by Simon Morden
A familiar voice drawled: “Is that necessary?”
“He’s asking for it.”
“And you got sucked in? Come on out, Petrovitch. We’ve been expecting you.”
Petrovitch could see a bulky figure in a plaid shirt framed in the doorway. He added that and the accent, and worked out it could only be Sorenson.
“Hey, kid. Where are your glasses?”
“You’ll have to ask the peshka. Maybe they’ve been so busy slapping me around and playing with their yielda that they don’t remember.” Petrovitch stumbled out, blinking. The watery light was bright enough to make his eyes smart.
“Come on, boys. Hand ’em over,” said Sorenson. He waited a few moments, and the door started to close again. He stepped forward and held one of his meaty hands up to prevent it moving any further. “Don’t make me come in there.”
The bearded man thought about defiance, and decided against it. He reached into his pocket and threw Petrovitch’s spectacles onto the floor outside the confines of the lift. He followed it with a gobbet of phlegm.
Sorenson was just about satisfied. He let go of the door, and when it had shut, he kicked it for good measure. He scooped up the glasses and pressed them into Petrovitch’s hands.
“You look like crap,” said Sorenson.
“Yeah. So everyone keeps on telling me.” Petrovitch jammed the bent frames onto his face, wincing as the cold metal touched his open wound. “I was wondering where you’d gone to. Then I was told a police station had been destroyed in an explosion, and I thought of you. That’s what you used to do, right? Blow stuff up?”
He blinked and tried to make the lenses more or less cover his eyes. He was in what used to be a community lounge for the residents of the tower block and was now a war room. It was at the very top of the building, with only the roof above, and the long plate-glass windows afforded an uninterrupted panorama of the destruction below. The tower was on the south side of Paradise: he could see Regent’s Park off to his left, and the City straight ahead, partially obscured by the smoke rising from many fires—one of which was St. Joseph’s.
Sorenson, dressed in a looted flying jacket and urban camouflage trousers, swung a medical kit onto a table. “Sit down, kid. I’ll patch you up.”
Petrovitch perched on the edge of the table and tried to keep his head still as the American swabbed lukewarm water across his cheek. There was a map of the Metrozone pinned to the wall, with arrows pointing toward the nearby domiks and down the Edgware Road.
“Where do you fit in here, Sorenson?” Petrovitch watched as a teenager with a pair of expensive binoculars slung around his neck passed a note to one of the women near the map. The woman moved one of the arrows back from Regent’s Park and onto Marylebone station.
If that had been Madeleine’s escape route, she was now cut off.
“Where do I fit in? Well now: how about the top?” Sorenson tutted. “You need stitches and a slab of fresh skin. All I’ve got are these steristrips. You’re going to have a scar.”
“Like that’s the thing I’m most worried about. Let’s get this straight: you’re in charge of this rabble now? What happened to the other guy?”
“I killed him. What’s this white stuff you’ve got all over you? You look like a ghost.”
“Pulverized concrete dust. And stop changing the subject: what happened to you? I thought you’d go feral, but zaebis! This is extreme.”
Sorenson used more pressure on Petrovitch’s cut than was strictly necessary, causing him to suck air in through his clenched teeth. “You really don’t know when to shut up, do you? What else could I have done? My life was ruined, squeezed between Oshicora and Chain, and no way to get either of them off my back. Until you gave me an idea.”
“So what pizdets am I responsible for now? Apart from you tearing the city up like it was Saturday night in Tashkent?”
“You got involved with Oshicora because someone tried to take his daughter. That got me thinking.” Sorenson packed the medical kit away, discarding the mound of bloody swabs into a plastic bag. “What better way to get revenge on the blackmailing sumbitch?”
“Oh, you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”
“Wasn’t difficult, in the end. TKO a guard and grab his gun, bust my way into her room. She didn’t resist. Cooperated almost, especially after I told her I’d blow her brains out if we got stopped. Once we were out of the tower, I thought of taking her to Marchenkho, but you know what? I wanted to call the shots for once.”
