Chapter 22 Dimitri
DIMITRI
The dinner trays arrived shortly after the Eight had left, delivered by the same human kitchen worker who brought them every evening. Three trays, three portions of whatever the central kitchen had produced that day, were handed over to Petrov, who was usually the one who accepted them.
Tonight it was grilled fish, rice, and a miserable excuse for a salad that was mostly lettuce with some purple onion strips and two cherry tomatoes for decoration. The smell of vinegar was so overpowering that Dimitri hesitated to remove the plastic wrapping from his tray.
"Don't stare at the food," Petrov said. "Eat."
"I hate vinegar."
"You haven't tasted it yet," Mattie said.
"I can smell it."
"Right." She nodded. "Your enhanced sense of smell. Which reminds me. Be careful and don't bite on anything hard where your canine is missing."
It also reminded him that he needed to sit with his back to the front of the lab that had windows facing the street.
"I need to switch places with you," he told Petrov.
His boss didn't need an explanation. He understood immediately, stood, and pushed his tray to where Dimitri had been sitting.
Dimitri pulled his mask down and took his first bite of fish. It was decent, and most importantly, it was a filet with no bones, so soft that it almost melted in his mouth. He put the container with the salad next to Mattie. "You like this stuff."
"I do." She lifted her fork. "It's easy to stab lettuce even with a left-handed bad aim."
"So," Petrov said. "We've learned a lot of new information this afternoon. There are other immortals out there who hate the Brotherhood, and they are headquartered in Los Angeles."
"And they supposedly have Navuh," Dimitri added.
Petrov chewed on a piece of fish, swallowed, and pointed his fork at Dimitri. "Do you believe him?"
Dimitri considered the question. He'd been turning it over since Dave had left, examining it from every angle, searching for inconsistencies.
"I don't think he's lying, but that doesn't mean it's true.
He assumes they have Navuh because they knew about the booby traps that caused the explosion in the basement. "
Petrov chuckled. "That's another piece of information we didn't have before. We were told it was a gas explosion."
"Right." Dimitri rose to his feet and walked over to the refrigerator to retrieve three bottles of water. "Dave must have forgotten that they didn't tell us about this before."
"What's stasis?" Mattie asked. "I mean, I understood from the context that they are in some kind of hibernation, but do either of you know anything about it?"
Dimitri handed Petrov one of the bottles and opened Mattie's before handing it to her.
"It's part of the immortal physiology." He sat on his stool and opened his own bottle.
"When their injuries are too severe for their bodies to fix or if they are buried alive, they don't die.
Their bodies slow down, and they enter a kind of hibernation.
That's why Dave pulled the hearts out of Tarik and his friends' chests.
That and beheading are the only sure ways to kill an immortal.
They can resurrect from almost anything else. "
"Not if they are blown to pieces," Petrov said. "That's the third method. And the fourth is a shot to the head that destroys most of the brain. They can't resurrect from that either."
Mattie grimaced. "I see that you've dedicated a lot of thought to the various methods of killing immortals."
"It's my job." He took a sip of his water before spearing another piece of fish with his fork. "It was all in Zhao's research notes. His protocol is supposed to make the enhanced soldiers harder to kill."
"Does it?" Mattie asked.
"It does, but those four methods of killing still apply to the enhanced soldiers as well," Petrov said. "It's just that they are much harder to incapacitate, and that protects them from the other methods to some degree."
Dimitri was listening to their exchange with half an ear. His mind was still on the explosions in the basement of the mansion. It hadn't been an accident, and the booby traps had been set by Navuh to protect his treasure, which, apparently, was the bodies in stasis of five enemy immortals.
"Now I understand why Losham is excavating the basement so carefully." Dimitri took another bite. "Dave may not have the whole picture, but the puzzle pieces he has completed are at least one corner of it."
"Barely," Mattie said. "We still don't know much more than we did before Dave's revelations."
Petrov snorted. "The story of my life. The more I learn, the more I'm convinced that I don't know anything."
