Equations of Life

by Simon Morden

  “I like you,” said Chain, once the water had started gargling noisily through the machine. “So I’ll tell you how the conversation with Marchenkho went.”

  “Marchenkho? The organitskaya boss?”

  “I’ve got him on speed dial. Now Marchenkho might be a vodka-soused old villain who models himself on Stalin, but we go back a long way, so he takes my calls. I tell him that two of his lieutenants are in the mortuary, having been scraped off the steps of a church, and guess what?”

  “He already knows?”

  “He already knows.” Chain went to the window and peered past the vertical blinds at the face of the glass monolith being erected opposite. “But he’s not apologizing. Marchenkho apologizes a lot, especially when he doesn’t mean it, so I guess he’s livid that his carefully planned, once-in-a-lifetime chance at taking Oshicora’s daughter hasn’t worked out.”

  “This isn’t sounding good,” said Petrovitch, slumping further down.

  “I mention that I’d talked to some of the witnesses. That I can link all the innocent bystanders gunned down by those two idiot slabs of Ukrainian pork directly to him.” Chain ambled back to the coffee pot, which hadn’t finished, and opened up a packet of nicotine patches lying on the table. “He doesn’t like that.”

  “Does that mean the hired help screwed up?”

  “It does indeed.” He peeled a patch off its backing strip, and pulled up his sleeve. He pressed it into place above his wrist, revealing that there was another just further up under his shirt cuff. “You catch on quick, Petrovitch. Tell me what happens next.”

  Petrovitch frowned. “You traded me,” he said after a moment.

  “Pretty much. I wouldn’t be able to stick anything on Marchenkho, but I might take out one or two of his upper management and they’d be watching their backs for months. So he’s called off the attack dogs on you in exchange for some peace and quiet.” Chain got fed up from waiting, and grabbed the coffee pot. As he poured the black liquid into two mugs, spatters of steam hissed on the hot plate. “Want to know how much you were worth?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Two fifty.”

  “Thousand?” Petrovitch sat bolt upright. “Huy na ny!”

  “Enough for a new heart, even. Marchenkho was really very cross with you.” Chain pushed the coffee along the desk at Petrovitch, and sat awkwardly on one corner. “I hope you don’t take milk, because I haven’t got any. Or sugar. Anyway, putting out a contract takes no time at all. Information like that moves fast, and it reaches all the right people—or wrong people—very quickly. Rescinding that same contract takes longer. News that no one wants to hear crawls along. Sometimes it doesn’t get to everyone who needs to know until it’s too late.”

  “Too late. As in me.”

  “You’ve got an uncomfortable week ahead, Petrovitch.” Chain slurped at his coffee. “Bugger. Hot.”

  While Chain dabbed at his scalded lip, Petrovitch pushed his glasses up his nose and made a little ticking noise with his tongue. “How did they get on to me so fast? I mean, I went from the church, to the hospital, to the church, to the university, and suddenly I’m a target.”

  “Two unpalatable options, each equally likely. First, that your face has been lifted from a CCTV file, run through facial recognition software, and your government file rifled for information on where you live, where you work, everything official about you.”

  “A krisha.”

  “As you say, a bent copper. More likely, you’ve been bugged. At the hospital, I would guess.”

  Petrovitch looked down. Now even his own clothes were betraying him. “So for all I know, they’re lining up outside to have a go at me.”

  “They’d have to know roughly where you are first.” Chain went behind his desk and pulled out a magic wand from his top drawer. “Abracadabra.”

  He waved the wand mystically over Petrovitch, top to toe, and gradually zeroed in on his right boot.

  “I’m not taking it off for you,” said Chain, looking up from the floor.

  Petrovitch unlaced the boot and pulled it off his foot. Chain wrinkled his nose.

  “Sorry,” said Petrovitch.

  “I’m guessing girls don’t feature much in your life.” Chain ran the wand around the boot, then inside. He plunged his hand in after it, and after a few moments of pulling faces, retrieved a sticky label. “There.”

