Theories of Flight

15

Petrovitch examined the new solution to the equation. He carefully wrote it out longhand on a fresh sheet of paper and spent time hunched over it, absorbing the feel and shape of it, growing in confidence that he could do it justice. By the time he picked up a pencil, he knew which expressions could be simplified, and which ones would become dominant.

As he worked, Miyamoto looked on impassively. At least, it appeared he was looking on: at some point in the past half hour, he had magicked a pair of info shades over his eyes. For all Petrovitch knew, his bodyguard was watching a movie.

The math was hard going, and he had to keep stopping to consult books and papers, real and virtual, running his finger down lines of dense script until he discovered the symbols he wanted. It was as if the result didn’t want to be found. Or the AI was wrong, of course, and there was no solution there, just another point on an infinitely variable landscape.

Pif would know, but she’d be busy looking behind her at the lights of the other cars on the freeway, wondering if any of them were following her. There’d be time to talk to her later—the equation was Petrovitch’s job for the moment.

He carried on plugging away at it, and just when he thought he couldn’t go any further with it, he saw the answer. His final solution looked… dangerously unstable. He frowned at it for a long time, assuming there was a mistake somewhere. But if there wasn’t… He swallowed hard.

“Yobany stos,” he whispered reverently.

It might be the last piece of research he’d manage for a while, but he just had to see this one through. He mapped out the solution in three dimensions, just as he’d done before, and sent it to the renderer to be constructed layer on layer until it was whole.

He’d have to pick the finished sphere up later, though: there was another knock at the door, and McNeil pushed Dominguez into the office ahead of her. Both stared at sword-wearing, gun-toting Miyamoto, who in return, ignored them completely.

“Doctor?”

“Don’t sweat it,” said Petrovitch. “You can, quite literally, forget he’s here.” He pulled the cable Miyamoto had brought for his head socket off the desk and into his lap, and from there into an already-overfull drawer. He pushed his glasses up his face and gazed at the pair. Enough of physics: they were his responsibility. He shuddered.

“You wanted to see me?” said Dominguez. He sounded still tired, as sleepy as Pif had been.

“Yeah. MEA has unilaterally declared the Thames the best line of defense against the Outies, and everything north of the river is now considered expendable.” Looking at Dominguez’s expression, he realized he had to spell it out. “That means us. The university could be overrun, and no one will come to our aid. I have to look after you two, so I’m telling you both to spend five minutes throwing a few clothes and whatever else you consider important into a bag small enough to be carry-on luggage, and get to Heathrow. I’ve booked you, Hugo, onto a flight to Seville at twelve thirty hours. Fiona, your Axis flight leaves at fourteen twenty. You might think you have time enough to say goodbye to friends, email some people, stuff like that. You don’t. Get to the airport, clear security, wait till your flight is called and make sure you don’t get bumped off it, not even if they promise to make you as rich as Croesus. It’s going to get mad, so don’t relax until you’re in the air. Got that?”

Dominguez had been shocked into consciousness. “Is it that bad?”

“Would I be suggesting you bail out when there’s science to be done, if I didn’t believe it was even worse than that?”

“You paid for my flight. Our flights.” He blinked like an owl.

“I’ll be in touch.” Petrovitch inclined his head toward the door. “Go. Now.”

Dominguez took a step back, then another. Then he ran, with only one glance at the impassive Miyamoto. The self-closer on the door hissed. McNeil was still standing there.

“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?” said Petrovitch. “Why don’t we assume I’ve said it, you’re persuaded by my force of argument to agree with me, and you’re merely collecting yourself before running off after Hugo.”

McNeil seemed to be in the grip of an existential crisis, uncertain as to anything anymore. She trembled with fear and frustration. Her hands clenched and unclenched from little white-knuckled fists to starred fingers and back. She screwed her eyes up and let out a shriek of frustration that started as a low growl and grew to be an ear-rattling squeal.

Then she fixed him with a wild-eyed stare that had him looking over his shoulder to see if there was anything there. Her whole body was heaving with effort, as if she’d exhausted herself yet still knew there was more to do.

The rat chimed, and Petrovitch snatched it up.

“Valentina.”

The woman was still sitting in her car, driving along. “Almost got there too late. He was already inside. See, tell me what you think.” She reached forward, touched the phone, and sent a video file to him.

Petrovitch looked up at McNeil. “Go,” he said, “in the name of whatever god you believe in, go. You have family. You have friends. Be with them. I cannot promise to protect you. I can’t even protect myself from the shit-storm that’s raging about me.”

Still she didn’t move.

“This is for your own good. Miyamoto, get her out of here.”

Sonja’s man was listening, after all. He stalked across the room from his corner lair and held the door open. McNeil looked like she was going to refuse: her skin had turned chalk white, and the veins in her face made her look like a marble statue, too heavy to lift.

Then, with a stifled sob, she broke and ran. Miyamoto closed the door again and folded his hands behind his back.

“No. I don’t understand, either,” said Petrovitch, and turned his attention to Valentina’s video.

The footage was raw, uncut. He could do something about that, passing it through a program that got rid of the tilt and shake, and allowed him to zoom in effortlessly on any portion of the image. The camera had been a good hundred meters away from Chain’s shared front door but, with enhancing, he had a clear view.

Grigori’s car was still outside, two wheels characteristically up on the pavement. Another, similar car was behind it, at an angle, almost blocking the street—not that there was any traffic to stop.

Petrovitch focused on the new car. It bore a military number plate at the front. He knew where this was going, and pulled the camera back to see who it was coming down the steps, two at a time.

He hadn’t even bothered changing out of his uniform, assuming wrongly that no one would be there to see him. He didn’t even look up and down the street before trotting around the side of the vehicle to the driver’s side door. There was something in his hand, and Petrovitch froze the picture.

