Angelopolis (32 page)

Godwin looked up, taking in the full height of the observation tower, an edifice bound by impenetrable panes of glass. Inside, along the spiraling floors, were angelologists on duty, some busy at computers, others at observation posts, watching, making notes, updating inmate files. The night shift would go home and the day shift would arrive, a routine that ensured the perpetual motion machine of the panopticon.

Godwin always felt an odd, phantasmagoric sensation when he traversed the moat of concrete surrounding the observation tower. Thousands of eyes trailed his movements, and he couldn’t help but feel the unnerving power of their gaze. Sometimes it seemed to him that their positions were reversed, and that he had become a prisoner, a spectacle paraded out for the pleasure of the Nephilim. Each day he had to remind himself that he was the master, and they, these beautiful beasts whose bodies were stronger than his own, were his prisoners.

II

U
nder normal circumstances, Yana wouldn’t go to the entrance to the panopticon for any amount of money. It had been more than two decades since she had last set foot at the nuclear waste facility known as Chelyabinsk-40, and yet the structure still had the power to fill her with dread. While her family had always been angelologists, tracing their first efforts to the time of Catherine the Great, she had an uncle who had been imprisoned in the panopticon as a spy in the 1950s. Stripped of his rights, he was thrown into an isolated holding cell. He worked both in the reactor and at cleaning up the nuclear waste that leaked from the facility. The lakes and forests were saturated with radioactivity, although the citizens of nearby villages were never informed. Yana’s uncle had wasted away with cancer and been buried at the site. Now most of the trees around the facility were dead, leaving a wasteland of ashy soil behind. The Russian government had only recently admitted to the nuclear contamination—for decades it had denied that the reactor existed at all—and newly posted signs warned of radioactivity. Yana wasn’t prone to doomsday scenarios, but she had the feeling that if the world were going to end, then the disaster would emerge from that desolate, godforsaken place in Chelyabinsk.

She halted abruptly before a fence ringed with barbed wire. Making her way into a corrugated steel outbuilding—a rusted-out shack that served as an entrance to the east tunnel—she pulled out her wallet and fingered her Russian Angelological Society identity card. At least she could identify herself, which was more than she could say for the others, whose French identity cards would mean nothing to these security goons. Getting them in would be difficult. For that she was going to need to call in a favor or two.

A pair of burly, stupid-looking guards—Russian military flunkies hired by the society in Moscow—greeted them.

“I have an appointment with Dmitri Melachev,” Yana said, imperiously, daring them to turn her away.

A guard with bloodshot eyes and the smell of vodka on his breath looked her over, sneered, and said, “You’re a bit old for Dmitri, honey.”

Another guard said, “His girls always come in the West entrance.”

“Tell him Yana Demidova is here.”

Yana crossed her arms and waited for the guard to place a call to Dmitri’s office. He relayed her name to another functionary at the other end of the line and then waved them toward some plastic chairs near an elevator. “Wait there. He’s sending someone up for you.”

Yana closed her eyes and took a deep breath, praying that Dmitri would give her a break. Before she’d been assigned to angel hunting in Siberia, she and Dmitri had been childhood sweethearts in Moscow. They had been deeply in love in the way that only teenagers can be—madly, blindly—and had been engaged until Yana broke things off. Yana had helped Dmitri get his first job as a bodyguard to one of the high-level angelologists. His career took off from there. Now he was the chief of security in the panopticon, a man with clout over everyone and everything barring their path, and if she had to put herself on the line a little to get them inside, then so be it. Besides, Dmitri owed her.

After fifteen minutes of waiting, the elevator doors parted and Dmitri himself emerged. Yana hadn’t seen him for twenty years, but he hadn’t changed much. He was short and muscular, with sharp blue eyes and streaks of gray in his hair. She could see that she had surprised him.

“Bring us to your office, Dmitri, and I’ll explain everything,” Yana said, meeting his eye, hoping that he was still her friend after so many years.

Dmitri nodded and the security guards went to work. They searched the angelologists’ bags and clothes, examined their weapons, and then allowed them to go into the lift. Dmitri pushed 31, and the elevator began to descend, moving slowly deeper and deeper into the earth. Yana couldn’t say if it were her imagination, but she felt as if the pressure of the earth were pushing into her, as if she had to struggle to breathe.

