Degrees of Freedom

by Simon Morden

  “Shall we get on with it? Iguro’s getting impatient.”

  She looked around at the man standing by the van’s rear doors. “He can stay close, if he wants. This size cylinder enough to hold maybe seventy-five, hundred kilos explosive. Safe distance is half kilometer.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Petrovitch shuffled bent-backed to the back of the van and shouted over Iguro’s thinning hair. “Tabletop?”

  “What is it?”

  “You might want to take Lucy for a walk. At least to the end of the street: the very end.”

  She came over, puzzled. “I thought you said…”

  “We’re playing it safe. Tina’s spidey-sense is tingling and I’ve got a bad case of last-minute doubts. Just because it’s not got two sub-critical lumps of uranium at each end doesn’t mean that it couldn’t contain enough cee-four to put all of us into orbit.”

  Iguro frowned. “Petrovitch-san, are you saying there is a bomb after all?”

  He pulled a face. “Maybe. If you want to pull your men back, Tina suggests five hundred meters would be sensible.”

  “What is to stop you from taking the bomb when we are so far away?”

  “You mean, apart from the lamp-post lying on top of a van whose engine we just shot up? Or that we’d have to carry it to Tina’s car in full view of everyone while leaving Tabletop and Lucy behind? Let me see…” Petrovitch cuffed Iguro around the head. “Yobany stos, man.”

  Recoiling, Iguro batted Petrovitch’s hand away. “I will stay to keep an eye on you. Miss Sonja would expect it.”

  “Your funeral. Not that there’ll be anything left of you to bury, but at least it’ll be quick.” He fixed Tabletop with his gaze. “Get the girl out of here. You’ll know soon enough if there’s anything to worry about.”

  Tabletop went over to where Lucy was standing and linked arms with her, guiding her away. Petrovitch watched them go, and then settled back down next to Valentina. “Now we’re ready.”

  She held out the wrench to the first bolt and started slowly to unwind it. “You should go too,” she said.

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  “You are important.” She stopped turning the wrench as a couple of millimeters of thread appeared at the bottom, and moved on to the next one. “I am expendable.”

  “You’re important to me. So shut up and concentrate on this.”

  She nodded, and with the vague hint of a smile, went round each bolt in turn and loosened them off. Iguro watched intently, and wisely said nothing.

  “Please, put hand on plate. Keep pressed down until I say.”

  Petrovitch did as he was told. The cover sank very slightly under his palm, back to flush against the casing. Valentina spun the bolts out and lined them up on the floor of the van next to her knee. Then she crouched right down, a flashlight in her hand and her eyes level with the edge of the inspection plate.

  “Just a little bit. Let it rise.”

  He programmed his arm for a half-millimeter of movement.

  “More.” She peered intently at the pitch-black gap, then felt in her box for a marker pen. She bit the top off and made a green dot part-way along the opening.

  “Because?”

  She spat the pen lid out of her mouth behind her. “There is pressure switch. Again, I do not know what it does, but I would prefer it not activated.” She retrieved a slim knife-blade and slipped it inside the cover where she’d made her mark, using only her fingertips and the smallest of movements. When she was happy with the blade’s position, she used electrical tape to hold it in place. “Is okay. Lift cover off.”

  It was easier said than done. Petrovitch finally caught its sides with his fingernails and lifted it gently out of the way.

  And now that he could see inside, he sucked in air through his teeth. “Chyort.”

  There was a foam square, out of which was cut a smaller rectangle. A mobile phone nestled deep within, and a braided pair of red and yellow wires curled along its side before diving back underneath. All around it were packed stiff plastic wrappers containing blocks of what looked like window putty.

  About half of the blocks had a thin silver tube pressed through a slit in the plastic and buried almost up to the wires that snaked off them.

  “As you say,” said Valentina. “Is bad.”

  “I can record this, and we can get out of here if you want.”

  “The phone will have been tested. We must retrieve it to see by who.” She brushed a stray hair back behind her ear.

