residence understood still to be the Weisshorn Hospital in Geneva.
I trust this news is of value to you. This has been difficult for me, as I am certain it has been for you. I am sorry for the distress you have, over the years, I am sure, been caused at the hand of our security services. I hope this news of your mother contributes in some way to atoning for that.
Please do consider strongly my request to meet with you in order to aid our vital investigations and put an end to Project Callidus’ operations. Let us keep secure lines of communication open.
Yours truly,
Harriet Alexander
I look up from Chris’s computer tablet at Patricia, my hands shaking at the shock, yet my brain curious and elated at the email.
‘She is alive,’ I say. ‘She is alive.’
Patricia comes close to my side, the milk of her skin and the warm bath of her scent reaching my brain. ‘I’m right here.’
She touches my fingers and my mind becomes a little calmer, small clouds of our breath billowing in the frozen air.
We are hidden by a wall outside Zurich Airport. Close by, the external glass façade of the busy building glistens by a freezing taxi rank and the pencil-straight road washed in paint strokes of sunshine, leaving weak yellow lines across fine snow-covered pavements. I pull out my notebook and the photograph Papa had hidden in Ines’s Madrid cellar. I gaze at Isabella’s face, at her river of hair, her flowing skirt, her baby – me – swaddled and held in arms so smooth and melodic they sing like swans. Could she really be alive? Could it be true? Or is the whole thing a fabrication? Quickly, I begin to write down the email contents, cross match for any patterns, hidden codes or messages, but no matter how hard I look, there is nothing secret to find.
Chris hurries over, cupping his hands and blowing on his fingers. ‘I thought spring was supposed to be warmer here.’
Patricia rolls her eyes. ‘Wimp.’
He stares at her, shudders, then looks to me. ‘Okay, so—’ He sneezes.
‘Bless you.’
He tilts his head at Patricia and raises one eyebrow; I have no idea why.
‘Okay, so,’ he continues, ‘I’ve double-tracked the email on my system and it’s from her alright – it’s from Harriet Alexander.’
I clutch the sepia-tone photograph in my fingers. ‘Are you certain?’
‘Yep. The thing is, she said what she said, you know, about investigating the Project, but if MI5 are tracking her then they’ll know she’s talking to you.’ He points to the email. ‘They’ll know now she’s planning to investigate it all.’
‘Doc,’ Patricia says, ‘he’s right. They’ll follow you and then MI5’ll want you dead and the Project will want you with them, just like before. The Home Secretary asked to meet you. Wouldn’t that be the right idea? She’s based in Westminster – it doesn’t get much safer than there. The Project and MI5 can’t get you then.’
‘Hang on though,’ Chris says. ‘What if she knows something – your mom, Isabella?’
I turn to him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Okay, so, what if we find her and she can, I don’t know, tell us something to really put the nail in the Project’s coffin? Because the way I see it, you can’t trust—’
Patricia shakes her head. ‘No. No way. Too risky…’
‘A nail in a coffin?’ I say, but Patricia continues.
‘The police have our bloody pictures, Chris, for God’s sake. They’ll find us. And then MI5 will get to us before we get back to the UK and we’re all stuffed.’
‘Wimp,’ he says. ‘We’ll be fine.’
Patricia rolls her eyes and looks to me. ‘Doc, I don’t like it. It’s risky. God, I’d rather we went to the safe house of Chris’s in Zurich than go to the hospital in Geneva.’
There is a wall straight in front of us. It is beige, bland, the grouting along the brickwork in neat patterned lines, each one with a clear beginning and an obvious ending. I calculate the length of the edges to help my brain to think straight in the midst of the plane engine roar in the air around me, the birds in the swaying fir trees near the network of road and railways, the tremble of trolley wheels and the faint scent of distant cigarette smoke. Yet it is only when a lick of aviator fuel flicks my nostrils, jolting me upwards, that the thought occurs to me.
The brick and the grouting and the definable end. I think about that word – end – how it sounds and what it means…
Slowly at first then faster, I study the cellar picture in my hands then scan the dates scrawled on the back. ‘There is an end.’
Patricia looks over. ‘What d’you mean?’
I spin round to Chris, my mind moving at speed. ‘Isabella’s birth date and death date are both on this photograph.’
He looks.
‘If she is alive,’ I continue, brain planning now at lightning speed, ‘as the email said, why is the date of her death written here? It was written over two decades ago. The conclusion can only be that either my Papa wrote down the date without it being true or—’
‘Or the Home Secretary is lying,’ Chris says.
I look to him, his body stomping from foot to foot, his breath blowing small, white candy strands into the air, and for the first time since we arrived in Zurich, I feel a strong urge to turn to him and nuzzle my face in his neck and just smell him.
‘I