The Last Oracle (Sigma Force 5)

Monk understood. You could turn a boy into a savant but he was still a boy: curious, mischievous, pushing boundaries.

“You hacked into her files.”

He shrugged again. “A week ago, Sasha—Pyotr’s sister—she drew me a picture. Gave it to me in the middle of the night. When we were all woken by one of Pyotr’s nightmares.”

“What picture?”

“The train here, with many children on board, all dead and burning. It also showed the mining site just past the blast doors here. So…so the next day, I broke into the files about the operation. I learned what was planned and when it was scheduled to happen. I didn’t know what to do. Whom to trust. Sasha left with Dr. Raev for America, so I talked to Pyotr.” Konstantin shook his head. “I don’t know how Pyotr knew…maybe he doesn’t even know…it’s sometimes like that.”

Konstantin stared up at Monk for understanding.

Though he didn’t completely, Monk still nodded. “What did Pyotr know?” he pressed.

“He is a strong empath. He sensed you would help us. He even knew your name. Said his sister whispered it to him in a dream. They are very strange, those two, very powerful.”

Monk heard a trace of fear in the boy’s voice.

Konstantin even glanced warily back toward Pyotr, then set back to work. “So we came for you.”

With a final flick of a switch, a row of monitors glowed to life across the top of the control board. They showed black-and-white images, views from different angles of a small cavern, rigged with scaffolding. On the floor was bolted a large steel iris.

The heart of Operation Saturn.

Motion drew Monk’s eye to the centermost screen. It showed a train rested outside the mining site. Open ore cars were loaded with children. Some had climbed out and stood around in confusion. Others appeared to be laughing and playing.

Konstantin clutched Monk’s sleeve. “They…they’re already here.”

Savina sat in the brightly lit control station, flanked by two technicians. They were running final diagnostics on two computers. The station was in a converted subbasement bunker beneath one of the abandoned apartment buildings. There were no windows. Their eyes on the world came from seven LCD screens wired into the walls. They displayed video feed from the cameras in the tunnel and at the operation site.

She stared at the parked train for another breath, then stood up, unable to remain seated. She felt a familiar crick in her back. She had failed to take her steroid injection, too busy with all the final preparations. She turned away from the view of the train. Not because it hurt to look—which it did—but because anxiety ran through her.

She checked her wristwatch. It was more than half past eleven o’clock, and she had still not heard from Nicolas. She exited the control room, so the others did not see her wring her hands. It was a weak matronly gesture, and she forced herself to stop. She headed to the stairs and climbed toward the level above. Not with any destination in mind, only to keep moving.

From her contacts in the intelligence community, she had already heard the rumblings of an “accident” at Chernobyl. A radiation leak. Dead bodies. The place was being evacuated. And if Nicolas had been successful, such a mass departure was too late. Perhaps her son had been caught up in the resultant chaos and had been unable to report to her yet. Her operation was set to commence in another forty-five minutes, once she heard confirmation from Nicolas.

As she climbed the stairs, she imagined him gloating in his success, possibly even enjoying a secret tryst with little Elena. It would not be unlike Nicolas to celebrate first and attend to business afterward. Anger tempered her anxiety.

She finally reached the floor above the control station. It had been converted into a domicile for the technicians: bedrooms, exercise space, and a central communal area full of sofas and dining tables. The only occupants at the moment were ten children. She knew each by name.

They turned to stare at her, their heads swiveling all at once, like a flock of birds turning in midflight. Savina felt a flicker of apprehension, a recognition of the foreignness of their minds. The Omega subjects were savants so talented that their skills crossed the threshold of the physical to a realm where Savina could not travel.

Boris, a thirteen-year-old with eyes so blue they appeared frosted, seemed almost to be studying her. His talent was an eidetic memory coupled with a retention that frightened. He even remembered his own birth.

“Why were we not allowed to go with the others?” he asked.

More heads nodded.

Savina swallowed before answering. “There is another path for all of you. Do you have your bags packed?”

They just stared. No answer was necessary. Of course their bags were packed. The question displayed the level of her own nervousness. Before her lay the power that would fuel the Motherland into a new era. And deep down, Savina knew such a power remained beyond her full comprehension.

“We will be leaving in an hour,” Savina said.

Those ten pairs of blue eyes stared back at her.

Footsteps sounded behind her. She turned as one of the technicians joined her.

“General-Major,” he said, “we’re having some glitch with the blast doors on the other side of the tunnel. If you could advise us how to proceed.”

She nodded, glad to focus her mind upon a problem.

She followed the technician back to the staircase. Still, she felt those ten pairs of eyes tracking her, cold and dispassionate, icy in their regard. To escape their judgment, she hurried down the stairs.

“Open the doors!” Monk called to Konstantin.

From inside the control station, the boy nodded. Electric motors sounded, and large steel gears began rolling the blast doors out of the way, splitting down the middle.

Konstantin came running over to him, out of breath. “Five minutes,” the boy warned.

Monk understood. Konstantin had sent the tunnel’s digital camera system into a diagnostic shutdown and reboot. The clever kid had engineered a five-minute blackout. They had that long to evacuate the children from the train before the cameras were back online.

There was little else he could do. The master control station lay at the other end of the tunnel. Once the subterfuge was detected, the other station would kill the power to Konstantin’s shack.

They had only this one shot.

As the doors parted, Monk squeezed through, followed by Konstantin. Marta also loped after them. The old chimpanzee wheezed with exhaustion, but she didn’t slow, even passing Monk.

The old girl knew they had to hurry.