Petrovitch tested the strength of the steristrips, contorting his face to hide his surprise.
“The man in charge here thought he could use me, just like Chain and Oshicora, but I showed him. His body’s buried under the police station I blew up.”
“Yobany stos, Sorenson. This puts you right up there with the New Machine Jihad, and they’re crazier than a shluha vokzal’naja.”
“About that,” said Sorenson. He reached into his jacket and held up a slim silver case. It was Petrovitch’s rat.
Petrovitch blinked. “Where the chyort…?”
“Your little Japanese girlfriend had it all along. Now here’s the thing: the jihadists seem to think you’re coming to get her, and I don’t know what I’m going to do about that.” He flipped the rat open to reveal the screen, already smeared with greasy fingerprints.
Despite that, the last two lines of text clearly said: Petrovitch is coming. Petrovitch will save you.
“Not bad for a Yankee,” said Petrovitch. “You’ve got it almost right. I was coming to find her, sure, but only because she’s worth a lot of money to the right people. Comrade Marchenkho for one. Thanks to the Jihad, I knew where to find her.”
“Must be peachy to be so wanted. Why don’t we go and say hello?”
The casual tone in Sorenson’s voice told Petrovitch that it was probably time he stopped talking and started listening. The American had entered his very own Heart of Darkness, and he seemed content to stay there.
Petrovitch followed Sorenson to a pair of double doors set in a partition wall. Behind them was a long-disused cafeteria, complete with stains on the paintwork and rusting food warmers. And Sonja Oshicora was chained to one of those, her right wrist held high by the handcuff attached to one of the uprights.
She was dirty, bruised and seething with rage. She was bleeding from trying to force her restraints, and she tried again as she looked up and saw Sorenson. The metal cut into her already abraded skin. “Kisama!”
Sorenson was unmoved. “Brought someone to see you,” he said, and stepped aside.
Petrovitch was used to the sight of a hostage tied to some piece of furniture or other: in his day it had usually been a Soviet-era cast-iron radiator. But Boris—even Boris, with his drinking and whoring and love of dog fights—hadn’t smacked his captives around. Up to the point where they were either released or had their throats cut, they’d been treated quite civilly. It had been just business to him.
The state Sonja was in filled Petrovitch with the burning light of righteous anger. To stop his hands from shaking, he shoved his balled fists in his coat pockets.
Where he made a discovery. The Paradise militia had relieved him of his Norinco and both boxes of bullets. It clearly hadn’t occurred to them that a man carrying two different calibers of ammunition and just one nine millimeter pistol needed to be searched a little more carefully.
The Beretta had become lodged in the deep recesses of the inner lining. He could feel its shape through the cloth and, if he delved a little further, the hole through which it had slipped.
Sorenson mistook his distracted air for a brooding silence. “You see?” he said to Sonja. “He’s here, but can’t save you. I’m betting he doesn’t even want to. No matter what the New Machine Jihad says: you’re not going anywhere.”
Sonja continued to glare at Sorenson, and all but ignore Petrovitch. “When my father finds you, it will take you a year to die.”
Petrovitch remembered his minute-old vow
to keep his own counsel just in time. It stopped him from blurting out the obvious: Sorenson didn’t know that Oshicora-san was dead, that Hijo was in charge and that the Jihad had taken over the tower just after he’d smuggled Sonja out of the building.
And Sonja, by not looking at Petrovitch, was clearly indicating that she needed him to play along, or being shackled to a catering appliance was going to be the least of her worries.
“I reckon on another hour, Princess, and the Paradise militia will be having a fish dinner in your old man’s Zen garden.”
“Your band of criminals will be slaughtered by my father’s men. Then they will come for you.”
“I don’t think so. First sign of them or your jihadist friends, and that trolley you’re attached to goes out the window. Seems a shame to waste a good pair of cuffs, but you’ve got to make sacrifices.” Sorenson snorted at his own attempt at humor. “What d’you reckon, Petrovitch?”
