by Simon Morden
[Do not be ill-tempered,] he said. [We are working — all of us — at our capacity. The resources of almost the entire Freezone are being dedicated to this.]
“Okay, sorry. We’re missing something, though. Something big. Something yebani enormous.”
[Your wife and the FBI agent wish to speak to you. They have seen the same simulation, with commentaries suitable to their level of comprehension. Joseph Newcomen has very little grasp of the technicalities of orbital mechanics, and therefore I cannot say how much he understood.]
“For once, it really is rocket science. Keep going. Let me know as soon as anything significant turns up.” He smiled ruefully. “And thanks.”
He kicked himself out of the virtual world and was once again sitting in the cargo hold of a small aircraft, with his wife and Newcomen. He looked at their faces to judge their reactions: Madeleine was watching him for the same reason, while Newcomen was sitting on a crate with his mouth open.
“The Chinese?” he said. “Nobody said anything about the Chinese being involved.”
“We don’t know that for certain.” Madeleine put her reader away inside her coat. “There’s a lot we don’t know for certain.”
“But what if the Chinese want what’s left of their satellite back?”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” said Madeleine. She extended herself to her full height and stretched. Her hands pressed against the cargo hold’s roof. “After an explosion of that size?”
“There’s one way to find out,” said Petrovitch, “and that’s ask them.”
Newcomen baulked. “What? Dear Comrade President, have you lost some space hardware that just happened to contain an atomic bomb?”
“Something like that, except you address him as Chairman. You might not know how Chinese bureaucracy works, but I do. You find some low-level functionary that’ll take your call. They clearly don’t have the authority to deal with such a question, but they’ll issue a blank denial as a matter of course. Meanwhile, the note gets passed up the food chain until someone decides that someone below them should look into the matter.” He shrugged. “It takes time. I’ll get a call from a middle-ranking civil servant, who will ask me obliquely what I know. I’ll tell him what I think he needs to know. It can go on like that for weeks.”
“And you’re happy with that?” Newcomen seemed both outraged and relieved.
“My happiness or otherwise doesn’t make them move any faster. But they might tell me something useful I can’t find out any other way. If it helps, I’ll take it.” Petrovitch looked up at Madeleine, and she down at him. “Newcomen?”
“Yes.”
“For reasons that should be self-explanatory, even to a naif like you, I’d like some time alone with my wife.” He raised his eyebrows and waited.
“Oh. Yes. Okay. I’ll just go back to our plane.”
“Thank you.”
Madeleine opened the door for him, and closed it again after.
“Hey,” said Petrovitch again.
21
It was four hundred kilometres to Fairbanks, and Petrovitch flew them at zero altitude all the way. The terrain was a maze of valleys and hills, with the occasional mountain to worry about, and all of it, except for the snow-capped peaks, forest. In the dark.
He had to continually change either height or direction, and sometimes both at the same time. It was a technical challenge to keep between the high ground, so as not to expose the aircraft to radar, and still not crash. Newcomen went first white, then green, then ran to the cabin to find something to puke his guts up in.
They crossed the border into Alaska. They weren’t shot down.
Newcomen eventually came back to the co-pilot’s seat, pale and shaking.
“Can you talk?” he asked.
“As long as you don’t ask me anything that requires more than a moment’s thought. This isn’t a car, and it doesn’t fly itself.” The whole brief for the plane’s design was fast and straight. Petrovitch was making it do things it was never intended to.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Newcomen.
“Careful now.”
“Will you just listen?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“They don’t want you to find out what happened to Lucy, right?”
“Let’s just say they don’t want me to find Lucy, and leave it at that.”
“Sure. But they’re also gearing up for a fight. With the Chinese.”
“Maybe.”
“Can’t we just tell them what we know? That everything Lucy could have found out we’ve worked out for ourselves, so there’s no point in us not finding her. It’ll make no difference. We could even promise them we wouldn’t say anything in return for her.”