  Petrovitch took the wand from the detective and inspected it. A line of lights ran up one side, the bottom four already lit. When he brought it close to the label stuck to the end of Chain’s fingers, all the lights flickered on.

  He peeled the label off Chain, and as he held it up to the window, he could see shadows of circuitry inside. “What do I do with it?”

  “Tear it in half. But if they have access to the CCTV network, they can still track you with cameras, and they know where you live. Anywhere you can hole up safe for a few days?” Chain dragged his coffee closer, and warily tried to drink it.

  “I’m a physicist, not a spy.”

  “A holiday in Russia?”

  “Yeah. That really isn’t a good idea.”

  Chain raised his eyebrows. “How so?”

  “It just isn’t. Okay?” Petrovitch stared up at the detective, who eventually shrugged and muttered something under his breath.

  “Look,” said Chain, “let me explain something to you. I can’t stop you from being killed. I don’t have the resources. I can make it difficult for them, but not impossible. I might even be able to catch your murderer, but I’m sure that’s not going to be of much comfort to you. You’re going to have to help yourself. Any good at that?”

  Petrovitch nodded slowly. “Yeah. Not bad.”

  “Good. So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. Chain, what is it with you and the Oshicoras?”

  The detective slid off his desk and paced the floor. When he spoke, it was with messianic zeal. “I was here. Here for everything. Armageddon: the shock of the first explosions—Dublin, Belfast, Sellafield, the emptying of the countryside, the radioactive rain, the streets choked with refugees, kids—so many kids without their parents—everywhere. We could have lost control in so many different ways, torn apart from the inside, swamped from the outside, or just one of those fucking heretics with their holy nuclear bombs getting across the M25: but we didn’t. We kept it together. We took everybody in. Housed them. Fed them. Found something for them to do.”

  Petrovitch sighed, and Chain made a rumbling cough.

  “Am I boring you?” he asked.

  “Just get on with it, Inspector.”

  “What we did was a miracle. Then Oshicora turned up, eight years ago, unseen amongst all the other refugees that were washing around the world. Marchenkho’s organitskaya and every other criminal gang in the Metrozone has been losing ground to Oshicora’s yakuza ever since.”

  “He’s not yakuza,” said Petrovitch. “His men have got too many fingers.”

  “Neo-yakuza, then. Corporate samurai, whatever you want to call them. They prey on us, suck us dry—virus and host. And if the infection was in just one place, it wouldn’t matter, but Oshicora runs his organization like a franchise, each outlet selling his specific brand of criminality to the masses. They’re turning up everywhere, and what we’ve worked for, what I’ve worked for, will have been for nothing. This city brought to its knees by a…” Words finally failed him. He threw up his hands and dropped heavily into his seat.

  Petrovitch scratched his chin and pushed his glasses up his nose. “All that must make him very rich.”

  “Most people don’t get it. They don’t understand why the police just can’t do something about it. I’m guessing that you get it perfectly.”

  “Better than you could possibly imagine.” His coffee at a drinkable temperature, Petrovitch gulped at it until it was gone. “Thanks for the lecture, but I think I should be going.”

  His abruptness startled Chain. “You said you had nowhere to go.�
��

  “That’s because I hadn’t. Now I do.” He was halfway to the door, when he realized he’d forgotten what he’d originally come for. “You still have something of mine.”

  “Ah, yes: your Remote Access Terminal. Half-gigabyte bandwidth, two-fifty-six-bit encryption, satellite connectivity and a touch interface. Chinese kit, top of the range, does pretty much everything. Just how does a kid like you afford something like that? More to the point, what would you need one for?”

  “You’re the detective. You figure it out.” Petrovitch’s jaw jutted out. “Just get it for me, okay?”

  Chain patted his pockets, and ended up using the hardwired desk phone. He said a few words, listened to the response, and a faint smile raised the corners of his mouth.

  He put the phone down. “Hard luck.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m afraid not. Someone’s swiped it from the evidence room. I’ll be making inquiries, don’t worry. You’ll get it back, eventually.” Chain looked almost happy. “So where are you going, Petrovitch?”

