Degrees of Freedom

14

They sat around a flickering screen, watching Sonja’s broadcast. None of them felt the need to speak during it—it was self-explanatory. When she’d finished, she took a moment to stare into the camera and straight into Petrovitch’s soul, trying to communicate just how very disappointed she was with him.

Petrovitch turned off the video feed and unplugged the lead from the screen to the computer strapped to his body. He threw the loose end snaking across the floor and looked sour.

Lucy got up from her fold-down chair and switched the white noise off, then just stood there like a little girl lost.

“What happens now?”

“I’m going to try and find a kitchen. Come on.” Tabletop stood at the door to the waiting area and scanned the overhead signs to see if there might be a clue. Obstetrics, Oncology, Medical Imaging, yes—all the equipment was ready and waiting for doctors and patients—but a strong cup of morning coffee still eluded her.

Petrovitch was left with Valentina.

“You must tell Sonja,” she said. “Even if she does not believe you, she will doubt herself.”

“Tabletop was right. I should have said something earlier.” He cupped his face with his hands and dragged them down his cheeks. “I’ve made it even more of a pizdets than it should be.”

“You were not to know.”

“I’m supposed to know everything.”

She moved along the row of seats, still covered in plastic wrapping from the supplier. She sat next to him and drew her legs underneath her.

“You are not God.”

“Not yet. I will be one day, if I live that long. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a hundred years ahead, but I can’t tell Lucy what happens next.”

If she thought his hubris worthy of comment, she chose not to. “Call Sonja. Explain to her you have nothing to do with New Machine Jihad. That you are both victims. She will listen to you.”

“Yeah, I know she will. But this will be the first time that it won’t make a difference. We’re running out of options here. Whoever’s done this has got it nailed down tight.”

“Hmm,” she said. “No plan is perfect. We must look for weak link. Exploit it. Where would that be?”

Petrovitch closed his eyes. “I’m tired, Tina. Too tired to think. Didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“I heard.”

She might have been embarrassed, but he wasn’t. He blew out a stream of air. “I thought… it was all going to be okay, at last. Now look at us.”

Valentina clicked her tongue. “Of course, if priest is involved, you and Madeleine apart is part of scheme, da?”

Petrovitch blinked. “Chyort.”

“So you call Sonja now. Then we get to work.” She patted him on the shoulder and went to find the others.

On his own, in the semi-dark, plugged into the wall to recharge his battery packs, Petrovitch made the connection carefully. No casual throwing of a message across an unguarded network this time; he obscured his routing, and ensured it was impossible to trace him. It would have been easier with the rat, but he could still work his magic.

She wasn’t alone, and it took her a few moments to spot the window opening on her screen. He activated his usual avatar to stand in his place: it would look like him, mirror his movements and his expressions, but it would be manifestly not him, and he’d set himself against a shifting background of images that almost chose themselves.

Sonja was leaning over the desk, shouting at someone in Japanese, with English words rising from the stream like rocks. Petrovitch could have run her conversation through a translator, but the gist of it was clear enough.

Not only had her personal security detail failed to collect him, they’d missed everybody. Two of them were in hospital, as a result of an unfortunate encounter with Madeleine’s fists and feet.

“Hey,” said Petrovitch, “down here.”

She did a double-take. His image held up his hand in greeting.

Sonja looked over the top of her screen at the current object of her ire and dismissed him with a bark of barely concealed disdain.

“The hired help not up to much, then?” he said. “That’s where surrounding yourself with friends who’ll keep you on the right path really pays off.”

“Sam. What have you done?” She sat down.

“Not what you think.”

Sonja leaned forward and opened a drawer. Its contents were hidden from him, but it didn’t take a genius to work out what she was attempting to do.

“Did you do it?” she asked plainly.

“No. No, I didn’t.” He could see the muscles in her forearm flex as she felt across a tiny keyboard for the next letter. “Look: I need your full attention for a bit, which I won’t have if you’re trying to instruct your minions to track down my physical location. They’ll never find it, and it’ll just mean you have to shout some more. So give it up and talk to me.”

She reluctantly put both her hands on the desk. “I’ll find you.”

