Chapter 3 Mattie
MATTIE
The phone rang.
Mattie stopped breathing. She didn't make a conscious decision to do it, her lungs just seized up, as if her body had concluded that the sound of her exhaling might somehow travel through the phone and alert whoever was on the other end that the call wasn't coming from the legitimate owner of the device.
It rang twice.
The room was silent except for the sound of eleven hearts beating at various speeds. Not that she could actually hear any other than her own, even though they were all crammed into the small bedroom, but she was certain that hers was the fastest.
Dimitri stood next to Petrov, who was occupying the only chair in the room and holding a notepad and a pen in his hand. The man believed that if something wasn't written down, it didn't exist.
The rest of them were seated on the two beds that had been separated and pushed against the walls in preparation for this call.
Mattie's thigh was pressed to Number One's, but neither of them was paying it any attention, she because she was nervous, and he because nothing fazed Dave.
The Eight were as calm as always, as if this one phone call wasn't about to change all of their lives.
They watched Dimitri with identical focus, and they were so still that if Mattie hadn't known better, she would have thought they were statues.
Even their breathing sounded synchronized, slow and controlled, as if Dave had dialed down every nonessential function to channel everything into listening.
The line rang a third time.
What if no one answered? What if the phone on the other end was turned off, or the person who usually took Losham's calls was not in the room?
It was the middle of the night on the island, which meant it was late morning in Los Angeles, where the other immortals were supposedly based.
"Losham?" A male voice answered, sounding mildly surprised. "Is everything all right?"
Mattie's heart slammed against her ribs.
This was it. This was the moment that would determine whether their plan would materialize or burst into flames, incinerating them.
"This is not Losham. This is Doctor Dimitri Volkov. Also present are Doctor Konstantin Petrov, my girlfriend and lab assistant, Matilda Johnson, and eight enhanced soldiers who are offering to help us escape from here. We need your help."
There was a long moment of silence that was so dense it could have its own gravitational pull.
What was happening on the other end of the line? Was the guy still there?
"Do you know who you're talking to?" The man sounded cautious but not hostile.
"I don't know who you are, sir," Dimitri said. "But we know that you and your people are immortal, same as the people of this island, but unlike them, you are the good guys."
A chuckle came through the speaker, brief and dry. "That about sums it up. My name is Onegus, Doctor Volkov. May I ask how you got Losham's phone?"
Onegus. It was a Scottish name, and Mattie could hear the trace of a Scottish accent. It wasn't thick, more like a hint of flavor that surfaced in certain vowels and disappeared in others.
"We borrowed it from him," Dimitri said. "We will return it before he wakes up, and he will never know it was missing."
"So, he's alive." The man sounded relieved.
It seemed that the clan needed Losham. He was useful to them, which meant they had a vested interest in keeping him in his current position of authority.
That was leverage, or at least context.
She would think about what it meant later.
"Yes," Dimitri said. "We wish him no harm."
"Good, because we need him." The response was blunt. "Just make sure to erase your call from the record."
"We will."
Petrov scribbled something on his notepad and angled it toward Dimitri, who glanced at it and nodded.
"Given that you are asking for help and the phone has to return to Losham soon, we don't have much time. I need to get a few more people on this call, and it will take me ten to fifteen minutes to assemble my team, so I can probably call you back in about twenty. Is that okay with you?"
"Yes, but you are correct about the time issue." Dimitri glanced at his watch. "It's two-thirty in the morning here, and the phone needs to be returned before four."
An hour and a half. That was all they had. An hour and a half to convince these other immortals that their story was real, their intentions were good, and their plan, which even Mattie had to admit sounded insane, was worth pursuing.
"Then we should hurry up," Onegus said, and the line went dead.
Dimitri lowered the phone and stared at it for a moment, then placed it on the nightstand.
"He didn't hang up on us," Mattie said. "That's encouraging. And he didn't sound alarmed or angry. He was polite."
"That's your takeaway?" Petrov set down his pen and crossed his arms. "A man representing a secret society of immortals just learned he's being contacted by the enemies of his enemy, and your first observation is that he didn't hang up and he was polite?"
"Well, yeah. What else am I supposed to deduce from the little he said?" Petrov could be so annoying sometimes. He was a good guy, but his Russian sarcasm was grating on her nerves. "He said he needed to assemble his team to talk to us. He seemed to be taking us seriously."
Petrov considered this, then conceded the point with a grunt.
Dimitri sat on the edge of the other bed, which was currently taken by four soldiers squeezed in together. His hand was trembling slightly, which it hadn't been while he was on the phone. The adrenaline was catching up to him now that the immediate performance was over.
"You were perfect," she said.
"I sounded like an idiot. 'We know you're the good guys'? After all the rehearsing, that's what I led with?"
"It worked," she said. "He laughed and said that it about summed it up."
Dimitri shook his head. "He laughed because it sounded absurd."
"He laughed because it was honest and real. Something overly eloquent would have sounded rehearsed and fake. He would have been suspicious if you'd opened with a formal speech about strategic alliances and mutual interests. You sounded like what you are—a scared person asking for help."
Dimitri looked at her. "I'm not scared."
She smiled. "We all are, even Dave, who claims that they have transcended fear."
"We never said that." Number One turned his head to look at her. "Like every living being, we want to stay alive and we fear death."
She nodded. "Thank you for sharing this."
"You did well, Dimitri," Petrov said. "You were clear and concise."
Coming from Petrov, that was a standing ovation.
Mattie turned to Number One. "What's your take?"
"Onegus's vocal patterns suggested surprise combined with caution. He did not panic, which indicates experience. He is not some fresh underling. His ability to assemble a team in fifteen minutes suggests that the team members are nearby or easily reachable."
"Or that they are all in the same place," Petrov said. "The most efficient organizations keep their key personnel close." He tapped his pen on the notepad. "What's interesting is what he didn't ask."
Mattie frowned. "What do you mean?"
"He didn't ask how we knew about them. He didn't ask what we wanted.
He didn't ask how many of us there are, or what the enhanced soldiers want, or what we're offering.
He asked two things. How we got the phone and whether Losham was alive.
That tells me that he recognized our names, as we suspected he would. "
That was a smart observation. Onegus hadn't wasted a single question on background information. He'd zeroed in on the two things that mattered to him—the security of his asset and the security of the communication channel—and then he'd moved straight to action.
Mattie looked at the clock on the wall. It was 02:34 a.m. The callback would come at approximately 02:50, assuming Onegus kept his word, which left them sixteen minutes to prepare for the most important conversation of their lives.
They'd been preparing for it all day long, but then Dimitri had improvised at the last moment. He'd been stressed and had forgotten his lines.
"Maybe we should go over our talking points again," she suggested.
"We've been over them fifty times," Dimitri said. "I'm tired, and at this point, I prefer to improvise."