Theories of Flight

12

Petrovitch was almost home when he called her, fumbling in his thigh pocket for his phone even as he dragged his feet down the last stretch of Clapham Road.

“Hey,” he said. He looked up at the sky smeared with pink clouds. “Where am I? About five minutes away. Meet me in Wong’s?”

He could tell she knew something was wrong, and he was grateful that she didn’t interrogate him there and then. She gave a simple acceptance to his offer, and rang off.

As he followed the bend round, the café came into view, its misted windows burning with white light, its neon sign flickering on and off in a pattern it made up as it went. All it needed was driving rain and it would have been the perfect noir setting, complete with washed-out hero.

He shouldered the sticky door. “Hey, Wong. Your sign’s on the blink.”

“Is that so? You fix it?” Wong slapped a damp tea towel over his shoulder and stepped toward the coffee maker.

Petrovitch shrugged. “If you like. It’s about the only thing I can fix with any certainty at the moment.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” said Wong. His eyes narrowed. “You filthy. You come in my shop and you filthy. All black and burned.”

“Yeah.” He dug his fists into his pockets. “You pouring that coffee or should I just leave like the bio-hazard I am?”

Wong reached up to a shelf for a mug. “Not a good day?”

“No. No, it wasn’t.” Petrovitch kicked the bottom of the counter. “Completely and irrevocably pizdets. I lost a friend.”

“Another?” Black coffee poured into the mug, filling the air with its sour aroma. “You running out of friends. Better find more, soon.”

“Wong, I’m not in the mood. I…” The door opened, and he turned, thinking—hoping—that it was Madeleine. In doing so, he showed his back to the shopkeeper, who could see the ruin that was his coat.

It wasn’t her. But it was a face he recognized.

They stared at each other, she plainly knowing who he was, too, and not in a good, seen-him-on-television, fan-girl way.

“Chyort,” he said. “Vsyo govno, krome mochee.”

“Sorry?” she said, her accent showing just from one word. She brushed a stray blonde hair from her face. “You’re called Petrovitch, right?”

“There seems little point in denying it. And you’re Charlotte Sorenson.”

“Do you know why I’m here?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be for the service.” Petrovitch glanced behind him to see Wong fuming. He banged Petrovitch’s coffee down and leaned his hands on the countertop, scowling.

“You knew my brother? Martin?” she said.

“Yeah, I knew him. Grab a coffee and you can tell me what you know. I can probably fill in some of the blanks for you.”

“Okay.” She looked up at the menu. Wong’s customers tended to ignore it, and it had mostly degraded into illegibility. “A… coffee, then.”

She was pretty in a corn-fed way. Long blonde hair framing wide, expressive features. She looked strong.

Wong poured another coffee and watched closely while she topped up her mug with milk.

“You friend of Petrovitch?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “It depends on how good a friend he was to my brother.”

Ignoring Petrovitch’s increasingly unsubtle signals to shut the huy up, Wong carried on. “Brother? American?”

“Duh,” she said, stirring her coffee with a spoon. She tapped the drips off and looked mildly surprised that the cutlery hadn’t melted.

“I remember him. Big man. Red face. Shouted. Shouted lots.”

She looked at Petrovitch, who had closed his eyes and was shaking his head.

“Why was he shouting?”

“Why don’t we sit down?” said Petrovitch.

By coincidence, the only table free was the one where he and Sorenson had sat, eaten breakfast, and argued, all those months ago.

Petrovitch snagged his coffee and led the way, wondering why Madeleine was taking so long. He sat with his back to the wall, and watched while Sorenson took the seat that had once been occupied by her brother. Her gait was mechanical, but not in a lumbering jerky way: it was all oiled gears and precision. She walked like she meant it.

“I saw Sonja Oshicora yesterday,” she said, centering her mug. “She was very helpful.”

“Really?” He was too tired to spot her sarcasm. Instead, he drank coffee and prayed for the door to open.

“No. She smiled a lot, but told me nothing. That man—”

“Wong.”

“Wong, then—he said more now than Oshicora did in an hour.”

“Did he?” Petrovitch flipped off his glasses and rubbed his smoke-stung eyes. “Yeah. That’s Wong.”

