business outside of the confines of our conventions.”
As if by a sudden impulse, Valko gestured for them to follow him back outside into the garden, where a table had been set with a breakfast of Valko’s antediluvian fruit—orange strawberries and blue apples and green oranges. Vera shivered, feeling the crisp mountain air on her arms as she made her way to the table.
“Sit a moment,” Valko said, pulling a chair out for Vera. “We’ll have something to eat while we finish our conversation.”
Vera sat alongside the others, watching as they chose fruit from a platter. Vera took a strawberry, picked up her knife and fork, and cut it in half. A thick orange juice seeped from the center. Valko opened a thermos and poured coffee into their mugs.
Valko continued where he had left off. “The panopticon prison is funded beyond anything you and I could dream of. As a result, it is extremely well equipped and secure. The scientists there are using captive angelic creatures as experimental subjects. They are taking blood and DNA samples; they are taking biopsies, bone samples, MRI scans; they are even operating on the creatures. They are very powerful and, as they say about absolute power, well . . .” Valko paused to cut a fruit that seemed a cross between a kiwi and a pear, “the aphorism is a perfect expression of the chief technician there—a British scientist named Merlin Godwin.”
Vera nearly choked on her coffee. Hearing the name Merlin Godwin now, uttered in this Edenic garden, was so jarring that she could hardly swallow. She glanced at her watch. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since she had seen Angela’s interrogation projected on a cellar wall of the Winter Palace. Finally, she found her voice. “Merlin Godwin is a traitor.”
“Godwin has been in the Grigoris’ pocket since the beginning,” Valko conceded.
“Why has he been permitted to continue his work, then?” Azov asked. “Sveti and I are struggling to keep our projects going, and this criminal is set up with unlimited funding and equipment.”
“The academy believes that the work he’s doing is of benefit to them,” Valko said. “Keeping him in Siberia is a form of containment: He is a permanent resident of the panopticon. He has absolutely no contact with the world outside.”
“He’s a prisoner himself,” Vera said.
“As director and chief scientist of the facility, I would hardly call him that,” Valko said. “He has ultimate control of the facility. But his power lies only within the walls of the prison. His work with the Grigoris is something he has managed to maintain, apparently, although I have no idea how.”
“Or why,” Sveti added. “How could they allow him to continue his work? I can’t imagine the Grigoris using their own kind as experimental subjects.”
“I have my own theories about that,” Valko said, winking at Vera. “I suspect that they are attempting to develop a new genetic pool as a way to renew themselves. What they may not realize is that their efforts are hopeless without a creature who can give them the biological blueprint they need.”
“Hence Lucien,” Azov added.
“I took care of Lucien,” Valko said, and Vera could hear the pride of a man who had spent a lifetime outsmarting the creatures. “I got him out of Siberia before they did any real harm to him.”
“He’s here?” Vera asked.
“All in due time, my dear,” Valko said. “You came to me for answers and I will try to provide some.” Valko leaned back in his chair, his coffee steaming in his hand. “As you know, the field of angelic genetics was founded by my daughter. What you may not know is that her work was closely monitored by her enemies. They hoped to use genetic engineering to create angels.”
“But I thought you said Angela didn’t believe cloning could work?” Azov said.
“She didn’t think it would be viable,” Valko said. “And her reasoning came from the most basic aspects of genetic inheritance—the nature of mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA.”
“Ah, the pillars of ancestry societies everywhere,” Azov said. “We’ve had a number of religious scholars at St. Ivan asking to exhume the remains of John the Baptist, hoping to run such DNA testing.”
“And of course you tell them why that would not be prudent,” Valko said.
“I tell them that it’s the mitochondrial DNA of the female members of a family that acts as a time capsule: A girl’s mitochondrial DNA is a replica of her mother’s, grandmother’s, great-grandmother’s, and so on. So John the Baptist, being a