[Dr Paul Vellek and his daughter Lucia consider their options]
All of our warships are gone, Dad. We can't go to Malta.
Leningrad. [sighs] We can't go there either. September 1941. Hittler's troops lay siege to Leningrad for days of the blackest, most wretched misery in human history. Do you have any idea what happens to your body when starvation sets in? It shrinks. Heart and lungs compress. Eyes, testicles, ovaries just shrivel up and wither away. Your muscles devour themselves. Temperature falls, you freeze.
Why are you telling me this?
Nikolai Vavilov is why I'm telling you this, my daughter. I'm telling you this because hidden in a bunker barely feet beneath that monstrous decay and rot of existence in Leningrad was salvation, Lucia. The world's first global plant bank from Vavilov. Ten thousand seeds, roots, vegetables, protected not by guns but by science. By science. Yet even Vavilov's devoted acolytes couldn't beat the terror raging above them. And finally they, having never even touched one plant for their own escape from doom, also starved to death. I'm telling you this because you're my little girl, and I love you. And where Vavilov failed, we will succeed in spreading salvation to the world for the protection of its future, to protect your future. Because right now, from every point on the globe, planes are converging on Malta. And from there, we will deliver our gift to the world. Our gift to ourselves, Lucia.
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