Degrees of Freedom

10

He slowly became aware of another presence in the shadows. They hadn’t tried to shoot him, smother him or stab him, so he assumed they were benign; also, to get to him, they would have had to pass through a room containing Valentina, and he’d never caught her asleep yet.

Cables trailed into the bed and under the covers, and he’d installed alarms that would wake him if his nocturnal turnings accidentally unplugged him. Power was still trickling into his battery packs, so he wondered what had disturbed him. It wasn’t time to get up. He had another hour and fifty-three minutes of electronically induced coma programmed in.

He could smell her. That was it: Madeleine’s own scent had broken through to his consciousness.

“How long have you been there?”

“Five, ten minutes. I’ve been riding round and round for hours, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

“That’s me. The last resort.” Petrovitch rolled onto his side, his left arm falling hard onto the mattress in front of him.

“Sam, don’t. I’m not in the mood.”

“Yeah, well. Neither am I.” He opened his eyes and used some software to boost his vision. Madeleine was sitting with her back against the wall, her legs out in front of her and almost touching the bed with her heels. She had a gun in her hand, one he recognized from both today and much longer ago. “Thought you’d lost that.”

“Wong sent it to me. Someone tried to sell it to him, and he recognized it. Told them he’d turn them in to the Metrozone authorities if they didn’t hand it over.” She flicked the magazine from the Vatican special into her hand and started counting the bullets.

“I miss him. No one can fry food to death quite like he does. I kept hoping he’d come across the river, but maybe business was too good where he was. Or he was avoiding us.”

“The second one, I think. Can’t blame him, either. His place was pretty much wrecked by the missile that hit Clapham A.”

“If it’s any consolation, you didn’t lose a nuclear bomb today.”

She rammed the magazine back home. “I don’t need your sympathy.”

“There wasn’t a bomb. It was a fake. The whole Container Zero thing was a one-act play, starring us. If we hadn’t been so completely taken in, we might have noticed the scenery wobbling.”

She was silent for a while. “Certain?”

“As sure as we can be.”

“We?”

“The usual suspects.”

“What did Sonja say when you told her?”

“Ah.” He pushed himself up against the headboard. “I decided telling her would be a bad idea. So she doesn’t know.”

Madeleine sighed. “You just can’t stop keeping secrets, can you?”

“I tried very hard to give them up, but no. Though I do have my reasons.”

“Just like before?”

“You mean, I don’t want my friends being hunted down like dogs and killed? Yeah. Pretty much.” Petrovitch pulled the duvet up to his chin, exposing his skinny white ankles to the winter air. “Reasonable to assume that whoever set us up is willing to silence us if we don’t play along. Of course, that includes you now, too.”

She holstered her automatic at her waist and drew her knees up to hug them. “So why won’t you tell Sonja? Don’t you think she needs to know that when she gets a list of demands in the morning, backed by the threat of a nuclear weapon, she can pretty much laugh in their faces and tell everyone it’s business as usual?”

Petrovitch wiggled his toes. “You’re kind of missing the big point, Maddy.”

“Too tired for games, Sam.” She rested her head against the wall, tipping it up so her neck shone pale in the glimmering light. “Tell me.”

“What if she already knows?”

Her head snapped around. “What? Are you mad? She’s not going to do that to you.”

“We’ll see what morning brings.” He stretched. “I may as well get up.”

“Sam! You can’t honestly think that about Sonja. She,” and she struggled to say the words, “she loves you.”

Swinging his legs out from beneath the covers, he wondered what he’d done with his trousers. “I don’t think she’d let that get in the way of something that she really, really wanted. I also think the others would appreciate it if you kept your yebani voice down. It’s half two in the morning.”

His trousers were on the floor near the en-suite bathroom door, his boots by the window, and his mutilated coat thrown over a chair. He hadn’t bothered about his pants, and taking his T-shirt off would have required an embarrassing amount of help.

He walked around the room, trailing cables and collecting clothing. Even though he hadn’t bothered turning the light on, he was still aware of Madeleine’s forensic gaze.

“For all I know,” he said, “Sonja thinks it was me and will try to have me arrested—though not by you, obviously. It could’ve been the remnants of Tabletop’s CIA cell, with or without her knowledge. It could have been you.”