  “Do you honestly think I’d tell you? You can’t even keep evidence locked up. What good would you be with a secret?” Petrovitch wrestled with the unfamiliar door handle. “Just leave me alone.”

  “You know my number. Call me when you’re ready.”

  “Ready for what?” He finally got the door open.

  “Ready for when you tell me why you saved Sonja Oshicora.”

  “Potselui mou zhopy, Chain.”

  Petrovitch fumed all the way down to the ground floor. He still had the sticky bug on the end of his fingers. He made a face at it, then carefully pasted it on the inside of his police-issue wrist tag. When he passed the front desk, he ripped the tag off and slapped it face-up on the counter in a carefully calculated act of rage.

  Outside, he looked at the buildings around him and headed north. Toward Green Park.

  8

  The Oshicora Tower was constructed in the phallocentric style: tall, narrow at the base before flaring out to a maximum girth halfway up. Silvered triangles of glass wrapped like a staircase around its circumference, making it impossible to see any of the internal structure.

  He’d soon have an opportunity. He was going in. He wasn’t sure it was the wisest course to take, but he gauged that the short-term benefits of staying alive outweighed any potential downside. He stood almost exactly where he’d been that morning, watching Sonja Oshicora striding toward him—then hesitating, as if she couldn’t quite remember what it was she planned to do next.

  Then he turned and walked down the wide, fountain-flanked concourse to the entrance lobby. The guards—he’d have called them paycops, but for the little cloth Rising Sun badge sewn on the front of their impact armor—must have thought him a courier, because they stood back and ignored him.

  Inside was bright and airy and clean. Real plants scrubbed the air, real people busied themselves cleaning the marble floor or carrying boxes labeled with katakana or answering phone calls at a tiered bank of terminals.

  Petrovitch was the only non-Japanese face on the entire ground floor. He’d crossed the threshold from the multi-ethnic Metrozone to something he’d never encountered before; a monocultural enclave. He stood there, in the middle of the lobby, marveling at the strangeness of it all.

  “Petrovitch-san?”

  It took him a moment to realize there was someone behind him, and another to realize they were addressing him. He spun on his heel to see a squad of three black-clad guards, two standing respectfully behind their leader, who Petrovitch knew.

  “Hijo. Hijo-san.” He knew to bow, and Hijo bowed lower, revealing the ceremonial sword strapped across his back.

  “You are most welcome, Petrovitch-san. Please, come with me.” Hijo walked away, just expecting Petrovitch to follow, which after a deep breath, he did.

  Everything he saw was beautiful, clean, new. It was how he’d imagined his future to be, not the squalor of the domiks, not the hot, heavy air that filled his lungs, not the day-to-day grind of just getting from one place to another. He had to keep reminding himself who he was going to see and how they got their money.

  The lifts ran up the core of the building, accessed from behind the receptionists with their terminals and headsets. Discreetly placed guards marked a line between the public space and the private—no physical barrier, but there was a steel strip set into the floor. Petrovitch had no doubt that he would have been challenged and turned back if he’d crossed it alone.

  But he had his escort: Hijo in front of him and two more armored men behind. Their presence didn’t make him feel any more safe than he did on the streets, and he knew they had orders to protect him.

  One set of lift doors were being held open for him. Hijo marched straight in, turned, and waited.

  Petrovitch hovered, and pushed at the bridge of his glasses. “Can I just say something here?”

  “Of course, Petrovitch-san.”

  “My turning up here is in no way to be taken as a sign of loyalty or joining sides or looking for favors. I’d very much like to keep everything informal, no contract implied or offered, that sort of thing. All I’d like is a quick word with your boss and ask his help in clearing up a little misunderstanding, then I’ll be out of here never to bother you again.”

  Hijo smiled, and gave a little bow. “Oshicora-san is eager to meet you, too.”

  Petrovitch screwed his eyes up and joined Hijo in the lift. “That’s not quite what I meant, but never mind.”