“I’m sure someone, somewhere, has already suggested that. I’ll check, but so could you. You’ve got a link. Use it. But look, you’ve already heard me cursing Chinese bureaucracy: your political mindset is such that you cover up first, then ask why later. By which time, too many important people have got too much to lose by coming clean. Some junior functionary on the ground orders evidence to be conveniently lost, he tells his boss, his boss makes up a story and tells his boss. So then he makes a couple of decisions based on layers of lies and misinformation, and when he finds out, he’s not going to go public with the fact he’s a mudak.” He stopped talking long enough to hurl the plane around one valley spur and through a col. “So tell me what happens when we let Washington know that we’ve spotted SkyShield is taking potshots at foreign satellites?”
Newcomen shifted uneasily in his seat as their acceleration surged. “They try to get rid of us too?”
“There reaches a point where even the most dedicated conspiracy theorist has to admit defeat. We are nowhere near that point. My life, your life, Lucy’s life are not as important as some guy’s career advancement in military intelligence. You remember that.”
“Oh.”
“Nice try, though.”
The plane’s tail swung around and the jets roared for a second, then dropped to idling speed. There were bright lights in the distance, and the ground they had to cover was more or less flat.
“Fairbanks?”
“We’ll take the last twenty k dead slow. No one should hear us, let alone see us.”
Petrovitch nudged them forward at a speed that didn’t generate too much wind noise — no more than the gusted, snowladen branches made — and eventually cut the power altogether.
They drifted over a part of the forest that had been clear cut long ago, and was now an undisturbed sheet of shining white. The plane dropped swiftly, then hovered just above the surface of the snow. The ice on top cracked as it was pierced by the undercarriage, then crunched as it was pushed aside.
They were at rest. No sound of dogs, of voices, no sign of swinging flashlights or armed militias.
“The nearest houses are two hundred metres away, so once we’re outside, you can’t talk. I can speak to you through your link, but all you can do is shut up and follow me. Get your coat on.”
Standing at the bottom of the ladder, Petrovitch closed the door and powered the plane down. It became no more than a dark shadow against the trees behind it. If someone was looking for it, they’d see it: that couldn’t be helped. But it was out of the way, and wouldn’t be there long.
It would have to do. There was a risk in everything he did.
He set off across the snow, guided by the map in his head and the light from his eyes. Every step, he sank in up to his knees. Back in St Petersburg, they had days like this, before the traffic and the soot turned the ice black and churned it up into semi-solid sculptures: days when the kids would pour out of their blank-faced apartment blocks and play. Some of them wouldn’t be properly dressed, and they’d get wet and cold, they’d get a fever and for the want of a few roubles’ worth of medicine, they’d die.
The snow would last for months, all through to spring, and it’d be all everyone could do just to make it through to the first warm s
un of the year.
But for one day, one perfect day, everything that was horrible about living in a basket case of a city with a corrupt government, crooked police, hyperinflationary prices and radioactive death from the sky was all blanketed under a layer of bright white snow.
The lights of the houses shone through the gaps in the trees, and in the dark, a chain-link fence reared up. He followed it, and the shape of a roof formed against the clouds.
He unlatched the gate, silently waved Newcomen through, and closed it behind him, then stepped up to the wooden porch. He rested his hand on the door handle and pressed down. It opened, and before entering, he kicked the snow off his boots.
Both inside, Petrovitch shut the door again.
“If you move, you’ll trip over everything. I’ll get the lights working, and we can sort ourselves out.”
“Whose house is this?”
“Mine, temporarily.” Petrovitch found the cupboard hiding the power switch, and flicked it on, remembering to close his eyes and adjust his vision back to normal.
A single dim bulb flickered into life above Newcomen’s head. It was enough to temporarily blind him to the several large boxes that lined the hallway.
“Yours?”
“Yeah. It’s not in my name, obviously — that would be stupid. I needed a drop-off point for these.” He kicked the cardboard side of one of the boxes.
