The Curve of The Earth

10

Petrovitch sent Newcomen away into a corner with a screen and a copy of one of the many unauthorised biographies written about him, and sat down with a fresh brew.

“What do you think?”

Marcus brought out a long-toothed comb and started to tease his hair to even greater heights. “That the boy has had an uncharacteristic flash of brilliance, or he’s delving deep into his own psyche and it’s not a pleasant place.” He found a knot and tugged at it. “It’s a credible scenario. Lucy’s quite a looker. And remember, Sam: you’re here to try and get her back, not bring down another president.”

“We could do that later, I suppose. Are we going to have to break her privacy seal and find out what she’s really been up to?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t asked for that before,” said Marcus. “In fact, I’ll take matters out of your hands: Michael will call an ad-hoc, and if they agree, a counsellor will pick over what information there is. Michael will tell you if anything relevant comes up.”

Petrovitch hunched over. “We’ve a good relationship. I know it’s not like a father — daughter thing really, but we both behave as if it is. Newcomen’s right on one thing: she is smart, but she doesn’t get that from me. Otherwise she’d have inherited my low cunning, too, rather than the naive optimism she excels in despite everything that’s happened to her.”

“You’re scared of what the counsellor might find.”

“Yeah. If it helps to get her back, I can live with the embarrassment, and so can she. We won’t be the same, though.” He let out a long breath. “I used to be a hard bastard. Nothing could get through. Skin like a rhino.”

“I blame that wife of yours.” Marcus laid the comb down. “She’s changed you. Honestly, I think I prefer this Samuil Petrovitch.”

“Caring makes it so much more difficult to behave rationally. Even to think rationally.”

“You want to blame this on the Americans. We probably all do. She was in their care, and the name Petrovitch carries a lot of baggage with it. What else were we to think?”

“Now it makes even less sense than it did beforehand. Something happened in the sky that night, independent of whether she had a secret admirer who rode to her rescue on a white charger. That had something to do with the Yankees: I feel it in what’s left of my bones.”

“Finding out what it was is secondary, Sam.” Marcus put his hand over Petrovitch’s. “I know what you’re like.”

“Yeah. Focus, focus.” He tried a smile, but it came out all wrong. “It’s going to drive me crazy. I hate not knowing stuff. I really hate not knowing stuff that other people do know and are trying to keep from me.”

“Your travel bag’s almost ready. Make sure no one looks inside it.”

“I’ll do my best.” Petrovitch looked over to where Newcomen sat. The man looked as white as a ghost, his lips thin, pale lines drawn over his teeth. “I don’t think he’s enjoying his book.”

“Even if half the things written in it were true, he’ll be shocked to his little Reconstructionist core. Where’s he up to?”

“He’s just skipping through it, reading about a paragraph a page. He’s up to the point where I apparently order the slaughter of two hundred thousand Outies, and just before the second Battle of Waterloo.”

“Leave enough time to get to the airport,” said Marcus.

“Plenty. Hour and a half, flying from Newark. Newcomen’s taking his girl out for Valentine’s Day, something I think he should do. Something vaguely normal. It’ll be the last chance he gets.”

“He’s taking his predicament well, I think.”

“He’s blanking it out completely. Perhaps he hopes it’ll disappear if he doesn’t mention it. Don’t worry, I’ll remind him often enough.”

“And you really think you can keep him in line? What if he suddenly gets brave?”

“Then it’ll be for the first time in his adult life.” Petrovitch ran his hand over his chest, where the turbine spun quietly. “I’ll deal with that if it happens, but I’ll subvert him before then. He already thinks his boss might be lying to him, or at least not telling him the whole truth. In his binary mind, that probably counts as the same thing. Authority has to be trusted completely, at all times. That’s a basic tenet of Reconstruction.”

“Unless he wants there to be a good reason why he hasn’t been told about the electromagnetic storm.”

“And the crater.”

“That too.” Marcus picked some stray hairs from out of the teeth of his comb, then slipped it into his back pocket. “Some people’s capacity for self-delusion is prodigious.”

“What am I going to do if I can’t find her?” Petrovitch drank some more coffee and looked pensive.

“Some self-delusions are more inspiring than others. We call that kind hope.” Marcus got up from his seat and collected the carpet bag being offered to him by a pink-haired woman with stripy tights. It was heavy with promise, and when he dumped it on the table in front of Petrovitch, it fell with a solid thump.

“Is that everything?”

“It’s what you ordered. If you’ve forgotten anything now, then it’s a little late.”

Petrovitch pulled the bag into his lap and unzipped it. A flimsy piece of paper shoved on top popped out: he unfolded it and saw his inventory printed out and each item checked as it was packed.

“Where’s the…?”

“Here.” Marcus passed him the tags that would mark the bag as a diplomatic pouch. “I don’t like it, though.”

“This is the first time we’ve ever done this, while everybody else does it all the time — and we can prove it. Anyway,” said Petrovitch, tying the tags on to the handle, “it’s for all the best reasons.”

“Just make sure you don’t, you know.”

“What? Blow stuff up?”

“It’d be good if you at least tried to behave.” He grew serious. “We all want Lucy back, but you need to remember that you’re part of the Freezone collective now.”

“Yeah, I know all this.”

“It’s my job to remind you.”

“Thank you, Mr Ambassador.”

“Don’t get shirty with me, Sam. We have protocols. We vary them only in exceptional circumstances, so don’t think they don’t apply to you.”

“Marcus, this is Lucy we’re talking about.”

