Simon Morden - The Curve of The Earth

Newcomen stared at him from underneath the fringe of his hood. He was aghast.

“We’re not going to do that, though. Right?”

“No one’s going to stop us. If I want to shoot someone in the head, then that’s okay by whoever’s in charge.” Petrovitch shrugged inside his heavy coat. “You’re not the only expendable agent here. Take a look at the eyes of everyone we meet: see if you can spot the fear in them. But us? We’re in a state of grace. We can commit no sin.”

They walked down the middle of what passed for a main street. The buildings — far apart, all raised clear of the permafrost by stilts — were functional and nothing else, and often little more than prefab sheds surrounded by discarded and partcannibalised equipment.

As the darkness drew about them, the day shorter still, he spotted the blinking neon sign for the Caribou.

“Take the receptionist at the hotel,” said Petrovitch. “He’s not the regular guy. He’s not even one of the occasionals. I’m guessing that last week he was working out of an office in DC, or New York. They’ve dragged him up north, no experience of Arctic conditions, little idea of why he’s here: he’s got a script, like they all do, all the ringers and replacements.”

He was at the bottom of the steps up to the hotel’s front door. He blinked away some ice crystals and wondered about adding antifreeze, or at least extra salt, to his tears.

“You’re going to try and make him go off-message, aren’t you?” said Newcomen.

“ Chyort , yeah.” Petrovitch tramped up the steps and shouldered his way into the foyer.

It was simple enough: a desk, a chair behind it, and a slightly pudgy, slightly balding man rubbing his sweaty palms nervously on his trousers. He cleared his throat, once, then again, because the first time hadn’t quite got rid of the dry, prickling hoarseness he felt.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said.

“ Dobre outro ,” said Petrovitch. “We have reservations. Lots of them, but we’ve also got a couple of rooms booked. Petrovitch and Newcomen.”

“I’ve got your keys here.” The faux-receptionist slid two plastic cards across the desk at them. “I’ll need to, ah, see some ID.”

Petrovitch eyed the sign behind the desk, telling him he wasn’t allowed either firearms or alcohol in his room. The corner of his mouth twitched. “ID? Sure.” His hand dipped into his pocket and retrieved a plastic eyeball, which he buffed against his sleeve.

When it was shiny, he rolled it towards the man, who stopped it with his fingertips and looked up at Petrovitch, then Newcomen, and back to Petrovitch again.

“Maybe we should waive the formalities this once.” He held out the eye and dropped it into Petrovitch’s waiting palm. “Your rooms are through that door, second and third on the left.”

“Aren’t you supposed to ask whether we want bugged or unbugged?”

They looked at each other again, and the receptionist’s tongue attempted to moisten his lips. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

Petrovitch dumped his bag on the desk, and made an ostentatious show of thumbing the lock, unzipping it, and rummaging around inside, his brows rising and falling as he felt each object in turn.

He pulled out a small wand, with a series of lights running up to the tip. He pressed a button on its base, and the lights pulsed once, settled down, then started rising again.

“Ooh, what do we have here?” Petrovitch held the wand up and traced arcane lines in the air. “The place is alive, Newcomen. We’ll have to mind our language, and everything else.”

He suddenly stabbed the wand at the chest of the receptionist, who jerked back, but only as far as the wall behind him. He was still within easy reach of Petrovitch.

The stubby wand crawled up his neck, his chin, his nose, and hovered, poised, over one eye. The man swallowed and watched the lights flicker near to their maximum.

“You’re wired,” said Petrovitch. “This whole place is wired.”

“I…”

“That was a statement of fact, not a request for information. I’d just like to take this opportunity, now that I know your controllers are listening for sure: you think you’ve got me. You couldn’t be more wrong.”

He pulled back the wand and dropped it in his bag. He passed Newcomen one of the keys and threw the other in the face of the receptionist, who flinched and tried to duck.

“Like I ever needed one of those. Come on, Newcomen.” Petrovitch grabbed his bag and took a step back towards the door outside. “Let’s go and put more fuel in the tank and take that tour.”

Back out in the snow and the dark and the cold, Newcomen rounded on him. “Is that it?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Just letting them know we’ve arrived, and we’re not scared.”

“You mean, you’re not scared.”

“Sorry, projecting. I assumed you’d grown a backbone, but I managed to be wrong, yet again.” Petrovitch frowned. “That better not become a habit. A lot depends on me being right.”

Newcomen ground his teeth. “Can you manage to be a little less rude next time?”

“What? You mean the desk jockey back there?” Petrovitch stopped in the middle of the street. “ Yobany stos , man. He’s got orders to kill me. Why the huy should I be polite to him?”

“And you’re a prophet now?”

“That man has been sent here to see you, me and Lucy in an early grave. They all have. They’re the teeth in the trap. Just because you share an employer doesn’t mean you’re going to escape what they’ve got planned for you.” He started walking again. “It hasn’t so far, has it?”

“In the end, they’ll not do that. If I can convince them I’ve done my duty…”

“Okay, let’s try something.” Petrovitch put his bag on the ground and pulled out his pistol. He tugged his mitten off with his teeth, and pressed the barrel of the gun against Newcomen’s forehead.

Newcomen was very, very still. “Doctor?”

“Right,” called out Petrovitch. “You can see me, right? You going to stop me? Here’s an FBI agent. He’s one of yours. Come and save him from the big bad Russian.”

There were figures in the shadows: he could see them in infrared, the bright colours of their faces, muted greens and lighter blues where their clothing shielded them from the cold. But no one asked him to lower his weapon, no one came out to press his gun hand down.

“What are you waiting for? Don’t you care?”

Newcomen closed his eyes.

“No one? No one at all?” Petrovitch shrugged, and tossed the weapon back into the open bag. “Guess not, then.”

He pulled his mitten back on and grabbed the bag’s handles, but didn’t move from the spot.

Newcomen opened one eye, then the other. He shuddered. “You, you…”

“Wouldn’t have shot you? No. You won’t get the same offer anywhere else in this town, though. You’d better remember that.”

Newcomen had reverted to sullen silence. Perhaps his capacity for self-delusion had finally reached its limit, and he was contemplating just how much of a pizdets his situation looked. Or he could have been sulking because Petrovitch had drawn a gun on him.

From the pilot’s seat, Petrovitch glanced across. He shrugged. Any hope he’d had of turning the agent looked increasingly unlikely. Fine. They’d do it the hard way.

The plane coasted slowly across the North Slope plain: the research station was out of town, but not so far that it required any great speed. Five minutes and they were there, back in the full dark of the Arctic winter.

Petrovitch used satellite maps and night vision to guide the plane down somewhere safe. There were no lights, no power — not since the instant of Lucy’s disconnection. He felt his way, and the moment the wheels touched down on the snow crust was a moment of obscure relief.