“Marty worked for her father, right? That was what he told me.” She sat upright, perfectly poised. Despite the conversations that leaked across their table from their neighbors, she made no attempt to preserve their privacy by leaning forward or lowering her voice.

“What else did he say about that? Did he mention what it was he was working on?” He was going to look around and see who was eavesdropping, even if she wasn’t. He dragged his glasses back onto his face.

“Big project, he said. Told me it was going well. Nothing about the content.” She looked him in the eye. “What was it?”

“Cybernetic interface for a virtual world.” He heard the door open again, and this time Madeleine stooped through the opening.

She was in her gray MEA fatigues and a surplus olive-green EDF jacket. She paused, frowning at everyone in the small eatery until she spotted Petrovitch. Her momentary pleasure at seeing her husband disappeared at seeing him with yet another blonde.

Wong handed her a coffee—Petrovitch was pretty certain she’d never had to pay for a single item yet—and folded his arms to watch. Madeleine stalked over and stood behind Sorenson, blocking out the light.

“Maddy, this is Charlotte Sorenson from the U.S. of A.” He scratched at his nose. “You may remember me telling you I killed her brother.”

The other diners had been listening, if only with half an ear. He had their undivided attention now. He looked at them, left and right.

“Idi nyuhai plavki,” he said to them, and then to his wife: “Why don’t you sit down while I tell her all about it?”

She squeezed in next to him, somehow managing to fold her impossibly long legs under the table. She licked her thumb and ran it across his cheek. It left a pale mark.

“What happened to you?”

“I lost Grigori. Pointless, useless, yebani death.”

“Sam,” she said, then to Sorenson: “Sorry. He’s not in a fit state for confessions. Come back in the morning.”

“No,” said Sorenson. Her lips barely moved, and the rest of her face, her whole body, was motionless. “I want to hear this.”

Madeleine slipped her arm around Petrovitch’s shoulders and pulled him into her. She stared defiantly at the other woman. “You don’t get to say what goes on.”

“Look,” said Petrovitch. He winced at the iron grip Madeleine had on him. “Now is as good a time as any. I’m in a public place and I have you here. What can she do but listen?”

“I don’t think you owe her anything,” said Madeleine.

“I… think I do. You have the certainty of faith. I just have what goes on in my own head. I see him sometimes. I see him with his hand round my throat. Sometimes I make him let go. And sometimes I don’t.” He scratched at his nose with his thumb. “You see, Miss Sorenson, I tried so very hard to save your brother. He wouldn’t take advice. Yeah, he knew better—didn’t want to do the easy thing of keeping his head down. He fucked up. He died.”

“You said you killed him.” She was perfectly still.

“Old Man Oshicora—Sonja’s father—was blackmailing him. It seems that your country frowns on those who get paid by extortionists, racketeers, traffickers, and murderers, even if they do have impeccable manners. Then there was this cop, who was also blackmailing him, using exactly the same levers, to get at Oshicora. Your brother had met me briefly, became fixated on the idea that I could help him. I tried. I told him to just keep on working, ignore Chain, do a good job and beg for mercy when he was done. Could he do it?” Petrovitch drank half his coffee and lined up his mug on the brown ring on the table. “The mudak couldn’t.”

“That explains nothing,” said Sorenson. “You still killed him.”

“You want to know why I killed him? Do you really want to know why, or do you just want someone to blame? I don’t really care either way.”

“You said you’d tell me.”

“He kidnapped Sonja Oshicora. He blew up a police station. He took control of a gang of thieves and thugs and declared war on the city. I found him. I had the govno beaten out of me. He choked me half to death, then he tried to throw me off the top of a tower block. All because he wouldn’t let Sonja go.”

“This is not my brother,” she said through clenched teeth.

“I gave him every chance. And when he wouldn’t take any of them, I put a bullet in his brain. Us or him.” Petrovitch slammed his hand down on the table, making their mugs jump. “I am not ashamed of what I did. I saved people that day. I saved them from Martin Sorenson. Yebany v’rot, he’d turned into a monster. Someone had to stop him.”

“You’re lying to me. He would never do anything like that.”