Petrovitch fingered the Beretta. “You got to her first. You get to do with her what you want.”
“Damn right,” said Sorenson, crowing, “and don’t you forget it.”
27
Sorenson was interrupted by an out-of-breath child bearing a slip of paper. He opened it, read it, and jutted his chin out as he crushed the note inside his fist.
“Go on, kid. Beat it.”
“Bad news?” asked Petrovitch.
“Nothing that can’t be taken care of. Some bunch of crazies are looting north of Hyde Park, and distracting my troops.”
Petrovitch raised his eyebrows. It had to be the Hyde Park chapter of the Jihad. “Yeah. Crazies I’ll go with: troops isn’t what I’d call your lot, though.”
Sorenson looked at Sonja and then at Petrovitch. “I’m going to deal with this, Okay? Be right back.”
The moment he’d gone, she started to speak: Petrovitch put his finger to his lips and checked through the open door. Sorenson’s broad back was obscuring the map in the war room.
“Okay. Tell me what you know about the New Machine Jihad. Quickly.” He stood so he could still see through the door.
“They helped Sorenson and me escape out of the tower, opened doors and turned off alarms.”
“Not what I needed. Who are they, and why are they so interested in you? And me.”
“I don’t know.” She yanked at her chain again. “You are going to rescue me, right?”
“Yobany stos, Sonja! I’m working on it. I don’t even know if I’m Sorenson’s guest or his prisoner. Probably both. And you had my rat, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You stole it from me. You have no idea how much grief you’ve caused.”
“I had someone take it from the police for you: I wanted to give it back. I was just waiting for the right moment. And without it, I wouldn’t have gotten this far. The Jihad talk to me through it.”
Petrovitch glanced around again. “When did they start?”
“Yesterday evening. I was hiding from Hijo, and they sent me a message, telling me the bullet train would run again.”
“Shinkansen ha mata hashirou,” said Petrovitch. Sorenson was visible briefly, then strode out of his eye-line. “Did you ever meet the programmers who created VirtualJapan?”
“I went to so many parties, was introduced to so many people. Probably, then.”
“Because I’m looking for a group of hardcore coders who still owe your father loyalty, and I can’t think of anyone else the Jihad is likely to be. Whoever they are, if I’m going to bust you out of here, they’re going to have to help.” He pushed his glasses up against his nose. “I need the rat.”
Sorenson barked one more order and started back across the canteen. “You two been getting properly acquainted?”
“Yeah,” said Petrovitch, “But I’ve got better things to do than babysit your prize zoo exhibit.”
“Why such a hurry? You wouldn’t be thinking of running off to the jihadists, would you?”
“Sorenson, can we get one thing straight? Just because they call themselves the New Machine Jihad doesn’t mean for a moment they’re a bunch of towel-headed Islamofascists, or whatever the insult of the week is. You carry on like that, and you won’t even notice them before they make you squeal like a piggy.”
“So tell me, Petrovitch: why should I worry about them?”
“Because they’re the reason you’re using runners, not mobile phones. They’ve already reduced you to fighting like it’s the Middle Ages, and they haven’t even looked in your direction yet.”
Sorenson had the grace to look uncomfortable. “They wouldn’t dare.”
“With half your militia tied up at Regent’s Park, and the other half carrying fur coats and diamond rings back from Oxford Street, how vulnerable did you want to make yourself?” Petrovitch shook his head and looked wide-eyed at Sorenson. “You never went to West Point, did you?”
“I was offered a place. Didn’t want to do the time.”
“Why don’t we look at this map of yours?”
“You know jack shit about tactics, Petrovitch.”
“Listen, you raspizdyay Yankee kolhoznii: I’ve been playing strategy games on computers since I first sucked milk from my mother’s tit. I can recite almost everything written by Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, and from that blank expression you’re giving me, you think they might be something you order from the corner deli rather than two of the greatest military philosophers in history.”
Sorenson’s cheeks colored up. “You done, Petrovitch?”