  The two guards stayed outside, and bowed as the lift doors closed. Hijo spoke up—“toppu yuka”—and the car started smoothly. Lights indicating the floor number turned over, kanji characters all.

  Petrovitch scratched his chin. The thought that had occurred to him while he listened to Chain crystallized in perfect form: this tower wasn’t just Japanese owned, Japanese staffed, but was actually Japan. It went beyond a yearning for what was lost; it was no pale recreation of a Tokyo office block, but the real deal, vibrant and alive with industry.

  Chain saw Oshicora’s neo-yakuza as a new model of crime syndication, but he’d missed the truth of the matter. Petrovitch had misspent his youth playing strategy games: he recognized the plan for what it was. Each franchise was a colony, and they were growing.

  The lift chimed, and the doors opened on another world.

  The light was blinding and, for the first time in his life, Petrovitch realized he’d lived in the dark. He could hear water, birdsong, feel a cool breeze on his face. As his eyes adjusted, he began to see how all this was created at the top of a building in the middle of a city.

  The glass skin of the tower soared up over his head. Fans at the apex stirred the air, sucking in the heat and pushing out a frigid wind. Trees, planted in real soil, waved their leaves over streams of moving water that sometimes narrowed to run babbling over cobbles, sometimes widened to become slow pools dotted with lilies.

  Gravel paths, carefully raked and rolled, wound across the rooftop until they arrived at graceful arched bridges. Birds—real birds—gave flashes of movement and color.

  Almost hidden amongst all of the garden was a single man dressed in loose gray trousers and a rough white shirt. He was standing at the edge of a square of white sand in which large black stones had been carefully placed.

  Hijo guided Petrovitch onto the first path, and took a step back. Hijo would see nothing, hear nothing, until it was time for him to go. Petrovitch walked as if he was on holy ground, carefully, fearfully, until he was within coughing distance of Oshicora.

  The man looked around. “Come,” he said. “Closer.”

  Petrovitch joined him at the dark timber which separated gravel from fine sand. He could see the surface of the sand was patterned in circles and waves.

  “I owe you a great debt of gratitude, Samuil Petrovitch. You rescued my daughter from her attackers, at a considerable personal cost. A relieved parent thanks you from the bottom of his heart.” Oshicora bowed low and forma
lly, showing his thinning hair. Then he straightened up. “You’ve heard stories about me? From Detective Inspector Chain?”

  “One or two,” admitted Petrovitch.

  “He makes me out to be a monster. Most unfair.” Oshicora spread his hands wide. “Could a monster have conceived all this?”

  “It’s… amazing. You must regret not spending more time up here.”

  “You mean, I am so busy running my empire of crime that I can snatch only brief moments of rest?” He laughed, loudly and freely, his head tipped back. “Really, there is not that much to do. The secret is to choose your key managers carefully. You only have to take the critical decisions, or at least those which your managers deem to be critical. I have plenty of time to devote to matters of culture and learning. Much like yourself.”

  “That’s very kind,” said Petrovitch.

  “You are downplaying your achievements, Petrovitch-san. You obtained a first-class honors degree from a top-rank university. You have a scholarship supplied by wise benefactors in Russia. Soon you will be Doctor Petrovitch, and you will become eminent in your chosen field. Good. It becomes everyone, great or lowly, to achieve their potential.” Oshicora rested his hand on his chin. “But you are wary of me, uncertain whether to accept a compliment in case it is snatched away and replaced with malice. Try not to fear me. Here we are: a young man on the cusp of his life, an older man imagining what his legacy will be.”

  “Yeah. About that life: it’s why I came to see you.” Petrovitch turned his toe in the gravel. “Did you hear about Marchenkho?”

  “I hear lots of rumors about that man.”

  “The contract? The two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-euro one on my head?”

  Oshicora pretended to think for a moment. “I sent Hijo to the hospital to escort you to safety. He informed me you walked away.”

  “That’ll be me not being in full command of the facts. I’ll apologize to him later for his wasted journey. So I nearly ended up with a knife in my back today, and I’d rather not repeat the experience.”

  “You require my protection? It is yours.”