AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Then I felt the pressure ease off. I crunched myself up to a sitting position as she walked away with her copper curls bouncing. She turned to look at me over her shoulder.
“Better, Doctor.” she said, as she headed toward the door to her room. “Not great. But better.”
I thought it was the nicest compliment I’d ever heard.
CHAPTER 18
Eastern Russia
16 Years Ago
SOME SCHOOL DAYS, like this one, stretched long into the night. The classroom on the top floor was totally dark, windows blocked with heavy shades. Meed and her classmates stood on one side of the room wearing night-vision goggles. Gunich, the owlish instructor, walked to the opposite side of the room, which was shrouded by a black curtain. He tugged a cord. The curtain dropped, revealing a row of iron safes—all types and sizes, from compact office models to bank-sized vaults, sealed with the most ingenious locks the industry had ever devised.
Meed had studied hard for this drill. Her mind was a maze of mechanical diagrams, electronic circuits, and metallurgy formulas. It was a maze she needed to solve, under challenging conditions and extreme time pressure. But that was her specialty.
“Execute!” said Gunich. He stepped to the side and put on his own goggles to observe.
The students rushed to the safes, reaching for the lock dials and electronic keypads. Working alone or in teams, they fished in their pockets for listening devices and electronic readers—all permitted during the exam. One team produced a compact acetylene torch. Gunich was impressed. Points for ingenuity.
Meed ran to the largest safe in the row, claiming it for her own. Through her goggles, the whole scene had a bizarre glow. In the greenish image, her classmates looked like bug-eyed reptiles. Gunich, in his long lab coat, looked like some kind of spectacled Druid.
Meed pressed her ear against the safe door and rested her fingers lightly on the dial of the combination lock. She rotated the dial with the lightest touch, letting the sensation flow through her fingertips. She pictured the tumblers, the wheel pack, the lever nose, the whole internal mechanism concealed behind four inches of tempered steel. But it wasn’t the image that mattered. It was the sound. She had trained for months using a physician’s stethoscope, but now she had sharpened her senses even further.
She pressed her ear tight against the metal and slowly turned the dial. There were three metal wheels buried inside. Meed was listening for the distinctive clicks the wheels made as they lined up. Her first try, at the start of the semester, had taken her five hours. But that was then. This was now. She heard the first click.
She turned the dial again and sensed another. She heard the beeping of a digital code reader from two stations down. She could tell that Irina was getting close to solving her challenge on one of the electronic locks. Meed concentrated on the safe in front of her. No distractions. One more twitch of her fingers. She felt something give inside the door, almost imperceptible—the feel of a small metal arm dropping. She leaned on the heavy handle. The massive door swung open. Twenty-five seconds.
Gunich’s eyes opened wide behind his goggles. The lock-whisperer had done it again.
Meed moved on to the next safe and nudged a classmate aside. In twelve seconds, that safe was open, too. One station away, Irina gave Meed a small nod and fussed with her own quirky lock. She wanted to succeed on her own. Meed stepped past her, working her way down the rest of the row. Five minutes later, Irina yanked open the door to her safe. She looked up. Meed had opened all the rest.
The other students set their tools down on the floor. They were stunned and embarrassed. And they knew the consequences. Gunich stepped out of his corner.
“Meed and Irina pass,” he said. “The rest of you will repeat the class.”
The students yanked the goggles off their heads. A few of them glared at Meed. She glared right back.
“Dismissed,” said Gunich. He opened the classroom door, letting the dim light from the hallway spill in. “I suggest you review your manuals. Section 5 in particular.”
The students shuffled out the door past him, handing him their goggles as they went. Meed hung back until she was the only student left. Gunich walked over and plucked the night-vision goggles from her head.
“Time to go,” he said. “You did well.”
Meed leaned back against one of the open safes and brushed her fingertips against her shirt, as if honing them.
“I think I’ll do some extra practice,” she said. “Please. Just a few minutes more.”
Gunich had never seen a student like her. A savant. Who was he to interfere with genius? He shrugged and headed out the door. Meed called after him.
“I’ll lock up when I leave,” she said.
She knew Gunich would not appreciate the joke, much less her true plans, and the real reason she needed to be alone. Safe-cracking (technically, “Barriers & Intrusions”) was the only class held on the administrative floor. Meed knew this was where the school’s deepest secrets were kept. And there was one secret in particular she intended to uncover. It was her own personal extra-credit project.
For Meed, passing the exam had been the simplest part of her night. The real challenge was about to begin.
CHAPTER 19
THE PLAN HAD taken months of careful preparation. Meed hadn’t told anybody about what she was up to. Not even Irina. Walking to class day after day, she had mentally mapped the entire floor and watched the comings and goings of every administrator. Especially Kamenev.