“Pretty much.” He stared at the American and waited, tapping his foot.
“Come on, then,” said Sorenson eventually. He looked down at Sonja and scrubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Anything you need?”
“Your head on a spike, issunboshi?” Her lips were puffy and cracked, yet she still retained a studied leanness. She wasn’t going to show any weakness even if it killed her.
Which, of course, it might.
“You’ll change your tune, Princess.” Sorenson straightened his shoulders and puffed his chest out. “Lie there in your own dirt for a while: someone as precious as you will hate that.”
“We’re wasting time, Sorenson,” said Petrovitch, as much to stop his own embarrassment as to prevent more abuse.
“I guess so.” He took one last look at his prisoner, then turned away from her.
Petrovitch hung behind until Sorenson had gone through the doorway. Sonja scowled at him, and he tapped his wrist where he might wear a watch. Give me time, he meant.
Sorenson led him to the map. The arrows had moved again, and not to Paradise’s advantage. Petrovitch took all the information in and gave his considered opinion.
“So whose smart idea was this? This whole thing is pizdets.”
“It was mine. Diversionary raids into here and here, while the main thrust is down this road here, ending at the Oshicora Tower.”
“Diversionary to who? So far, you’ve started a war with Regent’s Park that you could have avoided, and whatever objectives you set your main thrust, as you laughably call it, have been lost to the lure of shiny baubles. Your attack has petered out into nothing.” Petrovitch shook his head. “You don’t loot until you’ve won. You make alliances with your neighbors to secure your borders. You concentrate all the forces you can on your single objective. You put your best units in your second line, with your most expendable lunatics in front. Pin the enemy down, outflank them and attack from the sides, bypass and isolate strongholds, keep moving because it unbalances the opposition, exploit the weak points and neutralize the strong.”
They both became aware that the rest of the room had fallen silent. Sorenson looked like he’d swallowed something cold and hard that was now sitting in the pit of his stomach, and Petrovitch risked a sideways glance around.
“Yeah, Sorenson?” He leaned in close and lowered his voice. “Perhaps we should go and rethink your battle plan somewhere a little more private.”
Walking stiffly and avoiding eye contact, Sore
nson walked briskly to the stairs leading up to the roof. After he’d left, and before Petrovitch had gone through the door, the muttering started.
He was so intent on listening to what they were saying, that when the door closed behind him, he was unprepared for the hand at his throat and the wall at his back.
“Goddamn know-it-all, undermining my authority. I should have had you killed.”
Petrovitch put his hand in his pocket and rummaged around while Sorenson’s fingers tightened around his neck, cutting off the blood. When he’d got a good grip on the Beretta, he jammed it barrel-first into the angle of the American’s jaw.
“You mean like how you had your father killed?”
The stranglehold lost its potency, but Petrovitch kept the gun where it was. He used it to guide the man back until it was Sorenson against the breeze-block wall, not his own.
“Turn around. Hands out, legs apart. You know the drill.” Petrovitch stepped back so he was out of range of feet or fists.
“Who told you about my father?”
“Everybody. It’s not exactly a secret anymore.” Petrovitch patted him down and relieved him of a kitchen knife, a Magnum, and the rat. He kissed its shiny cover and slipped it in his inside pocket.
Sorenson growled low in his throat. “In a minute, someone’s going to walk through that door…”
“And what? Judging on the mood in there, they’ll shake my hand and help me pitch your body over the parapet. If anybody could have taken advantage of today, it was the Paradise militia. You fucked it up for them. Something tells me that unless you play it very smart—like listening to me—your reign as czar is going to be over before it starts. Now, get up those stairs.”
There was another door, edged by bright daylight. Sorenson went through first, Petrovitch following. The top of the tower was pooled with water blown into corrugations by the wind. The sky was huge and low, almost as if it could be touched with an upstretched hand. The Metrozone was laid bare around them.
Some of the younger kids were serving as spotters. They saw Sorenson held at gunpoint, and looked nervously at each other.