  “If you think you can do that, then great.” Petrovitch beckoned Iguro closer. “Take a look. No nuclear material at all. Just a shitload of high explosive, designed to incinerate the evidence and whoever happened to be standing around it at the time.”

  “This is good news.” Iguro craned his neck to see, and Petrovitch helped him up into the van proper. Once he was satisfied, he turned to go: “No atomic bomb is good news. I must tell Miss Sonja at once.”

  Petrovitch reached into his waistband and pulled out his gun. He pointed it at Iguro’s head. He was close enough that the barrel pressed into his temple. “Sit down over there and shut up. She already knows because I told her, and until I find out what the huy is going on, you’re not going anywhere.”

  Iguro took the hint and crawled into the furthest recesses of the van, where he sat and muttered.

  Valentina turned her attention to the small hole in the side of the bomb where the electrical cable had been wrenched out. She put her eye to the hole and was still for a while. “Hmm. Not connected to anything. Dummy.”

  She straightened up and tutted, staring into the heart of the bomb. “I would like to disconnect batteries first, then phone. But batteries are underneath.”

  “If I was going to make this, I’d want easy access to everything before final assembly. Maybe the whole thing just pulls out as one unit.” He gave Iguro one last baleful glare and reholstered his gun.

  “There is tamper switch on cover. Another underneath would be undetectable.” Valentina demonstrated with her hands.

  “It’s your call,” said Petrovitch. His mouth was dry, in contrast to his palms, which were soft with sweat.

  In answer, she scraped around in her tool box and found a pair of surgical scissors. She started to snip away at the foam surround, always taking care she wasn’t cutting a wire. A pile of gray foam trimmings piled up beside her, and inside the bomb, the shape of things became clearer.

  Under the phone was a thin piece of plywood with four small rectangular batteries tied to it, and a small square of circuit board. Tiny electronic components were soldered to it. Valentina moved aside, and Petrovitch squatted down.

  “Okay. The batteries supply thirty-six volts to the detonators. That black square’s going to be a logic gate, which will act as a switch. When the phone rings, you get a voltage on that red wire—that should set the bomb off. But,” he said, and traced the wires back to the switch on the cover, “only if this wire is live. Which it still is, because we’ve taped this into the on position. See that little button battery there? It’s telling the chip that the cover’s still in place.”

  “Is not tamper switch. Is fail-safe.” Valentina snorted in disgust. “Schoolgirl error.”

  “Meh. No harm done. It just means that the people who set the bomb didn’t want to blow themselves up by accident.”

  She handed him a tiny pair of wire cutters.

  “Oh.” He flexed his fingers and lowered his hand slowly into the recess. He knew he was right. The circuit was simple and effective—just the sort he would have used if he’d been into bombmaking. He could have knocked one up just the same given half an hour, just using bits and pieces lying around his makeshift lab.

  “You are hesitating.”

  “Yeah. Give me a moment. This is still a big deal.”

  “You were ready to defuse it when you thought it was nuclear.”

  “Stopping fission is easy, if you don’t mind the cloud of uranium particles drifting in the bre
eze. A couple of house bricks thrown in the middle of a gun-style device would work.” Petrovitch pulled his hand out and wiped it against his trousers. He adjusted his grip on the cutters and went in for a second time.

  “Cut the wires,” she said after a few moments more.

  “Yobany stos. I’m doing it, all right?” He steeled himself and placed the red wire from the phone between the sharp jaws. “See you in Hell.”

  He closed his fist. The wire snicked. They were both still there, with Iguro crouched behind them.

  Valentina wrapped the loose ends of the wire in strips of insulating tape, and waited for him to cut the second wire. It was easier than the first, but only slightly.

  “I’d be happier when those batteries are out of the loop.”

  “Then do it. Is fine.”

  He checked the polarity on the batteries one last time, and snipped through the wires, red first, then black. Valentina made them safe with more tape, and Petrovitch sat back.

