The Mandel Files, Volume 2: The Nano Flower

by Peter F. Hamilton

  He rubbed his arms. ‘It’s cold here. I’d forgotten what real mountain air could be like.’

  ‘You English are wimps. It’s too hot, it’s too cold, it’s too wet. Never satisfied.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Greg turned back to Vassili. ‘At least we’re allowed to complain.’

  Vassili made a farting sound. ‘Now we’ve found the glories of democracy, when do Russians ever do anything else?’

  Greg glanced at the four young officers standing blank-faced behind Vassili. ‘I need to talk with you, Vassili.’

  ‘Bah, one phone call telling me you’re coming. Then another from the Defence Ministry itself telling me to be vigilant this morning, there are to be no unaccountable accidents in my airspace. So I ask myself, all this for my old orange farmer friend?’

  ‘I’m not farming right now. It’s the middle of the bloody picking season, and I’ve been dragged away.’

  ‘They never leave us alone, do they, Gregory?’ Vassili said soberly.

  ‘This isn’t the Army, the English government, Vassili. I’m doing this for another friend of mine.’

  Vassili’s bushy eyebrows rose. ‘This must be a tremendous friendship you have.’

  Greg jerked a thumb back at the Pegasus. ‘Julia Evans, the owner of Event Horizon.’

  ‘The Queen of Peterborough herself? What circles we two poor footsore soldiers move in these days, Gregory. Come then, come and tell me how a simple Russian general can be of help to the richest woman in the world.’

  Vassili’s office was on the second floor of the airport building, taking up the entire western end, which gave him three glass walls looking out over Nova Kirov, the embryonic farms, and the glacier. There was a desk and high-back chairs, several bookcases, a long table for staff officer briefings. All the furniture was made from hard Siberian pine, with simple geometric carvings; it was old looking, cracked and worn, polished a thousand times. A battered samovar bubbled away on a table in the corner, its charcoal glowing rose-gold, filling the air with wisps of arid smoke. Polished artillery shells were lined up on bookcases and the desk. One wall had a row of framed pictures, beribboned generals Greg didn’t recognize, Yeltsin, Defence Minister Evgeniy Schitov. One frame held a metre length of helicopter blade; there was a chunk missing, as though some animal had taken a bite out of it. It was from a Mi-24 Hind K. Greg had been in it, liaising with Vassili’s troops, when it was hit by AA fire from the Jihad Legion. Thankfully, the pilot’s autorotation technique had been flawless.

  Vassili poured two cups of tea from his samovar as Greg sat at the long table. The tap squeaked each time he turned it. ‘It’s been in my family since before the Bolshevik Revolution,’ he explained. ‘I get the Air Force boys to fly my charcoal in. A general has some privileges.’ He put the cup down in front of Greg. ‘Have you cut yourself shaving, Gregory?’

  Greg’s hand went to the scar by his eye. The dermal seal membrane had peeled off during the night, but the new flesh was pink and tender. ‘Did you hear about the Colonel Maitland crash?’

  Vassili sat opposite him, frowning. ‘The airship? Certainly, it was on the news channels last night. It caught fire somewhere over the Atlantic. Most of the crew got out. You were on board?’

  ‘Yeah. Tell you, it didn’t catch fire by accident.’

  ‘Gregory, my friend, you are too old and too slow to be thinking of combat. Leave it to the stalwarts like that fine young man accompanying you. Please.’

  ‘Christ, don’t you start.’

  Vassili chuckled, and blew on the top of his cup. ‘So, what is it that Julia Evans wishes to know?’

  ‘Is the Russian government mounting a covert deal against Event Horizon? And if so, she’d like to negotiate a peaceful solution.’

  Vassili put his cup down without drinking any of the tea. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Greg didn’t like the way Vassili was looking at him, almost hurt. He hadn’t liked asking, either. Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a good idea.

  ‘You seriously think my government would do such a thing?’

  ‘I don’t think you would, Vassili. But someone inside the republic is going balls out against her. I need to know who.’

  ‘Tell me, Gregory. Start at the beginning, and tell me all of it.’

  Greg took a sip of tea, and started to talk.

