by Simon Morden
“Should I come?” asked Lucy.
“No one’s coming. And this time, you’re not going to argue.” He climbed across Tabletop and jumped down into the road. “Bag.”
They passed it out and he threw it around his neck and over his shoulder. Part of the strap caught on his metalwork. That it took moments to free it wasn’t the point; that he had to do it at all made him grind his teeth.
Then he looked up at the three faces staring out at him. “Why the chyort do you put up with me?” He looked left and right, even though he knew nothing was coming, and that the Oshicora guards were still back at the hotel. Someone was watching.
The camera above the Jesuits’ door was aimed directly at him. By the time he walked across the street, the heavy oak door was ajar. He put his hand on it and hesitated briefly, glancing up in time to see the camera’s lens wink and whirr.
If they’d been waiting for him, he was in danger of becoming predictable.
“Five minutes and I’m out of here,” he said, and shoved the door aside.
Sister Marie caught the swinging door and stopped it from crashing into the plasterwork. “Welcome,” she said. “No Madeleine?”
“Not this time. Maybe not ever.” His face twitched. “Where is he?”
“The cardinal? Down here, on the left,” she started, but Petrovitch was already stalking down the narrow white-washed corridor, checking each door in turn before shouldering one open.
“Doctor Petrovitch,” said the man behind the desk. Two words, and already his midwestern accent had got his guest’s back up.
Petrovitch kicked at the chair facing the desk and fell into it. “His Excellency Cardinal James Matthew Carillo, Society of Jesus, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Now we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, where the fuck is that lying priest you’ve been milking for information about Michael. I’d like a word with him.”
The cardinal tugged at the sleeves of his black cassock and reached across the desk to where a silver teapot sat steaming on a tray. “Shall I pour?”
“Stop stalling.” He reached into his bag, and he felt, rather than heard, Sister Marie stiffen. He pulled out the bottle of vodka and slammed it down on the polished wood. “I’m quite happy to turn the whole of the Freezone upside down looking for him, but I’m kind of assuming you know exactly where he is and would very much like to save me the trouble.”
Carillo passed Petrovitch an empty porcelain cup before taking one for himself. Petrovitch unscrewed the bottle and splashed some in the bottom of each.
“Chtob vse byli zdorovy.” The cardinal raised his teacup and drained the contents. Petrovitch followed suit, then launched the fragile china at the empty fireplace.
“Force of habit. Are you going to tell me where this Father John is, or am I going to have to break something else?”
“It may not surprise you to learn that I’ve been around the block once or twice myself, Doctor Petrovitch.” Carillo cleared his throat noisily. Whichever block he’d lived on, it hadn’t involved knocking back neat spirits at six in the morning. “Or can I call you Sam?”
“No, let’s keep this professional. The priest: where is he?”
“Surprisingly enough, we don’t put electronic tags on the clergy. That’s a Protestant thing.”
Petrovitch turned his head. “Sister? Could you hold this for a moment?” He dipped into his bag for his automatic, remembering to hold it by the barrel as he brought it out.
The nun took the gun. “Because?”
“Because otherwise the temptation to shoot this obstructive wanker in the face will prove too much, and I don’t want to be in a position where you and me end up in a firefight. Now,” and he twisted back, “where is he?”
The cardinal steepled his fingers. “You seem very anxious to find him, and not in a partake-of-one-of-the-sacraments sort of way. Are you intending to visit violence upon his person?”
Petrovitch leaned forward and stretched out his left arm. “It may not be very grown up of me, but he started it.” He used the same arm to sweep the desk of everything on it. The teapot, tray, jug, sugar, bottle, papers, lamp, statuette of Ignatius Loyola: all ended up jumbled, shattered or dented, and the small book-lined room now smelled like a distillery.
He heard the sound of a gun slide being pulled behind his ear, and he ignored it. He leaned back and laid his arm in his lap.
Carillo wiped a fleck of milk from the back of his hand. “I’ll take that as a yes. We have our own procedures to deal with any specific allegations you’d like to make against a particular priest. We’re quite rigorous when we investigate, but I’m sure you appreciate that just giving you Father Slater’s address isn’t an option here.”
“And I’m sure you appreciate that, what do you call it, breaking the seal of the confessional means that our beloved John Slater is going to get his bollocks ripped off by the Pope himself.” Petrovitch let that sink in, then brushed away the gun barrel that was tickling the side of his neck. “All the information you’ve got about Michael is from my wife, via that little wooden box in his church.”
“That’s,” and Carillo paused, “a very serious accusation to make, Doctor Petrovitch.”
“If that was all the arsehole had done, I’d go round and just give him a good slapping. He’s in league with the New Machine Jihad—who suddenly think they’re nuclear-capable. We’re in Armageddonist territory here, Your fucking Excellency, and if I don’t have some answers soon, it’s going to be too shitting late to do anything about it.” He took a deep breath. “I’m not used to swearing in English, but I’m making the effort because you’re a Yank, and it’s important that you understand just how trouser-pissingly scary this all is.”
“There’s a bomb? In the Metrozone?”