Blown up, the resolution wasn’t quite sharp enough to be certain, but they looked pretty much like Chain’s door keys.

He let the rest of the video clip play out, as Daniels leaped into the car and drove off in a cloud of blue smoke.

“Who was that?” asked Valentina.

“Captain Daniels. MEA intelligence officer—under Harry Chain.” Petrovitch scratched the end of his nose. “He clearly got around the sentry gun, so I think we can assume he set it. What would he have seen?”

“Poor, stupid Grigori. And hole in floor.”

“So now he knows I’ve lied to him. What’s he going to do now? Disappear or come after me?”

“Depends,” said Valentina, “on why he thinks you lied.” She had parked her car somewhere: at least, her hands were off the steering wheel and wrapped around a disposable paper cup.

“He knows I know he sent me there to kill me. Whatever else he thinks I may or may not suspect, that alone will either lead him to vanish without a trace or try to take me out a second time.” Petrovitch looked up at Miyamoto, who was concentrating on the far wall. “I’d very much like to see him try.”

“Or he could send someone you do not suspect.” Valentina slurped whatever was in the cup, and came back into view with a frothy mustache. “Hmm. It does not matter what he is going to do. What are you going to do?”

“Well,” said Petrovitch, leaning on his elbows, “Daniels might still come after me, so why don’t we keep him busy worrying about his own neck. I thought telling Marchenkho would probably sort it.”

She wiped her upper lip with her finger. “I wondered why you abandoned all of Chain’s documents with him. I thought you were getting careless.”

“Marchenkho will have committed them all to memory by now. He’ll be in heaven, reliving the good old days: Soviets against the West. He’ll enjoy hunting Daniels down.”

“I will tell him,” said Valentina. “Gets me on his good side again. And Petrovitch? Is about now someone tells you to trust no one, da?”

“I get it. Thanks, Valentina.”

“Later.” She cut him off, and the rat’s screen reshuffled its icons.

Petrovitch closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the codenames on the CIA list: Argent, Tabletop, Rhythm, Maccabee, Slipper, Retread. All of them innocuous, meaningless words—out of context. The man he’d shot was one of those names, Daniels most likely another. He didn’t know if Sorenson was part of it, or whether she was acting alone; from the way she’d thrown all caution to the wind, he thought he’d keep her separate for now.

Four more, then, and no idea who they might be. It wasn’t looking good.

He opened his eyes. Miyamoto hadn’t moved, and the room was exactly as it was before. It was the noise outside that had changed.

He went to the window, which overlooked the street, and pried the slats of the blinds apart. Through the encrusted filth that coated the glass, he could see more people together than he had in a long time. They were streaming south down the narrow road, and if he craned his neck just so, he could see the junction at the Hyde Park end. It was solid with bodies and traffic.

“How long ago did the news wires announce the bridges were mined?”

“Ten minutes,” said Miyamoto.

Petrovitch reached into his pocket for his phone, and with one eye on the outside, he called Madeleine.

“Hey,” she said. There was a cacophony all around her, making it almost impossible for him to hear her.

“Where are you?” He spoke slowly and loudly. It was obvious she wasn’t at home where he expected her to be.

“I got called in. They didn’t tell me why until I got here.”

“Where are you?” he repeated. “You can’t go on a patrol. You’re not fit.”

“West Ham. The bridges…”

“I know. Daniels.”

“Sorry? Who?”

“Daniels. Captain Daniels—he talked to me at the hospital. He’s CIA.”

“What?” Her voice was lost in the roar of an engine and barked orders. “I have to go. So do you.”

“Maddy? Stay on.”

“Go home, Sam. Now.”

The connection died, and Petrovitch thought about throwing the useless piece of junk against a wall repeatedly until it broke.

“Chyort!”

Instead, he sent her a text that he wouldn’t know if she’d ever get.

She was a big girl: she could look after herself, she was armed, she was with her unit, who were also armed. The Outies were much more of a danger than Daniels. Except, except…

She wasn’t very good at disobeying orders, and if a MEA officer told her to do something, she’d do it first and only question it later.

“I hate to do this to you,” said Petrovitch.

Miyamoto raised one eyebrow above the rim of his info shades. “We are going outside. To find your wife. To warn her of the rogue MEA officer.”

“Pretty much. The mobile network could be swamped by a million people all trying to call each other at once, or it could be the first sign that the East End is next to fall. She hasn’t got a sat-phone, and I’m guessing the MEA network uses the same masts as the civilian one.” He picked up his coat and shrugged it on, then retrieved the rat. “You don’t have to come.”

“How would I explain your untimely death to Miss Sonja?”

“Oops?”

“I do not think ‘oops’ would cover it.”

“You’re probably right.” Petrovitch patted his pockets. No gun, no knife. He had his info shades and his rat. “Shall we go?”

“I should advise you of the foolishness of your proposed course of action.”

“Perhaps you should.”

“I will not be doing so. We must ensure your wife’s safety.”

Petrovitch, hand on the door, stopped and looked at Miyamoto. “Is there something else you need to tell me?”

“Apologies, Petrovitch-san.” Miyamoto lowered his head. “My feelings are not important, but I must inform you I am compromised.”

“What the huy are you talking about?”

“I have instructions regarding your personal security,” said Miyamoto, “but if you were to meet an unfortunate end during this unwise excursion through no fault of my own, I would not be disappointed.”

Petrovitch took the opportunity to take his glasses off and rub them on the hem of his T-shirt. “When I look up pizdets in the dictionary, you know what I find?”

Miyamoto didn’t venture a reply.

“My picture. That’s what.” He hooked his glasses back over his ears and swung the door wide open. “Come on, lover-boy. You’re with me.”