  Vassili’s rounded face was thoughtful when he finished. ‘No, it is not the Russian government that is doing this,’ he said. ‘I would know. I have been informed of this atomic structuring science. This Clifford Jepson you talk of approached Mikoyan two days ago with his development sharing proposition. Naturally as good Russians, Mikoyan informed the Defence Ministry. You’ll see that I’m telling the truth, Gregory.’

  Greg pushed his empty cup over the table to Vassili, meeting the general’s eyes. ‘I don’t need to use my gland on you, Vassili.’

  ‘Bah, so morbid and serious you sound, Gregory. I have been of some help to you, have I not? Would you not do the same for me?’

  ‘You have my address, and I’m on the phone. I can’t offer you air defence cover, though.’

  Vassili slapped the table, laughing. ‘So, we now need to know who is dragging my country’s good name through the mud. Yes?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You said it was Mikoyan who informed your government. Didn’t Mutizen approach the Russian Defence Ministry with its generator data?’

  ‘No. I did not realize we owned a kombinate.’

  ‘Only thirty-two per cent. But, yeah, it’s as good as outright ownership.’

  ‘If the government has a controlling stake, they would have made sure the generator data was used to their advantage. It would never be offered to Event Horizon.’ Vassili stood up and took the cups back to the samovar. ‘I don’t like this, Gregory. The briefing officer they sent over explained some of the possible defence applications of atomic structuring. There will be a terrible scramble to acquire it. All or nothing, Gregory. What country could afford to be without it? A shield which can protect whole cities against nuclear weapons and electron compression warheads. The citizens of the world would demand nothing less from their leaders. And I would venture that offensive capabilities will soon follow. People are so very good at that kind of thing. And now you tell me there are unknown players on the field seeking a monopoly. No, this is not good, and not just for Julia Evans.’

  Greg ran a hand across his forehead. Last night he had been too exhausted to give atomic structuring much thought. But Vassili’s comments were opening his mind up to possibilities, few of them good. ‘You think it’ll mean a new arms race?’

  Vassili refilled the cups and returned to the table. ‘Arms race, economic upheaval.’ He gave Greg a sad smile. ‘And just when we were getting over the worse of the Warming.’

  ‘Yeah. England’s a good place to live in again, Vassili. You wouldn’t know it was the same country that suffered under the PSP.’

  ‘Do you have the names of the Russian export companies Jason Whitehurst was trading with?’

  ‘Sure.’ Greg pulled his cybofax out, and called up the data. He handed it over to Vassili. ‘Mean anything to you?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Vassili walked over to his desk and activated his terminal. Greg saw him squirt the export companies’ profiles into the key.

  ‘I have a scrambled link with the military intelligence cores in Moscow,’ Vassili said. ‘And through that I can access the Federal Crime Directorate memory cores. This won’t take a minute.’ He sat behind the desk.

  The shiny artillery shells prevented Greg from seeing what data was in the cubes. He drank some tea.

  Vassili suddenly let out a contemptuous grunt.

  ‘What?’ Greg asked.

  ‘I’m surprised at you, Gregory. Mindstar gave you intelligence data-correlation training, did they not?’

  ‘Three months of lectures and exercises, yeah. Why?’

  ‘Shame on you, then. Do you not recognize that you are in fami
liar territory with this so-called Russian dealer? Have you no sense of déjà vu?’

  ‘Familiar, how?’

  ‘Private organizations that form a powerful national cartel, influencing government departments. Who do you know that duplicates that pattern, Gregory?’

  ‘Shit. Julia. Do you mean we’re up against the Russian equivalent of Julia Evans?’

  Vassili sighed, and switched off his terminal. ‘No, Gregory. Russia envies Julia Evans and Event Horizon. How could we not? A woman who devotes her wealth and power to nurturing her own country. Who does not abuse her position. An honourable person. No, Gregory, we have no equivalent of Julia Evans. Instead, this is something Russians are ashamed of. The other side of democracy’s coin.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Vassili came back to the table, and sat heavily. ‘Dolgoprudnensky,’ he spat.

  ‘Never heard of it. Whatever it is.’

