The Curve of The Earth

16

Petrovitch leaned over the ferry’s railings while Newcomen huddled down inside his jacket, pitifully thin against the subarctic air.

“I have a thermal jacket at home,” said Newcomen. “It goes down to my ankles and has its own fuel cell.”

“I have the ability to ignore the cold. Though I do have to watch out for frostbite.” Petrovitch inspected his fingers, which were pleasantly pink, then looked out over the sea to the Seattle skyline.

The two men who’d followed them on foot down the quayside were just a fraction of a second too late to board the water taxi. Men like that didn’t carry ID with them, because they never wanted to be identified. But it also meant that Newcomen could flash his badge and jump the turnstile, and leave them behind.

“You realise this trip isn’t going to last very long.”

“Ten minutes across the bay is fine. Even if someone makes a call and gets us turned around, we’ve still got time to play with.”

“Why do we have to sit out on deck anyway? Won’t they be watching us?”

“Of course they will. They may even get some lip-readers in to try and see what we’re saying. All we have to do is turn our back on them. Besides, I’ve been cooped up for too long. Planes, hotels, offices. I spend a lot of my time outside now, just walking and talking, thinking and planning.”

“What do you mean, too long? It’s been, what? Two days?”

“I was never very patient. You should see me play chess.” Petrovitch faced Newcomen, the wind whipping at his spiky hair, Mount Ranier pale and uncertain behind him. “What else did Buchannan give you? Apart from your gun?”

“How did you know?”

“Because I’m a genius. And you’ve been touching your suit just here,” and he tapped where the internal pocket would be, “every couple of minutes since we left the Bureau, just to check you’ve still got it.”

Newcomen dug his frozen fingers into his jacket and held up a standard data card, its golden electrical contacts glittering in the low winter sun.

“What did he say was on it?”

“Everything I’d need.” Newcomen turned it around to show its ordinariness, then slipped it back inside.

“That’s magnificently ambiguous. Anything else?”

“No. Just that. And that he was really very sorry.” Newcomen shivered violently. “There’s only so much you can say in that short a time.”

“I’m sure I could have thought of something.” Petrovitch noticed that Newcomen’s nose had turned white. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry too. Though I haven’t changed my mind about our arrangement. That’s the problem with being a bastard: you get used to it.”

“Would it make any difference if I just jumped into the bay?”

“Yeah. I don’t float so well. Fishing you out again might be a problem.”

Newcomen looked genuinely surprised. “You can kill me in a eyeblink. Why would it bother you?”

“Because I’m the patron saint of lost causes. I have the stigmata to prove it. And I reckon you’re getting interested, despite yourself. Part of you is still absolutely terrified about the prospect of going north with me, trailing around while I ask my stupid, useless questions, and wondering if today’s the day I snap and blow your heart out through your chest. Part of you is angry, because you know what I ought to do is wait for spring and see if Lucy’s body turns up, and all this running around is a monumental waste of time. But part of you is intrigued. Part of you wants to know. Part of you, the detective part, the bit that loves justice and honour: you want to find her, or at least find out what happened to her.”

Newcomen neither agreed nor disagreed. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

“It does to me.”

The ferry puttered on, and the dock in West Seattle was visible across the tops of the waves.

“So what do you say?” said Petrovitch. “We’ll be back ashore soon enough. There’ll be fresh tails waiting for us. We’ll get to the airport, and they’ll board the plane with us. We’ll be watched every single step of the way to Fairbanks and beyond. I’d like some time alone, not just to plot and plan, but to be invisible for a while. Fed up of living in this yebani goldfish bowl.”

“What is it you want to do? And how illegal is it?”

“How many laws do you think they’ve broken? Do you imagine they even care? They think laws and statutes are for little people, Newcomen. That bad smell under your nose is a laminated copy of your constitution being burnt to ashes. What I have in mind is barely worth bothering about.”

Newcomen shifted uncomfortably. Every time he moved, he exposed a new piece of skin to the cold, wet wind. “I promised to uphold the law. Just because someone else won’t doesn’t mean I was wrong.”