  “Couldn’t do that for a living.” He let out the breath he’d been holding in, and Valentina presumed to ruffle his hair.

  “We have defused bomb. We have lots of plastic explosive and detonators. And,” she said, lifting the phone clear and tugging out the remaining wire, “we have this.”

  “Yeah. We do. We have a slight problem to go with it, though.” He took the phone from her and scanned the call history. “It’s going to take a little longer to restore the network and everything that depends on it, than it did to take it down.”

  “Explain.”

  “There’s this kid—an American—called himself Anarchy. Wrote a virus that I may have helped him with now and again without him knowing it was me. He set it loose on some government computers, whose servers promptly crashed and burned. Every time they rebooted, the Anarchy virus popped up and trashed them again: they’re still mopping up the last of it now. Of course, what no one seems to have realized is that you can modify it to leave it dormant on a system. While it’s not undetectable, it’s pretty stealthy: you have to know what you’re looking for.”

  “You have broken the internets. Is that what you are saying?”

  “Pretty much.” Petrovitch shrugged. “I was in a hurry, so I cashed in all my chips at once. If I had my rat, I could get an uplink to the nearest satellite. As it is, what with the state of emergency, all the people who could at least attempt to fix things are stuck at home.”

  “And we are stuck out here.” She retrieved the board with the batteries and slid it behind her. “We cannot call our friends, our enemies, or the wider world. We can tell no one that there is no bomb or present them our evidence. We cannot find out who made this bomb or why.”

  “So we’re on our own. That shouldn’t stop us, should it?”

  “It might, this time.” She started to pull the detonators out, one by one, and pile the explosives up like a wall.

  Petrovitch moved to the back of the van and sat there, legs dangling. He patted the space next to him. “Iguro, come and join me.”

  In the distance, he could see the knot of Oshicora guards and the two slight figures of Tabletop and Lucy. He waved the all-clear.

  Iguro warily sat next to him but unconsciously mirroring his body language. “Miss Sonja should still be told. She will lift the emergency, and exonerate you.”

  “Like I said, I think she knew all along.” Petrovitch frowned. “I take it you’re not going to try and arrest me now, or anything embarrassing like that?”

  “There seems little point. There is no bomb, so how could you have stolen something that does not exist?”

  “And yet, there it is, in plain view. Tell me, Iguro: how did you know where the van was?”

  “We were directed to it. By our controllers.”

  “Of course you were. Now, how do you suppose they could differentiate between us and the van containing the bomb, given we were all going in the same direction at the same time, and there was no visual identification of which phone signals related to which vehicle?”

  When Iguro didn’t answer, he continued his musing.

  “You see my problem? Everything points to someone within the Oshicora organization knowing exactly where this fake bomb was, at all times. And I’m guessing that even though no one was ever supposed to see inside and learn the truth, whoever designed this whole charade knew I’d be chasing around after it—and on the off-chance that I managed to get my hands on it, they made it so that I couldn’t possibly blow myself up. I wonder who would go to all that trouble?” He leaned into Iguro, who was looking increasingly uncomfortable. “Why is everything pointing back to me? Who could possibly want to frame me for something so monstrous, and yet at the same time sabotage their plan because they couldn’t bear the thought of harming me?”

  He kicked his heels for a moment longer, then jumped down from the back of the van. Tabletop and Lucy were almost there.

  A thought struck him, and he turned back to Valentina. “Have you seen the time?”

  She glanced at her big Soviet-style wristwatch. “What of it?”

  “What do I normally do now?”

  “You climb the Oshicora Tower.” She looked up from the bomb, eyebrows raised. “And people come to watch.”

  “Yeah. They do.” Petrovitch kicked a stone in the road. “I wonder if anyone’s going to show?”

  18

  Petrovitch rode with Iguro, the cars becoming a slow-moving convoy back down to the center of the city. They skirted Regent’s Park and stopped on Marylebone Road.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Petrovitch.

