Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

Wong scowled at him as Petrovitch kicked the door open.

“Hey. Why you no use handle like everyone else?” he complained, but he was already pouring coffee in a scalding black stream.

Petrovitch pushed the door back with his heel, shutting out the mist and the dark. “Because I’m not like everyone else. Where I come from the door opens you.”

“That still make no sense. You say that like it mean something, when it all nonsense.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and felt the weight of the pistol as he sized up the rest of the café’s clientele. “Quiet?”

“No one come in and shoot us up. Not today.” Wong slid the coffee over the counter. “On house.”

Petrovitch had come out without a credit chip, or even a few coins, so he had no choice but to accept. “Thanks. Why?”

“You great man now. Shows fortune cookie right again.” His face cracked into an unpleasant grin. “I have sex with the Stanford faculty’s mothers!”

Petrovitch looked over the top of his glasses. “Is that how they translated it? I prefer my version.” Still shaking his head, he retreated to the very back of the shop and nursed his scalding black coffee until Chain barged his way in.

“Hey,” started Wong.

“He’s with me,” Petrovitch called.

Chain squinted into the distance and finally located the source of the voice. He patted his jacket down for his wallet, and let Wong charge him twice for the same drink without him noticing. He brought his coffee to Petrovitch’s table and slopped it down before collapsing in the chair opposite.

“You all right?” asked Petrovitch.

“A bit, you know. Strange days.” He pressed his squashed nose into his mug, inhaling the bitter fumes. “Everything is wrong.”

“That, coming from a policeman, doesn’t fill me with happy thoughts.”

Chain’s face twitched. “I’ve been seconded. Metrozone Emergency Authority militia. Intelligence.”

Petrovitch just about managed to swallow. He coughed hard to clear his throat. “Ha!”

“Don’t start. Not now. Besides,” he said, reaching inside his jacket, “I’ve got something for you.”

He slid a slim metal case the size of a cheap paperback across the table. Petrovitch stared at it for a moment before looking up into Chain’s rheumy eyes.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Since I dropped the last one in a swamp, I supposed I owed you.” Chain nudged it closer. “Consider it a late wedding present.”

“I thought my present was your convenient forgetting of all the illegal things I’d done.” Petrovitch picked up the case and turned it in his hands, watching the play of light and shadow across the brushed steel surface. He touched the recessed button and the case split apart. “If you’ve loaded this up with spyware… What am I saying, if? The first thing I’m going to do is bleach the insides.”

“For what it’s worth, I haven’t touched it. Factory fresh. Except,” and Chain stopped, and his shoulders hunched higher.

Petrovitch dabbed at the rat, checking the software and the connectivity. “Except what?”

“I did put a file on it. You might want to take a look.”

Petrovitch found the file and clicked it. A video started to run: grainy, too-bright colors, ghosting. It was almost unwatchable, but then it settled down. People were passing through a screen, the camera pointing down and toward them, recording their faces as they walked out from under the arch.

“Airport?”

“Heathrow, this morning. Watch for the blonde.”

“That’s every second person.”

“You’ll recognize her.”

He watched as figures paraded by. There was a pause, then a woman with a curiously mechanical gait stepped up to the screen. Lights and alarms sounded, causing a flurry of activity from the paycops. The woman looked first to her left, then her right, her ponytail flicking her shoulders. A guard was arguing with her, his hand on his holster, but she seemed supremely unconcerned. It was almost as if this happened all the time to her.

She was alone again, everyone else retreating outside the square of the camera’s capture. The screen rang its alarms for a second time, but she strode through untouched. She looked up at the camera, her gaze unwavering. Then she was gone.

“Don’t know her,” said Petrovitch.

“No family resemblance, then?”

“Not mine.” Petrovitch wound the video back and froze it. He stared at the image, even as she stared back. “Chyort.”

“May I introduce Charlotte Sorenson, recently arrived from the U.S. of A?” Chain swigged at his coffee and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “She has cybernetic legs, hence all the kerfuffle.”

“No prizes for guessing why she’s here.” Petrovitch snapped the rat shut and tapped it on the tabletop. “What does she know?”

“She knows where her brother stayed, who he was working for. She may even know he was being blackmailed.”

“By Oshicora and by you,” said Petrovitch pointedly.

“I would apologize, but he’s dead.” Chain shifted uncomfortably in his seat and leaned closer. “We all did things we’re not proud of.”

“Like shooting my wife in the back? At least the Outies have the decency to try and kill her face to face.”

Chain almost got up and left. His hands were on the tabletop, poised, ready to push himself away. He went as far as tensing his arm muscles. Then he slumped back down. “Okay. Probably deserved that.”

“Probably?”

“I’m trying to help you. There’s more than just Miss Sorenson to worry about.”

Petrovitch pocketed the rat and signaled to Wong for more coffee. “Go on.”

“I get to see things in my new job I wouldn’t normally see. A briefing here, a transcript there. Things start to add up.”

“Chain, stop sounding like the yebani Oracle and get to the point.”

“I think the CIA are after us.”

Petrovitch became stock still. Even when Wong banged down two more mugs and swept away the empties, he didn’t react.

Chain leaned back, making his seat creak in protest. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah. I heard. What makes you think that?”

“This is not the best place to discuss the evidence.” Chain regarded his fellow diners, who appeared to be entirely disinterested in anything he might say. Or do.

“I’m not taking this on trust,” said Petrovitch. “You’re a pizdobol at the best of times.”

“I’m limited to what I can show you, but come in tomorrow.”

Petrovitch smirked. “Don’t you think I’m going to be busy tomorrow?”

“Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame. It’ll be something to remember fondly while you pace your cell and tear at your orange jumpsuit.” Chain picked up his coffee and gulped at it.

“You’re actually serious.”

Chain leaned forward again, his chest almost across the tabletop. “They’re desperate to know what happened during the Long Night, and there are only three people who know the whole story. Four, if you count your Doctor Ekanobi. I hear rumors: some of them are even true, though it would take anyone else years of sorting to get the full picture. But that’s why the CIA are here. They suppose if it can happen to the Metrozone, it can happen to one of their cities. This has their highest threat level, and their top priority.”

“Why don’t we do something radical?” Petrovitch stretched his neck out toward Chain and whispered: “Why don’t we just tell them what happened?”

“You shot an American citizen.”

“He was tovo. He’d killed, what, two dozen cops by blowing them up? You said yourself he had form for that, and yobany stos, he had his own father murdered.” Petrovitch pushed his glasses back up his face. “The Director’ll probably give me a medal for services rendered.”