STORM: The Infinity Code

Vassily Baraban could not stop a shiver. It wasn’t because he was cold. Though the temperature outside was minus twenty, the laboratory was warm. All the heat generated by his vigorous mental activity seemed to make it stifling, in fact, and Vassily had peeled off his sweatshirt and thrown it to the floor. Now he sat at the desk in only his old underpants and a black lab-issue T-shirt.

Vassily looked with disgust at the yellow-white of his flesh. Bruises from when he’d been shot to the ground in London had left ugly purple patches like stains across his legs. But perhaps some good had come out of the past week: He’d eaten next to nothing and the stomach that had been threatening to fall out over his belt had gone crawling back to his rib cage.

The dark, miserable morning of his arrival, he’d been briefed by his new “boss” via a videoconferencing link. Afterward, a scientist had come in to discuss the plans for the “test.” She hobbled, using a crutch, her right ankle in a plaster cast. Her eyes were dark, intense as a black hole. But Baraban had barely noticed. He was too afraid.

Again, Vassily shivered. He glanced over his shoulder. In the far corner of the lab was a camp bed, made up with white sheets and a gray army blanket. To his left was a bathroom. Within five minutes of being bundled into the base, Vassily had been fitted with a GPS-equipped, radiofrequency identification tag. Wherever he went, he could be followed from the surveillance room. And it had been made quite clear that if he did try to enter one of the forbidden zones—that is, within five yards of the operations room master controls, or out of the building—the radio-tracking bracelet would automatically punish him with a 500-volt shock. It was like being an animal. Like cattle, Vassily thought.

Only three places. To the terrible heart of the laboratory complex: twin concrete tunnels that stretched on as if forever, twenty yards underground. To the cafeteria, to get what passed for food. And outside: into the wastes, into snow that would grasp his body in a freezing death grip.

His thoughts filled him with horror. He was terrified of failure—he’d been told exactly what would happen to him and to his family. But perhaps he was even more terrified of success. Strangelets were one thing. This was quite another.

No—no—he had no choice. He had to complete the task. Yet he had tried—and so far failed. Time was of the essence, and on this occasion he, Vassily Baraban, was its slave. If he could not solve the problem, he must go to someone more clever. And who else but Caspian, his own son.

On the desk in front of Vassily was a heavy-based Anglepoise lamp and his personal digital assistant. To the side, a blank pad and a pen. His PDA was equipped with a phone, a web browser, and e-mail software—but these functions did not work here, inside the lab.

Vassily had noticed the copper mesh incorporated into the glass of the one small, high window as soon as he’d been thrust into the room by the guards. That mesh also ran through the plaster of the walls and the ceiling. It formed a Faraday cage, which stopped electromagnetic signals—like those from a mobile phone—from getting in or getting out. But somehow . . . somehow, Vassily knew he had to reach his son.

“I have been abducted. They want me to solve the problem—attached. Act with speed, Caspian. Our lives depend on it—your loving father.”

Now he needed to breach the cage. Then he could transmit the message. He would find some other way to receive Caspian’s reply. Above all, he wanted to protect his son from the people behind this madness.

Vassily had built his own Faraday cage once, in his laboratory in St. Petersburg. He knew that the wavelength of the signal produced by his mobile phone was about a foot, so a mesh size smaller than this would block his signal effectively. And the holes in the copper mesh in the window were only about four inches across.

Quickly, Vassily formulated a plan. He took a tissue from his pocket and scrunched it up on the desk. The winter sun that drifted in through the window was weak, but somehow it would have to be enough. His hand trembling, Vassily held his glasses above the tissue. The lenses were cracked, but still they would magnify the weak rays.

Vassily waited. Sweat dripped from the end of his nose. And then—at last—a tiny spiral of smoke. The tissue smoldered, and caught light. Vassily reached for a sheet of paper from his pad. He used it to feed the gentle flame and he carefully carried the paper to his bed.

At once, the dry blanket ignited. Vassily backed to the far wall, and he grabbed the Anglepoise lamp from the desk. Unsteadily, he got up on the chair, and then onto the desk itself, until he could reach for the window. The smoke was starting to billow now, and Vassily coughed.

Gripping his PDA in one hand, he grasped the lamp in the other and he brought the base smashing against the window. The first thrust shattered the glass, but it did not break. With all the force Vassily Baraban could muster, he slammed the heavy metal base once more against the mesh—and the glass gave way. At last! Vassily thrust the antenna of his PDA through the mesh . . . and he got a connection! His e-mail software instantly sent the stored message.

A moment later, the guards burst into his room to find Vassily gasping at the window. “Fire!” he called, his PDA safely back inside his pocket. “You did not hear my cries! I had to smash the window to breathe!”

Sergei glanced at Vladimir, who was using the pillow to try to put out the fire. He scowled at Vassily. “You!” he said. "You will explain yoursel to the boss!”

Twelve hundred miles away, in the front bedroom of an apartment in Covent Garden, London, the Russian boy with the shock of black hair stared at his computer screen with a mix of joy and dread.

Twenty-four hours was not unusual, nor even forty-eight. His father would not answer his phone, would not come home, would “vanish” so he could devote himself entirely to his work. But then Caspian had noticed the police car parked outside their building. The university had been tardy in alerting the Metropolitan Police. They’d hoped Vassily Baraban would reappear, despite the sinister hole in his window. Or so the inspector had told them, as Caspian’s heart had blanched and his mother had turned her desperate eyes to him.

And now this e-mail. It had arrived hours ago! Caspian had been wandering the streets, hoping to glimpse his father on a park bench, or at a table at a cafe. He searched, though he knew his father had been seized. Vassily Baraban, the great astrophysicist and his beloved father, was gone.

At first, he had tried to deny the truth, Caspian realized. He had tried to go on as normal, and had encouraged his mother to do the same. He had gone to the meeting in Andrew’s basement because it had been arranged. He had gone to his tutor’s office as usual because he had not known what else to do. Perhaps the hole in the glass meant nothing, he’d whispered to himself. Immediately, he’d felt the pain of the lie.

But if Caspian felt joy at a message from his father, the attachment triggered dread. His gaze staggered as his eyes scanned the words . . .

Caspian dashed to the window and stared up at the white-black night. To him, the snow tainted the sky like bacteria across a Petri dish. Why this lack of purity tonight—of all nights—when he most needed the heavens’ help?