  “I must report back to Miss Sonja,” said Iguro. He left the motor running, but put the gear into neutral. “She must learn of all that has occurred since we lost contact—something which is entirely your fault.”

  “Sue me. I was being tracked through the prophet’s phone, and I get pissed off when people track me. And I rather assumed those same people were trying to kill me, too.” The power in his arm batteries was getting worryingly low, but he had to move it now and again, just to relieve the pressure of bits of metal sticking into his side. “Tell her what you like.”

  “There is no more than a week before the Freezone is handed back to the authorities. This delay will cost Miss Sonja greatly.”

  “If that’s all she’s worried about, I’ll cover the penalties myself.”

  “You?” Iguro had a strange laugh, more like he was gasping for breath.

  “Yeah. I’m a very rich man. Didn’t you know?”

  From baring his teeth in mirth, his lips became thin lines. “How is that possible?”

  “One of those things where you use the capitalist system against itself. I borrowed some money, and used it as leverage to short-sell oil on the spot market. When I say oil, I mean a lot of it, of course. Crude was trading at around a hundred and eighty U.S. dollars two days ago: I promised to sell twenty-five million barrels to whoever wanted it at one seventy, close of play yesterday. I sold the lot in seconds.”

  “But where would you find that amount of oil?”

  “Look, the oil doesn’t actually exist. It could have been sugar, cocoa, aluminium or pork bellies—it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I bet everything on the price of oil dropping below one seventy. I could pretend to buy it, and then pretend to sell it to the traders who’d snapped up my futures because they thought I was mad.” Petrovitch shrugged. “I barely understand it myself. It’s a stupid way of doing business. But because I actually bought the oil as it dipped below fifty dollars, I made one hundred and twenty dollars a barrel. After brokers’ fees, I made a shade under three billion dollars—about five and a half billion euros.”

  Iguro reached forward and turned the engine off, and sat in silence, digesting the news.

  “How did you know that would happen?”

  “I knew because I was about to offer the world cheap energy forever. Oil’s still going to be useful, but we’re not going to be burning it in engines. Not that that got in the way
of a market stampede to the bottom. By the time sanity had been restored, I’d done the deal.”

  “You could buy whatever you want. Anything. Anything at all.” He was awestruck.

  Petrovitch wedged his knees against the dashboard. “The stuff I want most I can’t buy. This is just seed money: there’s hard work to be done if I want to make real things grow. You know, stuff that actually lasts. But like I said, I think Sonja’s got other things on her mind than her contractual obligations.”

  “You wish me to deliver a message to her?”

  “If you could.”

  Tabletop tapped on the window, and Petrovitch cracked the door open.

  “Problem?” she asked.

  “Not really. Just explaining something to Iguro.” He opened the door wider and slipped out. “I think he might finally get it this time.”

  “Petrovitch-san. The message?” Iguro leaned over from the driver’s seat to see him better.

  “Yeah, that.” He scratched at his nose. “How about ‘I know what you’ve done and the moment I get to prove it is the moment you start running’? That’s a bit melodramatic, though, and she’s never been one for running. I could always go for the menacing ‘I know where you live,’ but she knows I know, so what would be the point? Just tell her the CIA tried to steal the nuclear bomb from the New Machine Jihad. That should give her some indication how deep in the shit she’s swimming.”

  He slammed the door, obscuring Iguro’s open mouth.

  Tabletop watched the car spin its wheels in an effort to get away from them. “Do you think she’s going to kill him?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t have fancied being one of the techs who put the bomb together though. If any of them are still alive, I’ll be very surprised. It’s not like we lack building sites.” Petrovitch looked at the silent cranes that dominated the skyline. “Why did she do it?”

  “You still don’t know for sure that she did, Sam.”

  “Yeah, I do. It’s just time to stop making excuses for her.”

  “So where does the priest fit in?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, if Tina’s right, and part of his plan is that he makes sure me and Maddy split up permanently… what does he hope happens next?”