Simon Morden - The Curve of The Earth

Newcomen was half in his jacket. “Don’t.”

“Even though you know you’re never going to marry Christine?”

“Especially because of that.”

“How did it go last night? Everything okay?”

Newcomen sat on the edge of the bed to lace his shoes. “We had a good time — no, an excellent time. I’ll remember yesterday for the rest of my life, however long that might be. I was gallant to the end. And you? You were good. Moral, even.” He looked over his shoulder at Petrovitch, and held his gaze.

“Except I’m a complete bastard really, aren’t I?”

The other man nodded sadly.

“When you flew to the Metrozone, did you care about what had happened to Lucy? Did you care about finding her?”

“No. All I cared about was the idea I’d been chosen for something special. That it would impress Christine. That it would impress her father. That my career was taking off, higher clearance, more money, me telling people what to do rather than the other way round. I didn’t care about Lucy at all. I thought you were a stupid, careless parent for letting her go, and she was as good as dead, so why bother?” Newcomen went back to his lacing. “So I imagine I’m just as big a bastard as you are.”

“Sixty bucks,” murmured Petrovitch. “Does stack up, doesn’t it?”

Newcomen stood up and started to throw things into his open case. After a while, he slowed down, and eventually stopped.

“I’m not going to need any of this, am I? Not where we’re going.”

“No, not really. I’ve ordered a whole stack of cold-weather gear that’ll be waiting for us when we go north. Stuff that genuinely works, not the tourist kit.” Petrovitch stood up and looked into Newcomen’s case with him. “You never really needed much of it anyway. A toothbrush. That’s about it, really.”

“I could just leave it here. Someone will make good use of it.” Newcomen reached in and pulled out the hefty brick that was the sat phone. “Should really return this, though.”

“Doesn’t work any more. Nuked that, too.”

Newcomen threw it back in on top of his clothes and dropped the lid.

“Your office is what, a couple of blocks away? Why don’t we go and have a talk with your Assistant Director while we’re here?” Petrovitch turned from the window. “I do need breakfast first, though. Mrs Logan made me an omelette, which she didn’t need to, but that wasn’t really enough to keep the wolf from the door.”

Newcomen grabbed the free pen and scribbled on the top sheet of the pad of paper that was next to it.

Help yourself , he wrote, and laid the note on top of his case. He stared at it, the little square of white against the grey of the plastic.

“Is this what it comes down to?” He chewed at his lip.

“Yeah. Pretty much.” Petrovitch jammed his hands in his pockets. “Welcome to my world.”

They walked in together, side by side, no thought that Petrovitch really ought to be a step ahead where he could be seen, guided, stopped if he got out of line.

There were agents and support staff in the foyer, doing whatever it was they were supposed to do: talking about the game, discussing a case or arranging to meet up, going home, clocking on. There were plenty of them, too: no shortage of manpower. Certainly no shortage of people to break off their conversations and watch Petrovitch pause briefly before he walked through the security screen.

The absence of alarms was deafening.

The two uniformed guards on duty pointed to the X-ray machine.

“You’ll have to put your bag through,” said the Moustache.

“I disagree,” said Petrovitch. “Neither do I have to submit to any search, physical or electromagnetic, whichever frequency you choose, including visible light.”

“Then the bag stays here. Since we don’t allow unaccompanied luggage in the building, you’ll have to stay too.”

“Don’t tell me, you’ve been reading Joseph Heller. Agent Newcomen knows all about Heller’s satirical work, Catch-22 , because he studied American literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Right, Agent?”

“Uh, Petrovitch, this isn’t helping.”

“Oh come on. All the time is learning time. We can’t go in because of me, but we have to go in, because of me.”

The senior man rested his hand on his colleague’s shoulder. It was just like customs at JFK. A word from a higher authority, and the rules could be not just bent, but stamped on and broken into little pieces.

“You can carry on,” said the guard. The corners of his mouth turned down.

“Of course we can,” said Petrovitch cheerily. “There was never any doubt of that.”

The pair of them made their way to the front desk.

“Just keep walking,” said Newcomen, leaning in. “Don’t let them intimidate you.”

“Yeah, you really don’t know me at all, do you?”

“Well enough to know a lot of you is just hot air.” He reached into his pocket for his badge, and flipped it open.

Petrovitch squinted at it, then moved Newcomen’s arm for a better look.

“Pfft.”

“What?”

“I thought I looked like govno on my ID.” He rummaged around in half a dozen pockets before he found his visa.

“Just let me do this, okay?” Newcomen eyeballed a receptionist. “I need my pass, and one for my guest.”

She was so dazzled, she automatically started to reach into a drawer. Her supervisor, an older woman with formidable hair, interrupted with a touch on her arm.

“I’ll deal with these gentlemen, Lenora.”

“Oof. And you thought it was cold outside,” said Petrovitch. He rested his carpet bag, now inexpertly repaired with ragged strips of wide silver tape, on the desk. The woman gave it a hard stare, as if she could make it disappear by willpower alone.

“Agent Newcomen. This is yours.” She gave him a lanyard attached to a holographic card. “And this, Dr Petrovitch, is yours. You have to wear it visibly at all times, and return it to me when you leave. Do you understand?”

She dangled a visitor’s pass towards him, with its bright red text face out.

“Well,” said Petrovitch, and Newcomen kicked him.

“Yes. He understands, and I’ll make sure he complies.” He took the tag and hung it over Petrovitch’s head. “Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll behave.”

Newcomen led them to the lifts, where Petrovitch had the novelty of waiting. Making sure there was a car ready for them would have been a little too obvious. Even as he tapped his toe, he could see out of the corner of his eye one of the security guys passing a variety of objects through the screen to see if it was still working.

The lift door opened, and two men were inside, talking animatedly. They stepped out together, and suddenly noticed who was standing in their way.

“Newcomen.”

“Baxter. Gowan.”

“How was, er, how was Europe?” said Baxter. Maybe it was something about deliberately engineering for tall, muscular, blond-haired men, but the Bureau had more than its fair share of them.

“Big,” said Newcomen, and showed no sign of moving. “Noisy. Where were you last night?”

“I’m a suspect in one of your cases?” Baxter pressed his palm to his chest in mock surprise.

“You know exactly what I mean. The pair of you should have been at the Hilton with him,” and he pointed at Petrovitch with a rigid, trembling finger, “last night.”

“Him?” said Gowan. “This the cyborg?”

He leaned in for a closer look, checking Petrovitch’s face for an access hatch or a data port. Petrovitch considered his options, the chief of which, and the one he personally favoured, was bringing his forehead smartly into contact with the bridge of Gowan’s nose. Instead, he made his eyes glow a charnel red, and blinked slowly.