Finally the doors parted, and they stepped into the east tunnel. Cool air blew through the shaft, sending a shiver of freezing air over her. She’d forgotten about the descriptions she had heard of the prison—it was cold, bereft of light, as if one would wither in its sterile darkness. They would walk for a few minutes through a narrow tunnel, the neon lights playing above, and emerge at the other end. It was a short walk, and yet Yana felt as though they were making a journey to another universe. She had always found it eerie that people aboveground knew nothing about the space. It could cave in, killing thousands of living beings, and nobody would know the difference.

When they reached the core of the panopticon, the immensity of the space pulled her eye up, and then, just as her vision adjusted to the scale and grandiosity of the structure, closed in on the rows and rows of creatures locked in their glass-and-metal cells, each angel back-lit by harsh neon.

Yana glanced at Bruno and then Verlaine, wondering what they would think of the state of their underground prison. Unlike other facilities she’d visited, where the ambiance was sleek and clean, orderly and antiseptic as a hospital, the panopticon was a dungeon of the classic medieval variety. The floors were concrete and stained with blood. Dim lights shone overhead, creating pools of murky light. There was, somewhere in the mass of cells, a lab where countless men and women labored over biological samples of angelic creatures. Every living being could be opened, studied, and classified. There was a pretension toward research and scientific progress, of course, but in the end they were there to exploit the prisoners for their own benefit. Every creature, Yana knew from her own experience, belonged to its captor.

“The security offices are this way,” Dmitri said, walking toward an alcove off the panopticon.

Yana slowed her pace to match Verlaine’s and, speaking quietly, so that the others wouldn’t hear her, said, “If your Evangeline is here, she’s in one of these cells.”

Verlaine gave her a grateful look. She squeezed his arm and gestured for him to come closer before she pulled a wad of material from under her sweater and pushed it into his hands. He looked at it, puzzled, and then smiled: It was the drunk security guard’s jacket. She’d lifted it off his chair as they passed through the elevator doors with Dmitri.

III

T
his is one of the only spots in the facility without security cameras,” Dmitri said, bringing them into an office and locking the door. “It’s safe to talk here.”

Verlaine paced the room. “There isn’t much to talk about,” he said. “We just need to know where Godwin is holding Evangeline.”

Bruno didn’t know if he should admire Verlaine’s obsessive pursuit or if he should tell him to back off and let Dmitri guide them. It was Verlaine’s nature to push harder the closer he came to his target: He always wanted to go in shooting, no matter what risk was involved. It was an admirable quality when they were on familiar terrain, with plenty of backup and weapons at their disposal. Being a million miles underneath a Siberian nuclear wasteland, in a security office loaded with plasma screens displaying hundreds of Russian angelologists and thousands of creatures in their cell pods—that was another story. Yana had assured them that Dmitri would be safe, but he couldn’t help but be wary of a man who had spent most of his career in the frozen tundra.

Bruno searched the video monitors for Godwin, but all he could make out were various office spaces filled with people in lab coats. “You ever get Godwin on one of these things?”

“I have been monitoring Merlin Godwin for fifteen years,” Dmitri said, waving a hand dismissively at the plasma screens. “Believe me, it would be a pleasure to nail him. But I can tell you that Godwin and his crew would never be stupid enough to let me see anything too important.” Dmitri leaned against his desk and crossed his arms across his chest. “My surveillance only goes so far.”

Bruno tried to imagine Dmitri spying on Godwin—eavesdropping on phone calls, monitoring his electronic correspondence. He was beginning to understand how frustrating it might be. “Let’s hear what you’ve got on Godwin first.”

“I should start by making one thing clear,” Dmitri said. “I’m not easily impressed by criminal behavior. Russia is full of thieves. But most of them want money and power and prestige. Not Godwin. He’s after another thing entirely.”

“Such as?” Verlaine asked.

Dmitri said, “Godwin has been working with the Grigori family to remove weak Nephilim from the general population, testing them for certain genetic qualities, and then disposing of or incarcerating them if they fail to yield the desired results.”

“Sounds like the bastard has been doing us a favor,” Yana said.