“Maybe you will. But not before I’m ready. So let’s talk.”

“There’s only one thing we really need to discuss: where’s the bomb, Sam?”

“There is no bomb, Sonja. It’s no more than a stage prop.”

“You said it was a bomb.”

“I was wrong.”

“You? Wrong? I thought you were never wrong.”

In real life, Petrovitch put his head back and stared blindly at the ceiling. “In my defense, I wasn’t the only one taken in. But when I got out of the hospital, I went back to Container Zero for another look. Someone had been in that container long before the wrecking crew broke into it, and arranged everything like they were dressing a shop window.”

“What… I told Iguro that no one was allowed near it.”

“Yeah. He said. I ignored him. Good job, too. Sonja, they—whoever they are—were waiting for me. They had to get the bomb after I’d seen it, but before I could check its authenticity. Madeleine was on her way back with a geiger-counter when they broke my arm, stole my rat and carried the bomb away. Ten more minutes, and I would have been able to prove there was as much fissile material in that cylinder as there is in one of my farts.”

She bit her lower lip. Her teeth were impossibly white.

“I wish, I wish I could believe you. I have a credible threat against the Freezone made by a known organization who claim to have a nuclear weapon. What am I supposed to do?”

“Call their bluff. Tell the so-called New Machine Jihad to take their bomb and stick it up their collective zhopu. Let the world know that it’s business as usual, and you’ll be ready to hand over to the Metrozone on time. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“I can’t take the risk, Sam. Everyone thinks that the Jihad are a front for you. Why don’t you come in? We can sort this out.” She grabbed a tissue and pressed it into the corner of her eye. “If you’ve done nothing, we can prove that together.”

“Nice offer, Sonja. But that’s exactly what they want to happen. They’ve designed this so that handing myself in is the next logical step, except that I’m not going to play by their rules anymore.”

“Do you know how mad you sound? Listen to yourself!”

“Sonja—I lived through Armageddon. Do you realize how much I despise them? They ruined my life. I was born with a malformed heart because of radiation. I lost my father to cancer. I grew up in a city that was a social and economic basketcase because of what the Armageddonists did to Europe. And now I’m supposed to be running around with my own bomb threatening to set it off because the UN won’t let Michael out to play? You’re out of your yebani mind if you think I’ve got something to do with this!”

“You and the Jihadis want the same thing. You’ve run out of time to influence the UN, so now you’re trying this. It won’t work.”

“Of course it won’t work. I’m going public after I’ve talked to you and I’ll tell everyone who wants to hear that there is no bomb in the Freezone. Why would I do that if I wanted to coerce the international community into doing what I want?”

Sonja sat back with a thump. “You might be smarter than me, Sam, but you can’t just talk your way out of this.”

“I’m smarter than all but half a dozen people on the planet. That has no bearing on whether I’m telling the truth or not. You’ve jeopardized the whole concept of the Freezone by falling for this scam. Don’t compound the error by doing their work for them, whoever the huy they are.” His avatar folded his arms, something that the real-life Petrovitch just couldn’t do anymore.

“The Freezone is finished if I don’t arrest you. Everyone knows we’re close, and I can’t be seen to allow personal feelings to get in the way of doing what’s right.” She clutched at her tissue. “Make it easy for me, Sam. Tell me where you are.”

“You should be concentrating on the Jihad. I know I will be, and if you’re not going to dig them out from whichever stone they’ve crawled under, I’ll do it for you. Just stay out of my way if you’re not going to help.” He was all but finished. “And leave Madeleine out of this. You’ve done enough already.”

“She’s wanted. Along with everyone with you.” Sonja regained a measure of calm. She straightened her jacket and dabbed at the end of her nose. “I will have what I want in the end.”

“Yeah, good luck with that. So, are we leaving it like this?”

“Looks that way. Sam, I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as you’ll end up being. I’ll give you the bomb, and the Jihad, and whoever put them up to this. You’ll end up looking like a mudak, and I’ll be the yebani hero. Again.” He gave her one last wave. “Sayonara.”

Petrovitch opened his eyes, and took the coffee proffered to him by Lucy.

“That went well,” he said.

