Degrees of Freedom

13

Petrovitch dressed—was dressed—in the back of Valentina’s car. It might have been funny; all the awkwardness, the fumbling, the myriad opportunities for an inappropriate hand to fleetingly rest. But he wasn’t in the mood, and his black cloud was contagious.

They hid up a side street, squeezed in between two town houses, in amongst the pristine refuse bins waiting for their new owners. Valentina had the window open a crack, and at one point she heard a convoy of cars.

“So it begins,” she said. She glanced into the rearview mirror, eyes wide in the gray morning light.

“Sonja hasn’t got the manpower to search for us.” Petrovitch was between Tabletop and Lucy, twisting and straining to adjust his clothing into something that might become comfortable. “She’ll set up static checkpoints using her own employees, and attempt to resurrect what’s left of the CCTV system.”

“Evasion is not our problem. Becoming outlaws is.”

“Yeah, well. We’ve all been there before.”

“So.” She turned in her seat now that he had at last become still. “What do we do?”

“I take it you heard me and Maddy?”

“Hmm. It was difficult not to.”

“The priest is the link between the Jihad and me. We need to find him.”

“Is big city. Which church would he call home?”

Petrovitch shut his eyes. “It’s somewhere in Belgravia, not far. He won’t be there, though.”

“No?”

“No. Would you be if you thought Maddy was going to kick your door down?”

“If I wanted to pretend that everything is normal, perhaps.” But she conceded the point.

Tabletop drew a pattern in the condensation on the window. “Sam? You sure about this Father John? What if you’re wrong?”

“If I’m wrong, I’ll still put a bullet through his head.” He reached into his pocket for his gun. “If I’m right, he’ll be grateful when I do.”

“Don’t like him much, do you?” said Lucy.

“No. No, I don’t. Can’t say I ever did.”

“Maybe when you find him, you’ll change your mind about killing him.”

“Then again,” and he flicked the safety off and on again. “Why don’t we make a start?”

Valentina started the engine, and listened to its tone. “So?”

“Mount Street,” said Petrovitch. “I want to find out how far this has gone.”

“What is there?” She tapped her satnav.

“A Jesuit mission. It’s where the Inquisition’s staying.”

“I thought you were never going to talk to them,” said Lucy.

“This isn’t about Michael. This is about me.”

“Just thinking ahead,” said Tabletop, still drawing on the window with the tip of her fingernail. The pattern in the moisture had grown in size and complexity. “If Oshicora comes looking for you there, how do you intend to escape? It’s not like going over the rooftops is an option anymore.”

He looked down at his arm and snarled at it. “Should have… pizdets. I’ll get a drone in the air. It’ll give us a couple of minutes’ warning if nothing else.”

“You have to start thinking, Sam, because you’re going to get caught otherwise.”

“Okay, okay. Look: I’ll try and find a couple of cars to block the ends of the street. Sonja’s private army drive cars with a manual override, so I won’t be able to stop them, but I can take a moment to put a trace on their transmitters. That’ll tell me where they are. Also, her lot are info-rich, so I should be able to track them if they come in on foot. I can blind and deafen them so that no orders can get in or out if I need to. I can get virtual agents to monitor the digital traffic, too, and look out for key words.” He scratched the bridge of his nose. “Better?”

“Yes.” Tabletop sat back and stared at what she’d drawn. “I have no idea what that is.”

“It’s a Shaker tree-of-life. If you want I can show you the picture you’ve taken it from.” Petrovitch leaned back in his seat. “Come on, Tina. Let’s go.”

She pulled out into Curzon Street and took an immediate left to take her off the main road. “There is a back entrance. We should use it.”

“Can you really show me this?” Tabletop was watching the buildings pass behind her window.

“Sure.” He hacked her stealth suit and flipped her an image of a colored print that hung in thousands of American homes.

Tabletop looked intently at the screen on the inside of her wrist. “I don’t remember it. Why can’t I remember it?”

“Because they scrubbed your mind with your consent? Maybe the patterns are still there, you just can’t access them. Like you’ve still got the data but the filenames have gone.”

“How do I get them back?”

“I don’t think you can. I think they’re lost forever.” Petrovitch grimaced. “Sorry. Bedside manner’s a bit abrupt.”

She sighed and wiped the image away, both on her suit and on the window. “I hate this. But I hate them more.”

Valentina threw the car around another corner and stamped on the brakes. She looked out and up at a honey-colored stone end-wall that butted up exactly with the later buildings on either side. The rose window was missing a few panes of glass, but the rest of it looked solid. “This is it.”

“Not quite.” Petrovitch pointed to the dark wooden doors recessed in an alcove to the right of the church. A security camera pointed down at the pavement outside. “That’s it.”

“How long will you be?”

“Minutes. I’ve tried waking some cars up, but it’s been a year since they were started. They all need new batteries, much like me.” He leaned over Tabletop and popped the door. “Wait for me, say, there.”

Opposite the church was the entrance to an underground car park. The shuttered doors were locked, but the building still overhung enough to hide them.

“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 speed.”

“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.”