Petrovitch took a deep breath and sighed it out. “I could have spun you a whole sack of govno. But I haven’t. The only person lying here is you to yourself. You know what he was capable of. What he was so nearly convicted of. What everyone thinks he did to your father. Go home, Charlotte Sorenson. Do yourself a favor and just go home.”

She considered matters for a moment before lunging across the table at him, her clenched fist aiming straight for his nose. It met the tabletop as it rose and tipped, Madeleine holding it like a shield, crowding forward, forcing the American back.

Sorenson kicked out. The formica cracked in two, throwing Madeleine aside. She was a moment slower getting to her feet than normal, a touch more awkward in her rise. Sorenson surged forward again, sending a chair flying, her legs coiled as she tried to spring at Petrovitch, who was pressed against the wall.

Wong threw himself on her back, his wiry strength knocking her off-balance.

“Hey,” he shouted, just before she elbowed him in the ribs, then shrugged him off onto the floor.

The general scatter of patrons was almost complete, either cowering on the greasy lino or breaking for the exit: there was a half-empty plate of eggs within reach, and Petrovitch snagged it and launched it like a frisbee. It glanced off the side of Sorenson’s head, deflecting her attention from Wong and back onto him.

The plate didn’t have as much effect as he’d hoped. She came for him, changing her tactics and attempting to shatter his leg with her foot. She telegraphed it, allowing him to dodge, and she slammed her foot into the wall and broke the wipe-clean plastic cladding into splinters. She lined up for another attempt and Petrovitch stabbed her with a fork.

It stuck out of her forearm through the thin material of her coat, and while she stared incredulously at the obscenely wobbling handle, he hit her with a haymaker that started somewhere behind him and ended with his knuckles splitting against her jawline.

She reeled back, and Madeleine was ready this time. She picked the American up off the floor, turned her and threw her hard against the wall by the door. Face lined with effort, she was on the fallen form before Sorenson had managed to work out which way was up.

Wong scrambled to his feet and pulled the door open. Madeleine straightened her arm and Sorenson was gone, out into the night.

“And don’t think about calling the militia, because I am the militia,” she shrieked after her. “If I see you again, I will arrest you. Got that, you crazy bitch?”

Wong slammed the door and stood with his back to it, bracing it against further breaches. He looked around as people started to emerge from behind chairs and tables.

“Coffee? Hot and strong?”

Tables were righted, all except the broken one, which was taken out the back. Spilled cutlery and crockery was retrieved and stacked on the counter, and Wong did the rounds with his coffee pots.

Without a table, Petrovitch set his chair back on its legs on an available piece of floor, and slumped into it.

“Are you okay?” asked Madeleine.

He inspected his hand, which hurt when he moved his fingers. His knuckles were crusted with blood and ragged pieces of skin. “What about you? Your ribs.”

“I felt something move. My lungs aren’t filling with fluid, so it can’t be that serious. Sam,” she said, “why did you tell her?”

“Because there was no reason for me not to.” He pushed his glasses back into place. “I didn’t want her thinking that he might turn up at any moment, alive, scratching his arse and wondering if anyone had missed him. She’s his family. She needed to know.”

She rested her hand on his leg. “You’re right.”

“I am? I was beginning to wonder.” Petrovitch watched Wong do his rounds, and then he came to him. “Thanks. You didn’t have to.”

“My shop. She attacked my customers. Crazy lady bad for business, so out she goes.” Wong inspected the pair. “Where your mugs? You not want refill?”

“I think,” said Madeleine twisting round and wincing, “they’re back on the counter.”

He smiled. “I fetch clean ones.”

Madeleine got stiffly to her feet and hugged Wong to her, planting a wet kiss through his wispy hair onto the crown of his head. She held him tight, imprisoning him in her arms and leaving his own stuck out either side, each holding a coffee pot. “You are so very good and kind, and I love you very much.”

After a while, she let go, and secretly wiped her eyes. Wong went back behind his counter without a word, and did the same.

She lowered herself back down and leaned in. “We need to do something for him, Sam.”

Petrovitch rolled an idea around in his mouth, tasting it and finding its flavor.

“Yeah. And all the other Wongs.”