Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

“Not yet. I know what the plan should look like. I know what I need it to do.” His hands gripped the painted metal, cool and heavy against his hands. “I know how much time I need to pull it off.”

“Do you think,” she said, then stopped to look around her: a couple of pedestrians, another car, ancient and dented, rolling slowly by. “Do you think it will work?”

The corner of Petrovitch’s mouth twitched. “Yeah. It’ll work.”

She had blue eyes like he did, and cheekbones like axe-blades, but at that moment she looked supremely vulnerable. “If I can help, then I will. In any way. Vrubatsa? ”

“Hey,” called Grigori, “get in, you two.”

“Okay,” said Petrovitch.

Valentina got in, and Petrovitch jogged around to the passenger seat. Grigori was frowning at him.

“What?”

The driver shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Where are we going?” He fired up the satnav module, finger poised over the screen.

Petrovitch dug in his pocket for the paper Daniels had given him. He unfolded it for the first time.

“Finsbury Park. Seven Sisters Road.”

C hain lived—had lived, past tense—in an apartment in a town house facing the main road. They gained access to the communal stairwell by one of the keys on the keyring, and swarmed up the stairs to the first floor.

In the shifting, shadow-battle against the Outies, Finsbury Park was behind the front line, but not so far as to be safe. The occasional pop of gunfire from further north was an aural reminder of that. Most of the residents had already fled, heading deeper Inzone or fleeing the city altogether. Only a couple of shops were open out of all the row of shuttered and bolted frontages. Where they got their customers from was a mystery.

Petrovitch didn’t like it. “Let’s not spend any longer here than we have to,” he said, inspecting the blank faces of the two doors that led off the landing.

“Nervous?” asked Grigori. He was holding his automatic in plain sight, not that there was anyone else to see it.

“I seem to spend my life like that.”

“It’s not like your heart is going to pack up any time soon. Not anymore.”

“No. It’ll keep on pumping blood out of whichever arterial bleed I die of, long after I’m actually dead.” He held up the magnetic key toward the pad on the door frame, only to have his arm held in place by Valentina.

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“No.” She laid her metal briefcase on the floor and clicked it open. The catches sprang and she lifted the lid. When she reached inside, she ignored the explosives, the wires and the detonators in favor of a stiff black cable.

“Tina,” said Grigori, “Petrovitch is right: we don’t have time for this.”

“What? You want to open door?” She looked up over the top of the case. “Petrovitch, give him key.”

Grigori took the key from Petrovitch’s hand, and made two abortive attempts to bring the rectangle of metal toward the sensor. Each time he drew it back.

“What do you know that I don’t?”

“Plenty,” said Valentina. She carried on assembling the fiber-optic wand, attaching a small screen onto the back of the cable, and now she turned it on. The picture was of the foam packing inside her case, magnified so that each individual gray bubble showed. “But I would ask you to think for moment. Chain is dead, and perhaps only by accident.”

“What if they wanted to make sure?” said Petrovitch. He pressed his palm against the wall separating him from the inside of Harry Chain’s apartment. It didn’t seem anywhere near bombproof enough. He regained the key and put it in his pocket.

Valentina slid the end of the fiberoptic cable through the crack under the door. The screen went black, and stayed that way before she changed the settings and dialed up the night vision.

The image resolved: through the shifting noise of the signal, they could make out shelves that stretched floor to ceiling, corner to door.

“Anything?” demanded Grigori.

“Wait,” she said, manipulating the end of the cable. “Do not hurry me.”

The shelves, pregnant with box files, slid by. The bright rectangle was a window, covered by drawn curtains: light leaked in nevertheless and gave definition to the rest of the room.

“What was that?” Petrovitch got down on his hands and knees next to Valentina, and tried to gain a sense of the layout. “Middle of the floor.”

She pulled the cable back and redirected it. There was something—angular, thin, constructed. “Table?” She tilted her head. “Music stand?”

“Too… big.”

Grigori was growing impatient. “If you won’t open the door, I will.”

“You had chance,” said Valentina. “You did not take it. So let me do my job.” She switched to infrared, and the screen changed to reflect the new data. The floor and wall were blue, cold. But the object in the middle of the room was colder still, a skeletal pyramid glowing in intense purple except for the white-hot spot at its chest-height apex.

“It’s a tripod. A camera?” Petrovitch dabbed a greasy finger on the plastic surface of the screen. “That’s strange, though. Some sort of heat source.”

“It is infrared light.” She froze the image and slid the cable out from under the door. “It could be part of Chain’s alarm system. Did you ever come here before?”

“No. I just assumed he lived in his office.” Petrovitch squinted. “What is that thing?”

Grigori sighed and rubbed his open hand with his fingers. “He’s dead, he has no neighbors left, and you’re worried about an alarm that no one will hear. Give me the key.”

Petrovitch looked at Valentina.

“If it was up to me,” she said, “I would say no. But we seem to find ourselves in democracy.”

“So give me the key,” said Grigori.

“You don’t have to prove how big your peesa is.” Petrovitch brought the keys out again, and Grigori snatched at them. “You want to open the door, not knowing what’s behind it?”

“You’re going soft on me, Petrovitch. It’ll be that wife of yours.” He held the key to the sensor, and the lock made a solid clunking noise. “Pizda.”

Valentina strode two quick paces toward Petrovitch, put her thin arms around him and kept moving, pushing him away and against the dividing wall. Grigori pushed the door open to be greeted by the high-pitched whine of servos.

There was a series of lightning flashes from inside, accompanied by the fast-repeated roar of gunfire. Grigori danced like he was standing on a scalding hot plate, and the plasterwork behind him was patterned with holes.

Then he fell backward, strings cut, body ruined.

Valentina kept Petrovitch’s back pressed against the wall. “Do not move. Do not go to him. There is nothing you can do.”

The firing stopped, and a wisp of smoke curled around the door frame.

“Chyort.” Petrovitch didn’t quite know where to put his hands. He flapped for a moment, then gripped Valentina around the waist to ease their two bodies apart.

He didn’t step into the open doorway, but got down on his belly and crawled. The opposite wall was cratered, punched through in places to the room beyond. The gun inside was clearly more than capable of hitting him through the brickwork, if only it could see him.

There was no doubt that Grigori was dead. His thumb had caught the loop of the keyring, but his arm was thrown up behind his head, and still in full view of whatever lay in wait. As were the top of the stairs, too.

More propellant fumes drifted out, sharp and hot.