Newcomen read the shipping label of the one closest to him, but it gave him no clues. “So, what’s in them?”
Petrovitch used a fingernail to break the tape seal, and ripped it away. He dug deep and came out with a pair of heavy-soled boots. “Twelve and a half. They’re yours. And these socks. And these. The thin pair go on first, the thick pair afterwards, in case there’s any confusion. And don’t buckle up too tight: you’ll restrict the blood supply and be more likely to get frostbite.”
Newcomen glanced down at his soaked shoes, soaked socks, wet trousers. He looked very sorry.
The other boxes contained thermal underwear, comfy-looking jumpers, thin gloves and thick mittens, hats, goggles, scarves — none of it with a single heating circuit or thermostat, all of it old-school Arctic survival gear.
“Meet you back here in five.” Petrovitch gathered up his kit and headed to one of the bedrooms.
“What do I do with my suit?”
“I could make some suggestions, but none of them would be constructive. Now get a move on. It’ll be closing time soon, and I need to find a bar.”
“What? You’re serious.”
“I never joke about drinking. Four minutes forty.”
Petrovitch stripped off, then dressed again. He spent the last thirty seconds transferring equipment from his trouser pockets into his coat, and one last delve into his carpet bag.
He kicked the bag under the bed and stepped out into the hall.
Newcomen was already there, buttoned up and ready to go. Petrovitch raised an eyebrow and turned the man around, checking he’d done everything properly. He was almost impressed.
“Not bad. Not good, either: you still look like a G-man masquerading as a trapper, but we don’t have the time to do anything about that.” Petrovitch stomped to the front door in his heavy boots and let some of the night air in. “We’re running out of time, so let’s go.”
They tramped out on to the main street: the road was separated from the pavement by a waist-high ridge of ploughed snow and ice.
“Are we meeting someone?” asked Newcomen, looking faintly ridiculous in his fur-lined hat.
“After a fashion. I know where they are, but they don’t know we’re coming. Hopefully, they’ll stay put for the ten minutes it’ll take us to get there.”
The walk into town was accompanied by blown snow drifting close to the ground, and the occasional rattle of snow chains as a car passed. The traffic lights cast pools of colour on the ground, and the street signs shone in white, blue and green.
Petrovitch stopped outside one particular bar, after passing several without a second look. A marlin, marked out in blue holographic neon, hung over the door.
He dug his hand into his pocket, and came out with a fluid-filled container. He gave it a shake to make sure the contents hadn’t frozen.
“You’ll need to put these on.” He corrected himself. “In. You’ll need to put these in.”
Newcomen held the cylinder up to the nearest light. “I don’t know where it goes.”
“In your eyes. The bar’s optical scanner will spot you coming, and I don’t want people to know we’re here until long after we’ve gone.”
Newcomen swallowed. “I don’t think I can. I’ve never had to wear contacts before.”
Petrovitch pulled the gloves off one hand and stuffed them in a pocket. He unscrewed the lid and fished out a curved silvered disc. “Look up.”
Their size difference was such that Petrovitch had to climb up the ice ridge.
“Okay, look up again. And don’t blink.” He held out the lens on his index finger, and Newcomen tried to look past it. His eye watered uncontrollably, and when he was properly blind, Petrovitch let the layer of moisture suck the lens on to the eyeball. Then he went back for the other one.
“That feels so weird.” Newcomen batted his lashes. “Why’s it so dark?”
“So the lasers bounce off your eyes and don’t read the retinas. You’ll need this too.” He pressed one of his plastic eyeballs into Newcomen’s palm. “When you pass under the scanner, hold this up next to your head. Pretend you’re scratching your ear, or something.”
“Petrovitch, I did go to Quantico.”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m having to fill in the gaps in your education as I go along. A couple of ground rules: don’t get drunk.”
“That’s not going to be a problem.”
“And don’t try and pay for anything. My cards only.” He took off his own furry hat, and looked slightly less like a Hollywood comedy Russian than before. “In fact, try not to say anything at all.”
