Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

“How is the old goat?”

“Better for not having Oshicora around. His blood pressure is much lower these days. The Long Night worked out well for us.”

Petrovitch pressed his fingertips against his chest. No pulse, just the throb of a turbine. The Ukrainian noticed the ring on his finger.

“That?” said Petrovitch. “I suppose it worked out well for me, too. In a narrowly-avoided-death-repeatedly way.” He looked up and down the street. “Look, is this meeting a happy accident, or has Marchenkho sent you? Only I’m expecting Harry Chain any minute now and if he sees me talking to you, he’ll go kon govno crazy.”

Grigori beckoned him closer. “Marchenkho sends his congratulations, and an open invitation for a drink.”

“Yeah. We can swear loudly and point guns at each other in a vodka-fueled frenzy: just like old times.”

“Also a warning. There are people…”

“There often are.”

He shook his head. “No. You must take this seriously. They have been asking questions about the Long Night. They know of the New Machine Jihad, and that the Oshicora Tower was involved. Beyond that?” Grigori shrugged. “We don’t know what went on, only that it involved you.”

“I’d heard someone was taking an interest.”

“Who are they? Union investigators? They do not behave like the Union.”

“No. Not the Union.” Petrovitch’s face twitched.

“Who, then?”

“The CIA. Tell Marchenkho to give Chain a call. And speak of the devil.” A battered gray car rattled up behind Grigori’s behemoth.

Grigori looked at his rear-view mirror. “What do you want us to do?”

Petrovitch pushed himself away from the open window. He could see Chain’s squashed face behind his steering wheel. “Keep an eye on my back, will you? I don’t trust this lot to do anything but stand round and stare at my rapidly cooling corpse.”

“Is done,” said Grigori. “Dobre den, tovarisch.”

The window buzzed upward, and the four-by-four bounced back into the street.

Chain leaned across his car and threw the passenger door open. Petrovitch sauntered over and clambered in.

“What,” said Chain, “did he want?”

“Marchenkho’s invited me around for cocktails one evening. Black tie affair, you wouldn’t be interested.”

“And really?”

“I can easily get back out and do something constructive. Or you can just drive.” Petrovitch tugged at the seat belt to strap himself in, but when Chain muttered something under his breath, he changed his mind and made to get out. “Fine. See you later.”

“Okay, okay.” Chain pulled onto the road without signaling, or even checking it was clear. “Do you have any idea how stressful this job is?”

“No. Neither do I care.” Petrovitch twisted around in his seat and looked out of the rear window. “I have troubles of my own.”

“You could always leave,” said Chain, echoing Sonja’s remark of earlier. “After yesterday, I imagine you could go pretty much anywhere. Take that wife of yours somewhere she’s not going to get shot at.”

“Funny you should say that,” said Petrovitch. There was no one following them. Not that that didn’t preclude the possibility that they were being watched every moment. He turned back and finished strapping himself in.

“Meaning?”

“Nothing for you to worry about. Now, about this prowler.”

“Five minutes ago, you’d never even heard the word.”

“Yeah. And now I’m a yebani expert.” He dipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out the rat. “Let’s see. Tracked vehicle, roughly pyramidal, sensor array on a central pylon, gyrojet weapons laterally positioned, each with a two-hundred-degree arc of fire, short-range scattergun. Powered by four rechargeable nanotube batteries, EMP hardened electronics. Any of this sounding familiar?”

“Worryingly so.”

“Then you’ve got the genuine article.” He looked up from his screen. They were passing Hyde Park. Empty, now. The last remains of the shanty town were blowing in the wind: torn plastic, loose sheets of cardboard, tatters of cloth flapped against the boards surrounding the park. The bulldozers had moved in, had been moving in for a month now, and the work had stalled. Some Metrozone assemblyman wanted all the bodies that lay on and under the park exhumed and buried elsewhere. “Another thing.”

“Which is?” asked Chain, when Petrovitch didn’t continue.

He tore his gaze from the window. “Self-destruct mechanism. These things are mobile thermobaric bombs. My guess is the MEA grenade pre-ignited the fuel–air mix before it reached its critical concentration. That’s why you’ve got bits left to look at. Another second or so, and you’d have lost everyone and everything, turned inside out by the shockwave and incinerated.”

“Translated?”

“You got lucky.”

“I’ll remember to pass that along to the next of kin”; Chain grunted as he hauled the car around Marble Arch.

“What was it guarding?”

“I… don’t understand.”

Petrovitch snapped the rat shut. “Clearly. These things aren’t tourists, Chain—it was keeping the Outies away from something, probably had done for a while, when the MEA patrol just happened to stumble across it and it all went pizdets. Take a look at the satellite images—near infrared if you can get them—or just swamp the area with soldiers until you find whatever it was.”

The last time he’d been up the Edgware Road, he’d been on his way to rescue Sonja from the Paradise militia. Madeleine’s church had been at the top end of the street, before it had been burned down and a Jihad demolition robot had stirred the rubble.

It was at the start of an arrow-straight line that cut a swathe all the way to the East End.

“Petrovitch?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m talking to you.”

He tried to blink away the images that were burned onto his retina. “Looks like I’m not listening.”

The domik pile on Regent’s Park had been kicked over by the same robot, heading northwest. Four months on, the chaos of spilled containers was being taken apart by teams of thieves with gas axes, burning their way through the labyrinth one death-filled space at a time.

“You lived there, didn’t you?”

“No. I had a bolt-hole there. Different. One of the high-up domiks.” Regent’s Park slid by and out of sight. “I wonder if they’ve got to it yet?”

“Leave anything of interest inside?”

“No.” He tried a smile, and found it didn’t fit. “I was always careful.”

“That’s a matter for debate.” Chain threaded his way through the drift of rubble either side of the Hampstead Road junction, then picked up speed again. He took the car down a side road and toward a tall chain-link fence.

He pressed his knees against the underside of the steering wheel and, using both hands, felt in his pockets for his card.

“Chyort.” Petrovitch reached over and steered them, more or less, toward the gate. “You may as well not bother. There’s no one to show it to.”

Chain applied the brakes and the car jerked to a halt, front bumper almost touching the fence. He left the engine idling and got out.

Petrovitch joined him and, together, they peered through the mesh.

“Hey,” Chain called. “Major Chain, MEA.”

“Yeah. Your spidey senses not tingling yet?” Petrovitch buried his fists in the grid of metal and heaved. The gate swung open with a tinny rattle. Beyond was a short street of anonymous prefab factory units, dwarfed by the station concourse next door.

Chain fumbled for his gun. “I don’t suppose you’re carrying?”

“No. Not at the moment.”

“Look in the boot.”