“Did it?”

“No, not really.” He bent his face low over the mug and breathed deeply. “Geopolitics seems to trump friendship every single time there’s a clash. Apparently, even fifteen-year-old girls are now enemies of the state.”

Lucy shivered. “Will we be all right?”

“Have I ever let you down?”

“No. I’d rather not have to stab or shoot anyone, though. Or have them stab or shoot me.”

Petrovitch looked down at his arm again. “We’re dealing with people who are comfortable with nuclear terrorism. Stabby, shooty stuff might be the least of our worries.”

She sat down next to him, in the seat recently vacated by Valentina. “Are you sure about the bomb? Not being a real bomb, I mean.”

“There is a scenario I might not have considered.” He pursed his lips, then smiled when he saw her expression change. “Still a fake bomb. But what if the Jihad don’t know that? What if they’ve been set up just like we have? You see, I know the prophet—when I say know, I mean he tried to kill me once—and despite him being a weapons-grade certifiable ebanashka, he’s not a liar. He wouldn’t be involved in this if he knew there was no bomb.”

“Who’s done this to us? Who’s gone to so much trouble when… you know?” Lucy leaned in and tried to rest her head on his shoulder. She ended up getting an earful of metal strut, and shifted uncomfortably.

“Yeah. They could have killed us in half a dozen different ways, and hey, some have tried. Madeleine’s always been on top of any assassination attempt, no matter how ill-formed or ill-thought out. Yet she seems to have missed this completely.” Petrovitch swigged at his coffee, made on a machine which still had the traces of the manufacturer’s oil in its pipework. “Don’t sweat it. Just because they’re good doesn’t mean we’re not better.”

They sat for a while, him swirling the gritty dregs of his coffee in tight circles at the bottom of his mug, she curled up in the seat next to him, knees drawn up in her arms and her chin resting on her knees: a young girl’s posture.

“You still got that gun Tina gave you?” he asked.

Lucy nodded.

“She show you how to shoot straight?”

She shook her head.

“We can’t fire off live rounds in here in case someone overhears. But we can go through the basics. Give it here.”

She reached into her pocket and held out the automatic.

“Okay. First lesson.” He reached over with his right hand and turned the barrel away from his face. “Never point it at anyone you’re not prepared to shoot. Never shoot anyone you’re not prepared to kill.”

She looked at the gun, and placed it butt first in his hand.

“Good girl.”

He showed her how to make the gun safe, to eject a round still in the chamber, how to unload, and reload. He got her to stand and assume a two-handed grip, leaning forward against the inevitable recoil. He checked her dominant eye, and told her that she may as well throw the yebani thing at her attacker if she was going to shake as much as that. He also said that if he ever caught her holding the gun sideways, gangster-style, he’d tear up her adoption certificate.

After she’d done everything often enough that he was confident she wouldn’t put a round through her own foot, he asked her if she was ready.

“Ready? For what?”

Petrovitch started to unplug his battery packs from their chargers. “I’ve found the original upload of the New Machine Jihad video. The copy on ENN was clean, but the one on the Ukrainian server still has all its exif metadata attached.”

She flicked the safety on the gun with studied care. “The…”

“It’s a bit on the front of the file you don’t get to see, but it tells you when the file was made, what the original resolution was, the camera model. Stuff like that. On GPS-enabled capture devices, it even records where it was taken, so you don’t have the arguments where you swear blind it was Beijing and your girlfriend says it was Shanghai.”

“Okay.” Lucy pocketed her automatic and waited for the payoff.

“Come on. You’re smarter than that.”

She screwed her eyes up and muttered. “GPS, GPS, GPS.” Then they opened wide. “You know where the Jihad are.”

“Were. Chances are they’re still there, but they might have shifted.” Petrovitch had gathered up all his wires and closed the flap on his bag on them.

She was suddenly agitated, eager to go and do something: activity against idleness. “You should have said as soon as you knew! Why did you waste… oh.”

“I don’t want to get you killed. But leaving you behind isn’t going to work, either.” He looked around the waiting room. Apart from the used mug and the crinkled plastic where they’d sat, it was just as they’d found it.