She let out a strangled gasp.

“Come off it. Don’t tell me you couldn’t have organized something like this: you’ve got the contacts, the opportunity, the skill. Valentina? She’d have to be in league with Tabletop, because they’re never apart, but the pair of them could brew up a scenario like that. About the only one I don’t think could’ve had anything to do with this is Lucy, and then I’m not so sure.”

She got up and stood over him while he tried to get his second leg into his trousers. It wasn’t as easy as he remembered it being.

“Why would I do something like that? Why would any of us?”

“I’m not saying you have. I’m saying you could. It’s a compliment, really.” He frowned: it probably wasn’t a compliment at all, but he let it stand. “As to why? How the huy should I know? What would anyone want to do with a dummy atomic bomb?”

“You don’t even know that. You’re just guessing.” Fed up with his inept attempts at dressing, she batted his hands aside and pulled up his trousers for him. “For all you know there’s a real bomb out there.”

“I’m calling chush’ sobach’ya on that. Someone cut into Container Zero long before we showed up, yet what did we find? Exactly what we wanted to see.” He had socks tucked in the top of his boots, but there was no way he was going to be able to manage them. He hissed at his own incompetence.

Madeleine knelt down on the floor next to his feet and angrily shook out the socks from the crisp balls they’d become. “When was the last time you changed these?”

“It’s not like anyone’s going to get close to me, are they?”

“Shut up and point your toes. Where can you possibly be going at this time of night, anyway?”

Petrovitch grunted as she dragged each sock on in turn, revealing two extensive holes in the heels.

“Oh, Sam.”

“They’re the only pair I have. And why do you care anyway? You left me, remember?”

“I care that you smell. I care that you have just one pair of socks. I care that some bastard smashed up your arm and your first thought was to have it amputated so you could replace it with shiny, shiny metal.”

“Didn’t though, did I?” He felt with his feet for the openings of his boots. “Instead I end up with this pile of govno hanging off me and I can’t even put on my own yebani trousers anymore.”

“Or tie laces.” She dragged the loose ends on his left boot tight and started to wrap them crossways through the hooks. “So where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Out?”

“Out,” he said firmly. “You can come with me, if you want.”

“Why would I want to do that? And I cannot see what I’m doing.” She dropped the laces in disgust and stood up. She had to slap the wall several times before she found the light switch.

With the light on, the room was revealed in its bare, vaguely squalid glory. Despite being part of a luxury suite in a luxury hotel, there were still fragments of glass embedded in the carpet near the repaired windows, ripped wallpaper hanging in shreds, curtains like lace, a cracked mirror over the dressing table. Empty bottles of vodka stacked up in the unemptied bin, and a half-full one trembled next to a single smeared glass.

Madeleine shook her head, then came back to the bed. She knelt again to her task, and Petrovitch could see the stubble either side of her mane of plaited hair.

“Sister Marie sends her regards.”

She lost the knot and had to start again.

“She’s here?”

“She’s with the God-botherers from the Inquisition. They tried to bounce me at the hospital: I didn’t talk to them, but I talked to her. I got the impression she wanted to meet up with you.”

“I know where they’re staying.” She moved on to the second boot. “The Jesuit’s place in Mount Street.”

“Chyort. That’s just around the corner.” He felt uncomfortable at them being so close. “Is that deliberate?”

“No idea. Most of the cardinals in the Congregation are Jebbies; default choice, really.” She finished his lacing and patted the side of his leg. “You’re done.”

“Thanks,” he muttered.

She looked up at him. “If you think someone’s trying to kill you, why are you going out alone? I’m assuming it’s alone. No one else seems to be stirring.”

He leaned over and dug his hand under the pillow. He came back with the gun Valentina had given him earlier, and shoved it in his waistband. “About this time, every night, for the past eleven months—since I got out of hospital with my new eyes—I’ve been doing a job.”

“One which doesn’t mean you leave the hotel?”

“One that means you don’t see me leave the hotel.” He fed his left arm through the hole in his greatcoat, and shrugged the rest of it on. “I know you’ve been watching me. I know when you’ve been watching me, too. Probably that’s why you have no idea where I go or what I do.”