Petrovitch didn’t bother to correct him about either the nature of the weapon or its location. “In about ten minutes, maybe less, the Freezone is going to declare a city-wide state of emergency. Sonja Oshicora thinks I took the bomb, and she won’t balk at sticking red-hot pokers up my arse if she thinks I can tell her where it is. My problem is that only someone who knows my life inside out could make her believe that. Two people have access to that level of detail. One is my wife, the other is her confessor.”
The cardinal would have made an adept poker player. His face betrayed almost no emotion at all. “How can I contact you?”
“You don’t. I’ll give you a couple of hours and I’ll call you.” Petrovitch stood up. “We understand each other here, right?”
“I am aware of what is at stake, Doctor Petrovitch.” Carillo extended his hand warily. “Thank you for your candor.”
“Yeah. Is that what they call it now?” He met the cardinal’s gesture. “I’d call it being a foul-mouthed, bad-tempered little shit, and sooner or later I’m going to have to do something about that.”
“But not now.”
“I’m just a little busy here.” Petrovitch retrieved his gun from Sister Marie and put it back in his bag. He looked at the pile of broken china and sodden paper. “Sorry about your stuff. I hope none of it was valuable.”
“Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and woodworm destroy them and thieves can break in and steal.” Carillo made a dismissive wave. “Only things.”
“Zatknis’ na hui, you pious perdoon stary. Go and talk to who you have to.” Petrovitch glanced at the clock in the corner of his vision. “Time I disappeared.”
“Sister Marie will show you out.” The cardinal was already tugging at the landline phone’s cable, pulling it out from the mess on the floor.
They swept back down the corridor, and Petrovitch called ahead to Valentina.
“Everything you said,” asked the nun of his back. “Was it true?”
“If I lied to him, I’m going to lie to you.” He put his hand on the door to the outside. “Why don’t you find a news feed? It might help you decide.”
“Good luck,” she said. “God sp
eed.”
“You know I don’t believe any of that govno, don’t you? Fate is what you make it.” He could hear Valentina’s car right outside.
“It won’t stop me from praying for you, Samuil Petrovitch. I think you need all the help you can get.”
14
They sat around a flickering screen, watching Sonja’s broadcast. None of them felt the need to speak during it—it was self-explanatory. When she’d finished, she took a moment to stare into the camera and straight into Petrovitch’s soul, trying to communicate just how very disappointed she was with him.
Petrovitch turned off the video feed and unplugged the lead from the screen to the computer strapped to his body. He threw the loose end snaking across the floor and looked sour.
Lucy got up from her fold-down chair and switched the white noise off, then just stood there like a little girl lost.
“What happens now?”
“I’m going to try and find a kitchen. Come on.” Tabletop stood at the door to the waiting area and scanned the overhead signs to see if there might be a clue. Obstetrics, Oncology, Medical Imaging, yes—all the equipment was ready and waiting for doctors and patients—but a strong cup of morning coffee still eluded her.
Petrovitch was left with Valentina.
“You must tell Sonja,” she said. “Even if she does not believe you, she will doubt herself.”
“Tabletop was right. I should have said something earlier.” He cupped his face with his hands and dragged them down his cheeks. “I’ve made it even more of a pizdets than it should be.”
“You were not to know.”
“I’m supposed to know everything.”
She moved along the row of seats, still covered in plastic wrapping from the supplier. She sat next to him and drew her legs underneath her.
“You are not God.”
“Not yet. I will be one day, if I live that long. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a hundred years ahead, but I can’t tell Lucy what happens next.”
If she thought his hubris worthy of comment, she chose not to. “Call Sonja. Explain to her you have nothing to do with New Machine Jihad. That you are both victims. She will listen to you.”
“Yeah, I know she will. But this will be the first time that it won’t make a difference. We’re running out of options here. Whoever’s done this has got it nailed down tight.”
“Hmm,” she said. “No plan is perfect. We must look for weak link. Exploit it. Where would that be?”
Petrovitch closed his eyes. “I’m tired, Tina. Too tired to think. Didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“I heard.”
She might have been embarrassed, but he wasn’t. He blew out a stream of air. “I thought… it was all going to be okay, at last. Now look at us.”
Valentina clicked her tongue. “Of course, if priest is involved, you and Madeleine apart is part of scheme, da?”
Petrovitch blinked. “Chyort.”
“So you call Sonja now. Then we get to work.” She patted him on the shoulder and went to find the others.
On his own, in the semi-dark, plugged into the wall to recharge his battery packs, Petrovitch made the connection carefully. No casual throwing of a message across an unguarded network this time; he obscured his routing, and ensured it was impossible to trace him. It would have been easier with the rat, but he could still work his magic.
She wasn’t alone, and it took her a few moments to spot the window opening on her screen. He activated his usual avatar to stand in his place: it would look like him, mirror his movements and his expressions, but it would be manifestly not him, and he’d set himself against a shifting background of images that almost chose themselves.
Sonja was leaning over the desk, shouting at someone in Japanese, with English words rising from the stream like rocks. Petrovitch could have run her conversation through a translator, but the gist of it was clear enough.
