Arcadian Genesis Read Online Free PDF

with the disk inside acting as a combination of coolant and dry cell. The contents – or passengers – were being held in stasis by the extreme cold. But now?’ He looked at the screen image of the room’s slimy inhabitants. ‘Mr. President, I’m not sure it is a good idea to go in there just yet. Perhaps some more study before —’
    Volkov cut him off. ‘Send someone in, or go in yourself. The next time we speak, I want to know what it is you have in my laboratory, Dr. Millinov.’
    Millinov sputtered before words formed. ‘But Dr. Khamid is —’
    ‘Leave Khamid to me.’
     
     

CHAPTER 6
     
     

Town of Urus-Martan, Chechen countryside
     
    Denichen Khamid looked at his watch for the tenth time. The Americans were coming; they said they would, they knew where he was. He rubbed his temples. Now, he guessed, came the hard part – staying sane. He needed to try to remain calm and be patient. He looked at his watch again.
    He started at the sound of the floorboards creaking, and turned so quickly he made his neck crick.
    ‘No, thank you.’ He shook his head, now with some pain, as the steaming cup of sweet black tea was offered to him. He rubbed his neck. His stomach was in too much turmoil for him to consider eating or drinking anything. He smiled up at Zezag: a good woman , he thought, just like his wife .
    Laila! He still felt the agony inside. From the laboratory he had fled to Katyr-Yurt, laying field flowers on the spot where his mother’s house once stood. The town had been rebuilt, and he had recognized nothing in the streets of new concrete and fresh wood. All that was left of the centuries-old town was a layer of ash below the cold bitumen and new pine floorboards.
    He lived on the run now, directed by the Chechen underground. Each day, he was moved from house to house, a new family taking turns to secrete him for twelve hours, putting themselves at risk for him – a Chechen fleeing from Russians would always find a bed in the Chechnya villages. Tonight it had been the Saidullay family. He tried his warmest smile on their small boy, who clung to Zezag’s leg and stared at him as if he had just dropped from the sky. It didn’t work and the child slid a little farther behind Zezag’s ample bottom.
    Khamid looked at his watch again. Must stop doing that , he thought. They would come soon, surely, before his luck ran out. The Russians would find him eventually, and if they got him back to the Ministry of Security, he fully expected to spend his last few miserable days being pulled apart – psychologically and physically. His remains would eventually be fed to squealing pigs in some remote farm on the outskirts of Moscow.
    Doubts, doubts, doubts – I did the right thing . . . didn’t I ? He wished he had prepared more, and thought again of the package he had risked everything for – only the size of a large button, but its shielded container weighed as much as a large dog. He had carried it for many hours, and his shoulders had been rubbed raw. He rolled them; they felt better now the thing was off his back. If he had needed to move quickly, it would have been his undoing. An odd tingling remained; he hoped it was just from muscle strain, and not from the strange radiation the object gave off.
    He cheered himself by imagining the look on Dr. Gennady Millinov’s face when he returned to discover the disk gone . . . straight after he contacted the president. Serves them right , he thought. He hated them all. They had vaporized his family and the entire village a decade and a half ago, and he had always dreamt of an opportunity to make them pay – to rob them of something as they had robbed him.
    He wondered if they had worked out who he really was yet. In a way, the Russians’ ability to make people and places disappear without a trace had worked in his favor.
    Like most Chechens, he had two identities. His Russian one, paid for on the black market and cultivated over the years. This allowed