“He might have been helpful if he’d just continued on his genocidal path,” Dmitri said. “Unfortunately, his ultimate goal seems to be to repopulate the world with creatures superior to the Grigori—a master race of angels, if you will. For this he needs a superior angelic specimen.”

“We have reason to believe he acquired a creature he has been pursuing for a very long time,” Bruno said.

Dmitri glanced at Verlaine. “This is the Evangeline you mentioned?”

“The very one,” he replied, his manner measured. He turned back to the bank of plasma screens. “Could she be here?”

“On paper there isn’t anyone in the panopticon that I don’t know about,” Dmitri said. “All prisoners are checked by security before intake.”

“And in reality?” Yana asked.

“In reality, Godwin can do what he wants,” Dmitri admitted. “He has ways of getting around the regulations. He could have Evangeline here and I wouldn’t have a clue.”

“The question, then,” Verlaine said, scrutinizing the screens, “is where.”

“What about the nuclear plant?” Yana asked.

“Security at the plant is extreme,” Dmitri said.

“Godwin could get around it,” Yana said. “He could access the panopticon via the nuclear reactor itself.”

“That would be a suicide mission in the extreme, even for a psychopath like Godwin, but not beyond the realm of possibility.” Dmitri stepped to a screen and, releasing a catch, pushed the screen up, revealing a vast interior garage stacked with long white bricks of plastic explosives, blue and red wires twisting around them. “This belonged to Godwin.”

“PVV5A,” Yana said, astonished.

“I intercepted a shipment in January,” Dmitri said.

“You’ve got enough of this stuff to bring down the whole prison,” Bruno said.

“Considering the fact that we’re below a nuclear reactor, that’s what we don’t want to happen,” Dmitri said, taking one of the white bricks and placing it on his desk. “Godwin, on the other hand, has planted this stuff in every nook and cranny of the prison. After I intercepted the PVV5A, I knew he was up to something, and so I used dogs to find the rest of the explosives. What you see here is a collection of what was found in the panopticon itself. I can’t guarantee he hasn’t rigged his private research center or the nuclear reactor, and I can’t promise he hasn’t planted other kinds of devices.”

Bruno was surprised to see sweat dripping down Dmitri’s face. His voice cracked as he spoke. “So he likes to play with fireworks,” he said. “But to what end?”

“Godwin knows that explosions in the cells would trigger the panopticon’s security system,” Dmitri said. “A series of mechanisms are in place that, once activated, cause a large-scale self-detonation. The structure will continue to destroy itself over the course of several hours, tunnel by tunnel, level by level, until the entire prison is incinerated.”

“Melt down to what extent?” Yana asked.

“To the extent that everyone and everything—including the caged angels, the laboratories, and all the data collected in the past four decades—will be destroyed. It’s a protective mechanism,” Dmitri said, “like torching fields and villages to deprive the enemy of food. The tower will go first. Then the labs. When the various pieces of the facility have been destroyed, a gas will be released into the panopticon, and every living thing—human being or monster—left inside will be poisoned. The system was meant to cover all traces of our presence here. The panopticon was built underground for this very reason: If they need to destroy it, the ruins will be hidden below the earth, a tomb containing thousands of dead angels.”

“Makes sense to have a safety measure in place,” Bruno said. “But why would Godwin want to trigger it?”

“That I don’t know,” Dmitri said, quietly. “I can only guess that he has no intention of leaving his work unfinished. If he’s under threat, he’ll bring the whole thing down.”

“Then we have to get to Evangeline before Godwin has a chance to self-destruct,” Verlaine said.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of guards patrolling this compound,” Dmitri said, reaching into the recesses of the crawlspace and pulling out three canisters of gas, face masks, two semiautomatic weapons with ammo, two stun guns, and three bulletproof vests. “Godwin’s movements are like clockwork. He got here this morning, entered through the south tunnel, and went to his lab. He’ll leave for an hour at lunch. I estimate that you’ll have half an hour to get in, look around, get the angel, if you find her, and get back out. All of this depends, of course, on your ability to get to his lab without being detected. I can take care of the security cameras in the panopticon itself, but that’s as far as I go. You can leave Russia when this is over. I have to continue my career here.”