The Frequency of the Dead – Chapter 16
What the Chemist Buried
Day eight. Three days until the purge cycle. Mira met Rook at a cafe near the rail station — public, busy, the kind of place where two people having an intense conversation were invisible in the ambient intensity of everyone else’s intense conversations.
“We need to get into the relay station,” she said.
“We need two things,” Rook corrected. “Access to the station, and a journalist who can receive and immediately publish the archive. The publication has to happen simultaneously with the access — otherwise Thorn’s people will have time to apply for injunctions, to apply pressure, to have it suppressed. The moment we open the archive, the story needs to be live.”
“Do you have a journalist?”
“I have a shortlist. None of them know about this yet.” He sipped his coffee. “And we have a more immediate problem. I’ve been tracking a vehicle — a dark blue maintenance van — that has been surveilling the relay station site since yesterday. Which means Thorn knows we’re interested in it. He may be setting a trap.”
“Or he’s trying to prevent access before we can get there.”
“Both.” Rook set down his cup. “There’s a third thing.” He hesitated in a way she hadn’t seen him hesitate before. “The name among the seven in the signal — the one I told you was unidentified. I’ve identified him. His name is Kowalski. He was a chemist employed by the NTA’s infrastructure division in the early 1990s.”
“What kind of chemist?”
“The kind who worked on chemical compounds that could be introduced into closed ventilation systems.” He said it flatly. “The relay station has a sealed mechanical room. If Thorn is anticipating our entry, he may have prepared a deterrent.”
Mira stared at him. “He’d gas the place.”
“Kowalski is dead — died in 1999. But his work is documented in the archive, and Thorn knows the archive. He knows exactly what’s available.” Rook looked at her steadily. “I’m not trying to frighten you out of it. I’m telling you because you need to know. And because we need, before we go in, a respiratory plan.”
“Where do we get —”
“I have equipment,” he said. “I’ve been planning for this for seven years. I’m not going in unprepared.” He looked at her. “The question is whether you are.”
“I’m a signal analyst,” Mira said. “I have never done anything like this before in my life. I have a cat and an ex-husband and a flat that I haven’t been back to in three days.” She picked up her coffee cup. “I’m terrified. Yes. But I promised a dead man something, more or less, and I find I am apparently the sort of person who takes that seriously.”
Rook looked at her for a moment with something that might, in a different register, have been warmth. “Day eleven,” he said. “We go in on night ten.”