“I’m painfully aware of that. I don’t want you going rogue, you hear me? I want you back as well as Lucy. Michael will keep a close eye on you to make sure you stick to the few rules we have.”

“I’m sure he will.” Petrovitch chewed at his lip and counted to ten. Slowly. “Marcus, I know it’s your job. I’m not going to screw up, okay? No declaring war on anyone unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Or at all. If you want to go off the reservation, talk to Michael, and we’ll have an ad-hoc. And you’ll behave yourself if the decision goes against you.”

“It was easier when I could do what I wanted.”

“You mean when you were always a hair’s breadth away from getting yourself killed.” Marcus sat down next to him, favouring his old bones. “I know how impulsive you are. Hell, I’ve seen the way you play chess, all or nothing. You need to take it slowly. Your usual way of doing things isn’t going to work.”

Petrovitch screwed the inventory up and threw it into a bin, then zipped up the bag. He locked it with his thumbprint and put it on the floor beside him.

“I’ll do my best,” he finally said.

“The Freezone’s bigger than you, Sam.”

“It’s always been bigger than me. If,” said Petrovitch, struggling for the words, “if it’s a choice between me following the rules and me getting Lucy back, you know which way it’s going to go, don’t you?”

“I know. Everybody knows. Which is why we’re all holding our breath, waiting to see what happens.”

“Yeah.” Petrovitch laughed. “It’ll be fine.”

“Time you were off, Sam.”

“I wonder how many NSA agents are going to be on our tail this time.”

“I’ve already complained to the State Department, for all the good that’ll do. You don’t honestly think they trust the FBI to control you, do you?”

“It would just be brilliant if they left me alone like they said they would.” Petrovitch nodded in Newcomen’s direction. “I’ve got an escort…”

“Who you drugged and boobytrapped,” interrupted Marcus.

“… who, I was going to say, should be enough. It’s now more in my interest to keep him with me than bury him in the nearest snowdrift. They should be thanking me.” He levered himself upright, scooped up the bag and advanced on Newcomen. “Come on then, G-man. You’ve got a date with a real live woman, which in itself is an accomplishment of sorts. Let’s get you there on time and looking vaguely presentable.”

Newcomen looked up from his reading, trying to match the skinny, scruffy blond man carrying the alarmingly heavy bag with the monster of legend.

“Did you do all this?” He nodded at the screen. Petrovitch snorted. “Don’t believe everything you read.”

“Then why did you get me to read it?”

“Because some of it is true.”

Newcomen tossed the reader into the chair opposite him, and stood up, straightening his jacket. “Which bits, then?”

“You don’t honestly think I’d waste a second with that govno? Yobany stos, I was there at the time: I know what went on.” Petrovitch retrieved the reader and rolled it up into a tube. He pushed it into Newcomen’s top pocket. “And in some respects, it’s not what happened that’s important. Not ten years on and an ocean away. It’s why a tabloid journalist should spend six months of their lives digging through all the old news reports and web pages to write a book that’s only partly right. Figure it out. But later: we need to go.”

He led the way back out to the library foyer, and Newcomen was reunited with his luggage.

“Is it clean?”

“Yeah, it’s clean. Even that old satellite phone you’ve been lugging around with you.”

“You… know about the phone?”

“You were unconscious and I only had my hands in your chest for a little while. I thought I’d have a poke around and make sure that you weren’t carrying any contraband.” Petrovitch shrugged. “It’s not like the locks were difficult to crack. I had to assume the ones who sent you wanted me to look inside.”

“I’ve been…”

“Talking to Buchannan on it. I know. Good work on not telling him about the bomb, by the way. Because if you had, you’d be dead by now.”

“And…” Newcomen was aghast.

“Christine. Likewise. Though you employed so much corn on your last conversation I thought I was going to have to break it up by puking all over you.” Petrovitch put his hand out to the door lock, and the bolts pulled back with a clunk.

“My private conversations.”

“Yeah. I warned you when you first woke up: everything you say, everything you do, I get to find out about. You had no reason to assume your box of tricks was immune from that. Not that it’ll be a problem any more, because both your tie and your sat phone are slag.”

Petrovitch heaved the door aside. There was another taxi waiting on the kerbside, the driver just emerging into the cold New York air. No Artak this time — he was away over in Brooklyn on another fare — it was just another guy with a car and a meter, looking to make a few bucks carrying a couple of out-of-towners down the New Jersey Turnpike.

When he saw the two men with their bags, he moved to open his trunk. Only the tall guy wanted his squared away, though. The foreigner shook his head with such steady conviction that he felt compelled to back away and get into his cab as quickly as he could.

“What you got in there anyway?” the driver asked conversationally once they were on the road.

“It’s a, uh, diplomatic thing,” said Newcomen. “Best not go there.”

“Courier job, eh? Where you going?”

“Seattle,” said Newcomen. He was disturbed by the lack of response from Petrovitch, sat in the seat next to him, bag firmly on his lap. He glanced around to see him with his head turned to face the back window.

“Are we,” and he struggled to look for himself, “being followed?”

“Yeah. At least three cars broadcasting encrypted burst transmissions on shortwave. There may be more than three, but at least they’ve the good sense to keep radio silence.”

“What this you’re saying? We’re being tailed? Better call the cops.” The driver reached to turn his phone on.

“He is the cops,” murmured Petrovitch. “So are they. Don’t sweat it. We were followed on the way from JFK, too, just more artfully.”

The taxi man pulled his hand back. “As long as you’re sure. You guys in some sort of trouble, then?”

“I didn’t think so,” said Petrovitch, “but now I’m not so sure.”