Petrovitch sat down beside him. “Do you realise just how much trouble you’re in?”

“I’ve a reasonably good idea.”

“You’ve no idea at all. You’ve been betrayed and abandoned by the people you swore your oath to. You’ll be effectively stateless: even if you survive whatever it is they have waiting for us, you’ll never be able to go back. You’ll be off the grid, a feral, living between the cracks of your society.”

“Respect for my badge and what it represents is about all I have left, Petrovitch.”

“You’re a sheep, Newcomen. A yebani sheep. I can’t stop you from being devoured by the wolves, and I was stupid to ever try.” He got up and rested his hands on the freezing railings. “Yeah, go on then. Throw yourself in the sea. Temperature it is, you’ll be in shock in seconds. Quick. Relatively painless too, unless you count the fleeting moment of regret at being a mudak. Leave the data card behind on your seat. I’ll need to take a look at that.”

The engine beneath them revved harder, making the deck shudder.

“You know I’m not going overboard,” said Newcomen. “I’m too scared.”

“Yeah, I know. This is just the last gasp of your ego before it collapses completely.” Petrovitch seized the handles of his battered carpet bag. The boat bumped up against the quay. “What will you do when I say jump?”

“I’ll ask how high.”

“You know, we might actually be able to pull this off. Be ready.”

There was a rattle of chains from the far side of the deck as the gantry was lowered. The few passengers emerging from below made their way to the exit, and trooped up the metal ramp.

Petrovitch and Newcomen were last off. Two men — different to the ones they’d shaken off downtown — were waiting for them in the terminal building. They watched them pass, then fell into step a few metres behind.

Outside, there was a taxi rank, a car park, a bus stop. Petrovitch ignored them all, concentrating really hard on the pavement in front of him.

“What are you doing?”

“Just keep walking. This is temporarily difficult.”

They had the bay on their left, the rise of West Seattle on their right with its trees and houses. The tsunami damage was only partly repaired here, and there were still vacant lots scattered through the white new-build apartments.

The two spooks were almost on their heels. Maybe they figured something was up, but didn’t know what. Their targets were due at SeaTac airport in an hour, and here they were, miles away, just strolling along, Newcomen without his luggage, Petrovitch seemingly without a care in the world.

“Ooh, seafood,” said Petrovitch. They were coming up to the first of several restaurants.

“You had breakfast two hours ago.” Newcomen shivered again, bending over against the wind. “Though I could do with a coffee.”

“Come on then. I’ll buy.” Petrovitch turned and walked backwards for a moment. “How about you guys? Coffee?”

They looked at each other and then back at Petrovitch. They said nothing.

“Suit yourselves.” He took a left and headed for the entrance, holding the door for Newcomen and letting it swing shut behind him.

The restaurant was just opening. A woman with a mop was busy swabbing the floor, and a couple of men joked in Spanish at the counter.

“Any table you want is fine,” said the woman as Petrovitch wandered in. She made a figure of eight with the mophead on the chequered lino floor, right next to the “please wait here to be seated” sign.

“I’m really sorry about this,” said Petrovitch. “None of this is your fault and you’re in no way to blame.”

He took the mop from her unresisting fingers and deftly threaded it through the handles of the double doors. The men outside suddenly realised what he was doing: their hands made the draw sign and the guns flipped out of their wrist holsters.

“Run,” said Petrovitch. He took a moment to kick the wheeled bucket over, sending soapy water spilling across the floor in a wave, before heading to the back of the restaurant as fast as he could.

Newcomen was just ahead of him, shouldering the kitchen swing door aside. The glass in the front doors shattered, taken out with gunfire. It’d take the spooks another few moments to wrestle the mop handle free.

“There’s nowhere to go,” said Newcomen.

“Fire exit.” Petrovitch darted in front, rushing past the stainless-steel counters and the big fridges. He planted the sole of his boot on the push bar: the door banged back against the outside wall, letting the cold north air spill in.

