Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

“Yeah.” He dug his fists into his pockets. “You pouring that coffee or should I just leave like the bio-hazard I am?”

Wong reached up to a shelf for a mug. “Not a good day?”

“No. No, it wasn’t.” Petrovitch kicked the bottom of the counter. “Completely and irrevocably pizdets. I lost a friend.”

“Another?” Black coffee poured into the mug, filling the air with its sour aroma. “You running out of friends. Better find more, soon.”

“Wong, I’m not in the mood. I…” The door opened, and he turned, thinking—hoping—that it was Madeleine. In doing so, he showed his back to the shopkeeper, who could see the ruin that was his coat.

It wasn’t her. But it was a face he recognized.

They stared at each other, she plainly knowing who he was, too, and not in a good, seen-him-on-television, fan-girl way.

“Chyort,” he said. “Vsyo govno, krome mochee.”

“Sorry?” she said, her accent showing just from one word. She brushed a stray blonde hair from her face. “You’re called Petrovitch, right?”

“There seems little point in denying it. And you’re Charlotte Sorenson.”

“Do you know why I’m here?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be for the service.” Petrovitch glanced behind him to see Wong fuming. He banged Petrovitch’s coffee down and leaned his hands on the countertop, scowling.

“You knew my brother? Martin?” she said.

“Yeah, I knew him. Grab a coffee and you can tell me what you know. I can probably fill in some of the blanks for you.”

“Okay.” She looked up at the menu. Wong’s customers tended to ignore it, and it had mostly degraded into illegibility. “A… coffee, then.”

She was pretty in a corn-fed way. Long blonde hair framing wide, expressive features. She looked strong.

Wong poured another coffee and watched closely while she topped up her mug with milk.

“You friend of Petrovitch?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “It depends on how good a friend he was to my brother.”

Ignoring Petrovitch’s increasingly unsubtle signals to shut the huy up, Wong carried on. “Brother? American?”

“Duh,” she said, stirring her coffee with a spoon. She tapped the drips off and looked mildly surprised that the cutlery hadn’t melted.

“I remember him. Big man. Red face. Shouted. Shouted lots.”

She looked at Petrovitch, who had closed his eyes and was shaking his head.

“Why was he shouting?”

“Why don’t we sit down?” said Petrovitch.

By coincidence, the only table free was the one where he and Sorenson had sat, eaten breakfast, and argued, all those months ago.

Petrovitch snagged his coffee and led the way, wondering why Madeleine was taking so long. He sat with his back to the wall, and watched while Sorenson took the seat that had once been occupied by her brother. Her gait was mechanical, but not in a lumbering jerky way: it was all oiled gears and precision. She walked like she meant it.

“I saw Sonja Oshicora yesterday,” she said, centering her mug. “She was very helpful.”

“Really?” He was too tired to spot her sarcasm. Instead, he drank coffee and prayed for the door to open.

“No. She smiled a lot, but told me nothing. That man—”

“Wong.”

“Wong, then—he said more now than Oshicora did in an hour.”

“Did he?” Petrovitch flipped off his glasses and rubbed his smoke-stung eyes. “Yeah. That’s Wong.”

“Marty worked for her father, right? That was what he told me.” She sat upright, perfectly poised. Despite the conversations that leaked across their table from their neighbors, she made no attempt to preserve their privacy by leaning forward or lowering her voice.

“What else did he say about that? Did he mention what it was he was working on?” He was going to look around and see who was eavesdropping, even if she wasn’t. He dragged his glasses back onto his face.

“Big project, he said. Told me it was going well. Nothing about the content.” She looked him in the eye. “What was it?”

“Cybernetic interface for a virtual world.” He heard the door open again, and this time Madeleine stooped through the opening.

She was in her gray MEA fatigues and a surplus olive-green EDF jacket. She paused, frowning at everyone in the small eatery until she spotted Petrovitch. Her momentary pleasure at seeing her husband disappeared at seeing him with yet another blonde.

Wong handed her a coffee—Petrovitch was pretty certain she’d never had to pay for a single item yet—and folded his arms to watch. Madeleine stalked over and stood behind Sorenson, blocking out the light.

“Maddy, this is Charlotte Sorenson from the U.S. of A.” He scratched at his nose. “You may remember me telling you I killed her brother.”

The other diners had been listening, if only with half an ear. He had their undivided attention now. He looked at them, left and right.

“Idi nyuhai plavki,” he said to them, and then to his wife: “Why don’t you sit down while I tell her all about it?”

She squeezed in next to him, somehow managing to fold her impossibly long legs under the table. She licked her thumb and ran it across his cheek. It left a pale mark.

“What happened to you?”

“I lost Grigori. Pointless, useless, yebani death.”

“Sam,” she said, then to Sorenson: “Sorry. He’s not in a fit state for confessions. Come back in the morning.”

“No,” said Sorenson. Her lips barely moved, and the rest of her face, her whole body, was motionless. “I want to hear this.”

Madeleine slipped her arm around Petrovitch’s shoulders and pulled him into her. She stared defiantly at the other woman. “You don’t get to say what goes on.”

“Look,” said Petrovitch. He winced at the iron grip Madeleine had on him. “Now is as good a time as any. I’m in a public place and I have you here. What can she do but listen?”

“I don’t think you owe her anything,” said Madeleine.

“I… think I do. You have the certainty of faith. I just have what goes on in my own head. I see him sometimes. I see him with his hand round my throat. Sometimes I make him let go. And sometimes I don’t.” He scratched at his nose with his thumb. “You see, Miss Sorenson, I tried so very hard to save your brother. He wouldn’t take advice. Yeah, he knew better—didn’t want to do the easy thing of keeping his head down. He fucked up. He died.”

“You said you killed him.” She was perfectly still.

“Old Man Oshicora—Sonja’s father—was blackmailing him. It seems that your country frowns on those who get paid by extortionists, racketeers, traffickers, and murderers, even if they do have impeccable manners. Then there was this cop, who was also blackmailing him, using exactly the same levers, to get at Oshicora. Your brother had met me briefly, became fixated on the idea that I could help him. I tried. I told him to just keep on working, ignore Chain, do a good job and beg for mercy when he was done. Could he do it?” Petrovitch drank half his coffee and lined up his mug on the brown ring on the table. “The mudak couldn’t.”

“That explains nothing,” said Sorenson. “You still killed him.”

“You want to know why I killed him? Do you really want to know why, or do you just want someone to blame? I don’t really care either way.”

“You said you’d tell me.”

“He kidnapped Sonja Oshicora. He blew up a police station. He took control of a gang of thieves and thugs and declared war on the city. I found him. I had the govno beaten out of me. He choked me half to death, then he tried to throw me off the top of a tower block. All because he wouldn’t let Sonja go.”