He used her shoulders to get him off the mattress, and collected his courier bag. It bulged as he slung it around his neck.

“And you want me to come with you? Why now?”

“Because you’re no longer head of Freezone security, and you don’t have a statutory obligation to report breaches of UN resolutions three-eight-seven-two and three-nine-three-six anymore.” He reached under his T-shirt and disconnected himself from the mains electricity, dropping the connectors on the floor and scraping them to one side with the edge of his boot.

Her hand went to her mouth. “What have you done?”

“I haven’t done it yet. Which is why I have to go out every night. I should be finished in time, I think.” He patted his bag. “And you’ll never find out how I intend to pull this off unless you follow me.”

She rocked back on her heels and rose. “Go on. Lead the way.”

Petrovitch allowed himself a satisfied snort and turned the light off. He compensated for the sudden darkness; she couldn’t. She walked into the back of him.

“That’s me.”

“Sorry.”

“Why can’t you see in the dark like normal people?”

“I’ve got night-vision goggles back on the bike.”

“That doesn’t count, and it doesn’t matter anyway. Take my hand.”

She couldn’t find his hand, so Petrovitch had to grab hers instead, if only to stop it flailing around. Skin on skin contact. It burned him, and he had no way to block that kind of pain.

He opened the door to the rest of the suite. Lucy had her own room, while Tabletop slept on a requisitioned army cot behind a screen. Valentina lay stretched out on the sofa, covered by a blanket. The barrel of her propped-up AK stood out against the uncovered window, and her open eyes reflected the merest glimmer of light.

Petrovitch raised his hand in acknowledgment, and Valentina blinked. She’d never once asked him what he did, and he realized that it wasn’t indifference, but the sort of trust that money could never buy.

Out in the corridor, the lights detected their movement and flickered on. They were still holding hands, which was awkward. He couldn’t tell if it was going to be more difficult to let go or keep hold.

She decided for him. With a final squeeze, she released herself. “We’re not a couple of kids anymore.”

But that was exactly how he felt, and he wondered if he’d ever grow up. In the end, he turned away from her and headed not for the main elevators, but the emergency stairwell at the far end. He shoved the fire door open and started trotting down the flights of cold concrete stairs. It seemed strange that after all the times he’d done this, there was another pair of footsteps following.

He passed the sign for the ground floor, and kept on going into the basement, through the laundry, past all the storage areas and the patchboards for the electricity and the central heating and the pumps, into a narrow passageway that carried pipes along the ceiling low enough to make Madeleine stoop as she walked.

Petrovitch strode purposefully on toward a locked door that barred their way, and felt for the key in the depths of his bag.

“Once we’re through, watch your step. It’s a bit slippery.” He opened the door, and a hollow breath of stagnant water and dark mud stole in. “You get used to that.”

She took his hand again as she stepped out into the black space beyond, the mud sucking at her feet. “So where are we?”

“Underground car park at Hyde Park Corner.” He paused to adjust his vision, and led her splashing to where, amid a sea of rubble, scaffolding appeared to prop up one corner of the roof. It was covered in tatty blue plastic sheeting, which he drew aside for her and ushered her in.

Behind it, another piece of plastic covered the wall. He lifted it up and walked through into a rough cave that shouldn’t have been there. The sheeting fell back behind them.

He’d installed lights, and when he fastened the bulldog clip to the battery terminal, they winked on in a line that led along and down, out of sight. He’d made a tunnel, just about big enough to shuffle down when hunched over.

“Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” he quoted, in the absence of anything else to say.

Madeleine took a moment to stare in wide-eyed wonder. “You did all this?”

“Yeah.”

“How the hell did I not find out about it?”

“Because I’m very good at covering my tracks. The tunnel supports are from an over-order, the lighting rig is built from spare parts, the anti-gravity buckets I use to shift the spoil I make myself. I borrowed surveying lasers for keeping me straight and for telling me how far I’ve gone.”

Her shoulders sagged. “But I’m the head of security.”

“Were,” he corrected, and tossed a yellow construction worker’s hat to her. “You take this. I’ll just have to remember to duck.”

“You couldn’t have done all this by hand. You just couldn’t have.”

Petrovitch bent down and started along the tunnel. “Well, if it wasn’t me, maybe a wizard did it.”