Mattie smiled, and something in his chest eased and then constricted.
She was so beautiful, and he'd made her a promise to figure out the logistics for tonight, but he was consumed by everything he'd learned.
The clan, the communication problem, the logistics of an escape that had suddenly expanded from improbable to impossible, all required focused analytical thinking that was his greatest strength.
But he'd promised to find a way for them to make love without endangering her injured hand, and Mattie had been waiting for it with a patience that was, by her own admission, not her strong suit.
Not that Dimitri was much more patient than she was.
He was acutely aware of her and the promise of making love to her tonight.
Every time she shifted on her stool, every time she tucked her hair behind her ear or adjusted the splint on her hand, the awareness pulsed.
It was there in the background of his thoughts, a warm, insistent undercurrent beneath the analytics.
The problem was that he couldn't concentrate on solving both problems at the same time, and right now, they needed to come up with ideas of how to contact the clan, or he would still be thinking about it when he and Mattie retired to their room.
"The question is how to reach the clan," Dimitri said, steering the conversation back to practical grounds.
"What about my Morse code idea?" Mattie asked.
She looked between them, her eyes bright with excitement over solving the problem.
Dimitri didn't want to be the one to crush it. He glanced at Petrov, hoping his mentor would show restraint for a change.
But he should have known that was too much to hope for with the guy.
"Smoke signals." Petrov set down his fork. "And what would you say to those distant immortals? What can you say using Morse code that will convince them to come help us?"
Mattie's cheeks flushed. "When you say it like that—"
"There is no other way to say it. Even if we could produce controlled smoke patterns visible from orbit, which is highly questionable given that satellite imagery resolution varies enormously and smoke dissipates in the wind, Morse code is a telegraph system designed for short, simple messages.
SOS. Stop. Help. It was never intended to convey complex information like 'Hello, we are scientists and enhanced soldiers trapped on a Brotherhood island, and we would like to discuss a partnership involving the liberation of two thousand women and children, please call us at your earliest convenience. '"
The flush on Mattie's cheeks deepened from pink to crimson. "I was trying to build on what you suggested earlier. You're the one who brought up smoke signals."
"That was sarcasm."
"Well, I didn't know that, did I? You said it with a straight face."
"I say everything with a straight face. That's how sarcasm works."
"No, that's how bad sarcasm works. Good sarcasm has inflection. It's not just what you say, but how you say it, and without the change in tonality, it can be mistaken for a genuine statement."
"Russian sarcasm doesn't need inflection. Life’s difficulties are implied."
Dimitri pressed his lips together to stifle a laugh.
Watching these two argue was like watching a chess match between players who were using different rule books.
Petrov operated on logic and cynicism, Mattie on intuition and hope, and when they collided, the result was mostly entertaining but sometimes productive.
"The concept wasn't bad," Dimitri said, attempting diplomacy.
"The problem is resolution and bandwidth.
Even the best commercial satellites can resolve objects down to about thirty centimeters, which means any visual message would need to be very large and very clear.
And Morse code, as Petrov pointed out, is limited to short transmissions.
We need to convey complex information like who we are, what we're offering, and what we need. We need direct communication."
Mattie's cheeks returned to their natural color, which was basically translucent because she was so pale, and she nodded her acceptance of his much more diplomatic explanation.
"So, what does that leave us with?" she asked.
"The phone," Petrov said. "It's the only viable option."
Dimitri had been circling the same conclusion since Dave had left, and Petrov had probably arrived at it even earlier. The phone line between Losham and the clan was the only existing channel of communication.
The problem was that it was Losham's phone, in Losham's possession, used exclusively by Losham.
"Like most people, Losham most likely keeps his phone on him at all times," Dimitri said.
"But he probably puts it on to charge during the night when he sleeps.
As far as I know, he doesn't live in the mansion.
He has his own house, but it's probably just as well guarded, and with his brothers circling like sharks, his security protocol has no doubt been elevated to code red. "
"Dave can handle the guards," Mattie said.