The view of Seattle was obscured by the flank of a gull-grey sports plane, the smooth curves of its aerodynamic outriggers hovering barely a metre above the waves and its high engine cowlings humming with potential.

“How did that…”

“Past’ zebej.”

The fuselage door was open, and a narrow target to hit at speed. The wooden quay hammered like a hollow drum as they kept on running. Petrovitch launched himself off the end of the pier, over the lapping waves, and crashed against the far bulkhead inside the plane. He rolled out of the way just before Newcomen landed like a sack of Iowa potatoes in the same spot.

“Hang on to something.” Petrovitch levered himself to his elbows. The plane was already moving, the big turbofans pushing them away from the shoreline and turning them to face the bay at the same time.

The engines roared: twin blasts of salt spray battered the quay just as the first of the following spooks made it to the fire exit. Before the agent could see again, the plane was a highspeed blur flying low enough to create its own wake.

Petrovitch dragged himself into the cockpit and concerned himself with making sure they didn’t hit any other shipping, islands, buoys or broaching whales. He ordered the external door to close, and when it had fought its way back against the gale caused by their speed, the interior of the plane was suddenly quiet enough to permit coherent thought.

Newcomen appeared behind him, still crawling on the floor.

“Whoever the pilot is must be mad.” The agent clung to the back of the co-pilot’s seat, and found only Petrovitch. “Oh.”

“Yeah, yeah. Do you know how hard this is? Everything comes at you really, really quickly.”

Newcomen looked down at the display, and turned even whiter when he spotted the right dial.

“You need to slow down.”

“You need to shut up, but I can’t see either of those things happening soon.”

An ocean-going yacht, single mast high and in full sail, appeared in the gap between Kingston and Edmonds. Newcomen stiffened, but Petrovitch howled by at God’s own speed, missing it easily.

“You’re not even touching the controls!”

“Because hacking the autopilot is a hell of lot easier, especially if I have real-time satellite data to warn me what’s coming up. A human couldn’t do this, and that’s what I’m counting on.” The throttle stick automatically eased further forward.

“Did we steal this? Don’t tell me we stole this.”

“Newcomen, sit down, there or in the back. Just stop talking. When we’re in Canada, we’ll have all the time we need.”

The aircraft slewed to put Hansville on its left and Whidbey Island to the right.

[Air traffic control has just shut down the airspace over the whole of Washington State.]

The corner of Petrovitch’s mouth twitched.

“Does that mean they have no idea where I am?”

[Western Air Defence Sector is mobilised and operational. National Guard interceptors are being scrambled from both McChord and Fairchild.]

“Forget Fairchild, too far away. Tell me about McChord.”

[Three F-15s are held in combat readiness at McChord, and whilst almost museum pieces, they have look-down radar and air-to-air all-aspect missiles. They are more than capable of destroying this craft, and will be airborne in ten minutes.]

“Okay. That puts me just short of Canada. If I go straight, they can’t catch up before I cross the border. Doesn’t mean they won’t chance their arm, though.”

[I have already informed the Canadians that a possible incursion is imminent. They are making pre-emptive representations to the Pentagon.]

“I can’t get any lower without turning this thing into a submarine, and if those F-15s are the only thing I have to worry about, I’ll take her up another twenty metres and crank the engines up to eleven. Anything else?”

[The Naval Airbase on Whidbey is on alert, though it will take them longer to mobilise.]

“If I had the time, I’d give them a fly-by.”

He rounded the last headland. The foundations of the houses long since swept away flashed by at incredible speed. Vancouver Island was in sight, and there was nothing but clear sky behind him.

He blinked, and became aware of Newcomen sitting next to him, rigid with fear, barely daring to look.

“It’s all information hitting the back of your eyeball. It’s just a question of how fast it happens.” Petrovitch leaned back and flexed his fingers, ready to take the controls when he switched to manual. “We’ll get this executive penis-extension down safely somewhere, and we can take a look at what Buchannan gave you.”