Not only had her personal security detail failed to collect him, they’d missed everybody. Two of them were in hospital, as a result of an unfortunate encounter with Madeleine’s fists and feet.
“Hey,” said Petrovitch, “down here.”
She did a double-take. His image held up his hand in greeting.
Sonja looked over the top of her screen at the current object of her ire and dismissed him with a bark of barely concealed disdain.
“The hired help not up to much, then?” he said. “That’s where surrounding yourself with friends who’ll keep you on the right path really pays off.”
“Sam. What have you done?” She sat down.
“Not what you think.”
Sonja leaned forward and opened a drawer. Its contents were hidden from him, but it didn’t take a genius to work out what she was attempting to do.
“Did you do it?” she asked plainly.
“No. No, I didn’t.” He could see the muscles in her forearm flex as she felt across a tiny keyboard for the next letter. “Look: I need your full attention for a bit, which I won’t have if you’re trying to instruct your minions to track down my physical location. They’ll never find it, and it’ll just mean you have to shout some more. So give it up and talk to me.”
She reluctantly put both her hands on the desk. “I’ll find you.”
“Maybe you will. But not before I’m ready. So let’s talk.”
“There’s only one thing we really need to discuss: where’s the bomb, Sam?”
“There is no bomb, Sonja. It’s no more than a stage prop.”
“You said it was a bomb.”
“I was wrong.”
“You? Wrong? I thought you were never wrong.”
In real life, Petrovitch put his head back and stared blindly at the ceiling. “In my defense, I wasn’t the only one taken in. But when I got out of the hospital, I went back to Container Zero for another look. Someone had been in that container long before the wrecking crew broke into it, and arranged everything like they were dressing a shop window.”
“What… I told Iguro that no one was allowed near it.”
“Yeah. He said. I ignored him. Good job, too. Sonja, they—whoever they are—were waiting for me. They had to get the bomb after I’d seen it, but before I could check its authenticity. Madeleine was on her way back with a geiger-counter when they broke my arm, stole my rat and carried the bomb away. Ten more minutes, and I would have been able to prove there was as much fissile material in that cylinder as there is in one of my farts.”
She bit her lower lip. Her teeth were impossibly white.
“I wish, I wish I could believe you. I have a credible threat against the Freezone made by a known organization who claim to have a nuclear weapon. What am I supposed to do?”
“Call their bluff. Tell the so-called New Machine Jihad to take their bomb and stick it up their collective zhopu. Let the world know that it’s business as usual, and you’ll be ready to hand over to the Metrozone on time. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”
“I can’t take the risk, Sam. Everyone thinks that the Jihad are a front for you. Why don’t you come in? We can sort this out.” She grabbed a tissue and pressed it into the corner of her eye. “If you’ve done nothing, we can prove that together.”
“Nice offer, Sonja. But that’s exactly what they want to happen. They’ve designed this so that handing myself in is the next logical step, except that I’m not going to play by their rules anymore.”
“Do you know how mad you sound? Listen to yourself!”
“Sonja—I lived through Armageddon. Do you realize how much I despise them? They ruined my life. I was born with a malformed heart because of radiation. I lost my father to cancer. I grew up in a city that was a social and economic basketcase because of what the Armageddonists did to Europe. And now I’m supposed to be running around with my own bomb threatening to set it off because the UN won’t let Michael out to play? You’re out of your yebani mind if you think I’ve got something to do with this!”
“You and the Jihadis want the s
ame thing. You’ve run out of time to influence the UN, so now you’re trying this. It won’t work.”
“Of course it won’t work. I’m going public after I’ve talked to you and I’ll tell everyone who wants to hear that there is no bomb in the Freezone. Why would I do that if I wanted to coerce the international community into doing what I want?”
Sonja sat back with a thump. “You might be smarter than me, Sam, but you can’t just talk your way out of this.”
“I’m smarter than all but half a dozen people on the planet. That has no bearing on whether I’m telling the truth or not. You’ve jeopardized the whole concept of the Freezone by falling for this scam. Don’t compound the error by doing their work for them, whoever the huy they are.” His avatar folded his arms, something that the real-life Petrovitch just couldn’t do anymore.
“The Freezone is finished if I don’t arrest you. Everyone knows we’re close, and I can’t be seen to allow personal feelings to get in the way of doing what’s right.” She clutched at her tissue. “Make it easy for me, Sam. Tell me where you are.”
“You should be concentrating on the Jihad. I know I will be, and if you’re not going to dig them out from whichever stone they’ve crawled under, I’ll do it for you. Just stay out of my way if you’re not going to help.” He was all but finished. “And leave Madeleine out of this. You’ve done enough already.”
“She’s wanted. Along with everyone with you.” Sonja regained a measure of calm. She straightened her jacket and dabbed at the end of her nose. “I will have what I want in the end.”
“Yeah, good luck with that. So, are we leaving it like this?”
“Looks that way. Sam, I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as you’ll end up being. I’ll give you the bomb, and the Jihad, and whoever put them up to this. You’ll end up looking like a mudak, and I’ll be the yebani hero. Again.” He gave her one last wave. “Sayonara.”
Petrovitch opened his eyes, and took the coffee proffered to him by Lucy.