  ‘Bah, of that I am pleased. I would like you to have the good memories of Russia only. But they exist. They are our Mafia, our Yakuza, our Triads. Organized crime, Gregory. These fifteen export companies are all owned by known Dolgoprudnensky members. Every one of them. What was it you were always saying in Turkey? There is no such thing as coincidence.’

  ‘Right. And this Dolgoprudnensky is powerful enough to influence your government?’

  ‘Influence is a strong word. They would not be able to buy our parliamentary cabinet members, not outright. But then, does Julia Evans actually hand over cash to make the New Conservatives do her bidding?’

  ‘Point taken.’

  ‘They are everywhere, Gregory, our bureaucracy is rotten with them. It is only natural, they are the Communist Party’s successors. They grew up in the party’s shadows in the eighties and nineties. There were eight or nine of them in Moscow alone in those days, the Podolsk, Chechen, Solntsevo, others, but the Dolgoprudnensky was the largest even then. It was inevitable they would absorb the rest. Now there is only Dolgoprudnensky, stretching right across the republic. There had been criminals in the Soviet Union before them, but never so well organized, nor so brazen. Afghanistan was the start, the youths who returned from it were a breed the authorities had never dealt with before. The Afgantsi. They had no respect, no morals, no conscience. The war had burnt it out of them, they could see they were fighting for nothing, and worse, for a lie. Not all of them, of course, but enough, a hard core that turned to crime. Then the Communists fell, and the gangs began to fill the vacuum they left behind. The corruption, Gregory, the sheer misuse of power. Westerners still have little conception of how the Communists ransacked our country to maintain their personal status. Dolgoprudnensky doesn’t have their stature, but it is just as insidious, with its rackets and syntho vats, and prostitutes; its legitimate companies defrauding factories and farmers, and the bought officials sanctioning both. We fight them through the police and Justice Ministry, Gregory, fight and fight, until buildings burn and blood is spilt, but the best we can do is hold what ground we have.’

  ‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, it is I who am shamed. It is a terrible thing to tell someone this is the land I am sworn to defend, the kind of people I will die for.’

  ‘We all have organized crime, Vassili. The number of people involved is so small you can’t even call them a minority.’

  Vassili handed Greg’s cybofax back. ‘But the trouble and misery they cause is vast. See what they’ve done to this old man, made him unable to look his friend in the face.’

  ‘Can we help?’ Greg asked. ‘Hand over what we’ve got to the Russian Justice Ministry?’

  ‘What have you got, Gregory? Fifteen companies traded with someone whose airship you say was attacked by tekmercs. Kombinates are jockeying for advantage over a new technology. How can this help us?’

  Greg toyed with his empty cup, feeling stupid. ‘Yeah, right.’ For Victor Tyo it would’ve been enough, for a tekmerc it would’ve been enough. Circumstantial proof which condemned for all of time. How strange that illegality could accept what the law couldn’t.

  ‘I tell you this, Gregory, if you ever meet any of the Dolgoprudnensky face to face, then you shoot. That is the best help you can give us. Shoot. Shoot them down like rabid animals.’

  ‘Is there a name?’ he asked. ‘A leader? I like to have a name for what I’m up against. I can form a picture that way.’

  ‘Kirilov. Pavel Kirilov. The bastard, he lives like a merchant from the decadent imperial days, he flaunts his wealth and luxuries, he has many young girls to amuse him. But he is smart, cunning. Nothing ever holds against him in the courts, he laughs at the very best our prosecutors can do.’

  Greg climbed to his feet. The sun was completely above the horizon now, casting long shadows. A thick blanket of mist had risen, glowing pink in the sunlight; it swirled gently above the cultivated land, filling Nova Kirov’s broad streets. People and horses looked like they were wading through it.

  ‘What will you do?’ Vassili asked.

  ‘Find out where Charlotte Fielder got the flower from, then go and meet the alien.’

  Vassili gripped both of his hands. ‘Gregory, if this alien turns out to be a threat, do not keep the knowledge to yourself. Do not become like the kombinates, and seek to gain advantage from it. It is the concern of all the peoples of this world.’

