Simon Morden - The Curve of The Earth

Gowan recoiled.

Petrovitch looked up at Gowan and his partner. They were so far down the food chain as to be the equivalent of krill. Even Newcomen was more important. They certainly weren’t worth having an international incident over.

“Real people have work to do,” said Petrovitch, “so why don’t you two just fuck off? That would be brilliant.”

Baxter stiffened. “That’s…”

“And we’re keeping the Assistant Director waiting,” said Newcomen. “I’ll be happy to tell him why we’re late.”

He held his hand up and turned it vertically so he could slice his way between the men, pushing first one then the other aside to make a gap big enough for him to fit through. He walked between them into the lift car and put his foot against the door to prevent it from closing.

Petrovitch joined him, and faced outwards. He extended his middle finger in the direction of travel and kept it there as the doors shushed shut.

“They have no idea what’s going on, do they?” said Petrovitch.

“None. None at all. To be fair, neither do we.”

“Let’s hope your Buchannan can be a bit more forthcoming, then. I want some answers.” He tapped his visitor’s pass so that it bounced against his chest. “Is there anything you don’t bug?”

Newcomen glanced down. “Doesn’t look that way. Can you deal with it?”

“Sure.”

They travelled up to executive country, where the important people were. The staff they met in the corridor moved aside for them. Perhaps they could smell the frustration and anger. Perhaps they didn’t want to touch the eldritch foreigner, and perhaps they knew that Newcomen was a dead man walking, and there was no reason to catch that infection.

They passed a kitchen area. Someone was inside, making coffee, and Petrovitch heard the sound of the clinking spoon.

“Hang on a second.” He stuck his head around the corner and spied the microwave. “Yeah, that’ll do.”

The woman in the pencil skirt busied herself with putting cups on a tray, and only turned around when she heard the beep of the cooker’s timer.

“What? What are you doing?”

Petrovitch looked up from peering at his FBI tag going around on the revolving plate inside.

“Just, you know. Fixing stuff.” He gave it thirty seconds and sprung the door. The tag was warm, and had a couple of burn marks where the electronics inside had arced. He dropped the lanyard over his head again.

Newcomen, propping up the door frame, shrugged uselessly, before standing aside for Petrovitch, who marched past and carried on down the corridor like he hadn’t just destroyed federal property.

They reached the door marked with Buchannan’s nameplate. Newcomen knocked, and a breezy voice told them to enter.

In days past, Buchannan would have been half invisible through air hazy blue with cigarette smoke, while the two of them were invited to sit in the slanting light coming through the nearly closed blinds on the window. They would have all worn hats — a trilby, a fedora: something dangerous — and they’d have talked over glasses of whiskey poured from a bottle hidden in the back of a filing cabinet. There’d have been trench coats hanging from the bentwood stand by the frosted-glass door, and the shadows of people walking by would have made them drop their voices and speak in short, clipped sentences.

As it was, Petrovitch missed the trappings. They would have reminded him of what was at stake, and made the whole proceedings less clinical and anodyne. At least the glass walls of the Assistant Director’s office could be dialled opaque. There were bookshelves, with real books; photographs of friends and family; mementoes gained from thirty-five years of faithful service. Buchannan’s first day as an FBI agent was the day before Armageddon. All his working life had been spent working against, and yet fearing, the actinic flash of a nuclear bomb.

Petrovitch had best remember that. He took the leftmost seat and placed his bag on his lap. Newcomen waited for Buchannan to indicate he could sit, which he did with an open gesture at the chair to Petrovitch’s right.

“Dr Petrovitch? Welcome to America.”

“No thanks, I’ve had enough already.” He pressed the lock on his bag and unzipped it. “Do you mind if I check for bugs?”

“The whole building is regularly swept, Doctor.”

“But not by me.” He picked out a variety of devices and dumped the bag on the floor.

It was inevitable that he found five different radio transmitters within the confines of the four walls, and in trying to trace a sixth, he tabbed the motor on the window blinds to reveal a palm-sized mosquito drone hovering just outside, eight floors up.

Buchannan had the decency to look embarrassed. “Such matters seem to be out of my control, Dr Petrovitch.”

“Maybe we should go for a walk,” suggested Newcomen.

It wasn’t a bad idea, but Petrovitch had a better one. “Your boss isn’t going to tell us anything in private that he’s not going to in public. Firstly, he’s part of the machine; he’s not going offmessage for us, for you, or he would already have done so. Secondly, he knows I’m one big recording device, and he’s probably already seen footage of our little incident back at the hotel. Let’s save ourselves the biting cold and let him make his carefully rehearsed speech here, where at least it’s warm and there’s the possibility of a decent cup of coffee.”

“I guess so.”

They waited in silence for a secretary to bring them drinks. Buchannan, too old to have been gengineered, too squeamish to stand the smell of his own corneas cooking by going under a laser, wore small, round glasses. Like Petrovitch used to have. He took them off and polished them with a cloth handkerchief.

Newcomen fidgeted incessantly, playing with his fingers, pulling faces, scratching. Petrovitch just sat and closed his eyes, feeling for the electronic equipment secreted around the room, for the operator of the drone, who was two floors down in a cupboard marked on the floor plan as janitorial supplies.

The delay meant that when the secretary and her tray arrived, he had a good idea of how to disable them all.

“Do you take milk, Doctor?” asked Buchannan.

Petrovitch shook his head. “Just sugar.”

“How much?”

“About four of those little sachets will be fine. Defenestrating spooks before breakfast always takes it out of me.”

“And Joseph?”

“Milk, please.”

“Can we stop being polite to each other? None of us really mean it.” Petrovitch watched while the Assistant Director ripped open the paper sachets and emptied their contents into a cup of black brew. “We’re all grown-ups.”

“Quite so, Doctor.” Buchannan stirred the coffee with a metal spoon and slid the saucer towards Petrovitch. “Why don’t you start?”

“Yeah, you don’t want me to start. But I’ll ask the first question: why are you going along with this charade? It must offend every instinct you have as a law-enforcement officer.”

“I would deny that there is a charade I’m going along with.”

“Meaning either there isn’t a charade, or you’re not going along with it? You look pretty well neck-deep in things from where I’m sitting.”

“That’s a matter of interpretation. Things look different depending where you stand.” Buchannan slipped on his glasses and blinked in the bright light.

“I was never much one for moral relativism.” Petrovitch got a raised eyebrow from across the desk. “Well, if I’m being a shit, even for a good reason, I’ll always put my hand up to it: I don’t hide behind the national interest or the greater good. Call it what it is.”

“And what do you think it is, Dr Petrovitch?”