“Thanks.”
“Unless I kick you. Then feel free.” He pushed at the bar’s door, and held up his own eye. A red light flicked out and scanned him, then Newcomen. As far as the computer log was concerned, Hyram T. Wallace and Bertram K. Bendix from New Mexico had just entered. Both identities were over twenty-one and came with clean bills of health. No alarms tripped, and they were in through the second set of doors into the warm fug of the bar.
Petrovitch started to undo his coat, and scanned the patrons, running their faces through the US database. He spotted his target over in a darkened corner, well away from the jazz band doing their thing on the cramped stage.
“Ready?”
“I don’t know what for, but okay.”
Petrovitch ignored the several empty booths and chose one already occupied by a young man, only the top of his head visible above the seat back. He slid along the seat opposite him, while Newcomen found himself facing a startled dark-haired girl with a hint of an epicanthic fold about her upper eyelids.
“Don’t try and get up,” said Petrovitch. “We only want to talk.”
The man — a slimmer, younger version of Newcomen — was pale already.
“Did my parents send you?” His voice quavered.
“We’re not private investigators, and we’re not here to enforce the injunction. Relax.” Petrovitch threw his hat on to the table and shrugged his coat off. “You’re not in trouble with me.”
“Then what do you want?”
Petrovitch leaned forward and beckoned him closer. “My name is Dr Samuil Petrovitch.”
The man blinked. “Oh my g… word. You are. You are him. How did you…?” He stopped and started again. “You just walked in here?”
“Yeah, pretty much. This is Joseph Newcomen, FBI.”
“FBI? Oh.”
“It’s fine. He’s with me, and he really hasn’t got time to worry about you two.” He looked at Newcomen. “Isn’t that right?”
“I have no idea what you’re ta
lking about,” said Newcomen.
“Excellent.” Petrovitch turned back to the couple.
“I’m Alan,” volunteered the man. “This is Jessica.”
“I know who you are. I know all about you.” Petrovitch smiled. “Let me buy you both a drink and you can tell me all about my daughter and Jason Fyfe.”
22
Petrovitch caught the waitress’s attention with a raise of his hand. She had epic breasts and a slightly too-tight blouse: not quite enough to get her hauled up on a public lewdness charge, but more than sufficient for Newcomen to blush pink and make a poor attempt at looking away.
“Whatever my friends had last time — unless you’d like something different — and whiskey for me and Joe Friday. Stagg if you’ve got it. Better still, just bring the bottle and some glasses.”
“Sure thing, hon,” she said. She collected an empty bottle of lite and went back to the bar. Her skirt was on the tight side, too, and Newcomen’s gaze was drawn away from the table.
Petrovitch turned Newcomen’s head back around and scraped his finger at the corner of the man’s mouth. “Let’s just wipe the drool away, shall we?”
“But she’s barely wearing anything,” said Newcomen, his forehead damp.
“Yobany stos, she can wear what she likes. Unless you’re going to arrest her, leave her alone.” He returned his attention to Alan. “So. Jason’s a postgrad in your department, right? And you know him pretty well.”
“He’s my lab supervisor. He’s pretty cool.” He kept on glancing at Jessica, almost as if he was checking everything he was saying with her.
She wrapped her fingers around her soda and made the ice rattle. “He lets me hang out in the lab. I’m an arts major, and so I’ve got plenty of time spare. It made it easier for me and Alan, you know, to…” She watched the bubbles rise in her glass. “Spend time together.”
“Yeah, look,” said Petrovitch. “Anything that’s going to help me find either Jason or Lucy is good. I need to know it all, no matter how uncomfortable it might make either you or me. Okay?”
Alan nodded. “Okay. Jason. Nice guy. Smart, but he had a talent for explaining hard stuff so that even a freshman could understand. He could be kind of intense at times, talking about his subject, or his music: this stuff, jazz. I liked him.”