  ‘If it’s dangerous, I’ll scream the house down, no messing. No matter what Julia Evans or Royan might say.’

  ‘Good, for I confess, what you have told me about this alien has frightened me. This is very strange behaviour for a sentient creature. I am forced to say suspicious. Hiding like this, contacting weapons merchants before governments. Not good. You listen to me, my command network is plugged into the Chinese and Eastern Federation Co-Defence League’s Strategic Defence platforms, and I am authorized to use them. I have the codes, and I am prepared to activate the systems, Gregory, on your word.’

  ‘That’s … quite a responsibility.’

  ‘You are a soldier, Gregory, a true soldier. You will do what’s right, I know you will.’ Vassili let go of his hands, and clapped him on the shoulder again, grinning. ‘Besides, since when did you go into battle without covering fire, eh? A soldier’s most important maxim. Backup, Gregory. I will be your backup, once again.’ He shook his head, grin turning to a mock scowl. ‘Bah, listen to us. Two ageing warriors lost in the past. Portentous, are we not?’

  ‘Very, but at least nobody else knows.’

  Vassili laughed.

  ‘One last thing,’ Greg said. ‘Can you run another name through the Federal Crime Directorate memory core for me?’

  ‘Surely. Whose criminal misdeeds do you wish exposed now?’

  ‘Dmitri Baronski.’

  25

  They told Charlotte about Baronski after she woke up. It was his death which finally cancelled all her links with the past. She had relied on him so much, which she hadn’t realized up until then. But now there was nothing left for her, nothing at all; no one to call, nowhere to go.

  So she made it her job to look after Fabian. The last promise made to a dead man. And Fabian needed looking after. His life had been fifteen years of luxury, of staff existing solely to run around after him, of any material possession he wanted a single phone call away. That was all he knew. He went into major sulks if his meals weren’t ready on time. And now he’d seen his home and father fall out of the sky. Burning.

  She was sure the Event Horizon medics didn’t appreciate how deep it went. They had written him off as another shock case. Tranquillizers, a couple of weeks’ therapy, a few months to recover, and it would all be over. They were used to treating combat casualties, not lost, traumatized teenagers.

  He wouldn’t even cry any more. They were given a room together in the platform’s little clinic. She had woken some time after midnight to see him lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He spent the rest of the night nestled in her arms, dozing off in the early hours.

  After brea
kfast the duty nurse found her some clothes; a pair of stonewashed Levi’s, trainers, and an Organic Flux Capacity tour sweatshirt. She turned up the bottom of the Levi’s to stop them from flopping over the trainers, and asked for a belt to pinch the oversize waist. Charlotte stared at herself in the bathroom mirror and shuddered. A Grunge disciple dressing down. At least nobody I know will see me wearing this, thank heavens.

  Then it was time to wait again. None of the clinic staff quite seemed to know what their status was, whether they were guests or prisoners.

  Suzi had been in the next room, her knee wrapped in bioware membranes, plugged into medical ’ware stacks with thick bundles of fibre-optic cable. Charlotte had thanked her for getting them off the Colonel Maitland, had a few words; but Suzi didn’t know what was going on either. ‘Greg’ll be back soon,’ she said. ‘We’ll find out what’s going down then. And you’ll have your big moment.’ The casual way she said it chilled Charlotte, like she didn’t have any choice but to tell them what they wanted to know, reducing her to a cyborg. Her life was being programmed by others. Nothing really new in that. But that didn’t make it the same.

  Delivering that bloody flower. Her one spark of independence in years. She knew she shouldn’t have done it. But delivering a flower from a lover – it was just fun. Harmless fun. How could it possibly have ended like this?

  Baronski would have known what to do next. In fact, he would have warned her off in the first place. If only she had confided in him.

  In the end, Fabian’s blank-faced suffering had got to her. She asked to go outside for a breath of fresh air. They even had to have a hardline escort for that.

  Outside was heat, noise, and the smell. They walked along one side of the platform, looking down on the two-metre generator vent pipes peeing brown water into the ocean, it stank of salt and sulphur. The bass thundering noise of the cascades made her feel queasy.