Саймон Морден - Degrees of Freedom

“See you soon. If you can’t find anything straightaway, call me so I can decide if I can do without it.”

The shadow left the end of the container, and before he called the Chair of the Freezone, he decided to tackle the dead man’s switch.

It was a simple task, but he had to do it right. He wound the free end of the wire around the nearest chairleg and pulled it tight so that he knew it wouldn’t slip. Then he unwound more of the coil to stretch around the switch itself.

Dead, brittle fingers were wrapped around the handle, which should have flung itself back the moment conscious pressure had ceased. Something had prevented that. Petrovitch ramped up the gain on his eyes, hoping to see what that was.

The secret was at the elbow. The Armageddonist had wedged his arm against the back of the chair to relieve the strain on his muscles. Maybe he’d had a cramp. Maybe he just hadn’t been ready. And some time after he’d completely negated the purpose of the bomb switch, he’d died.

“ Mudak. Can’t even get the end of the world right.”

He looped the wire around the switch and the emaciated hand, and took up the slack, then gave it three more winds before slowly drawing everything together. As the wire tightened, it bit into the dry, bloodless hand, cutting the parchment-colored skin.

Petrovitch watched dispassionately, only concerned with whether the underlying bones would break. He decided that they weren’t going to, and he finished off the wire with bending it back down to the chair and fixing it to the same leg. He gave it an experimental kick. The wire held.

Next thing.

She was sitting at her desk, unaware that she was being observed. Her eyes were flickering across the screen in front of her, reading a set of accounts. Every time she came across an entry that she might later query, she frowned a little, eyebrows knitting together.

He coughed to attract her attention. “Madam President?”

“Sam?” Sonja sat back, now trying to focus on the tiny camera clipped to her screen. “Why are you calling me that? Where are you?”

“Regent’s Park. We’ve got a problem. An official Freezone the- govno ’s-hit-the-fan problem.” He regarded the bomb. “And I’m officially telling you about it.”

“Okay.” Her face sharpened. “Tell me.”

“I’m standing in Container Zero. It contains the body of the Last Armageddonist and the Last Armageddonist’s home-made nuclear device.”

If she was surprised or shocked, she didn’t show it. She showed nothing at all. “Is the area secure?”

“No, but I don’t want people down here mob-handed. It’s a sure way of drawing attention to the fact we have a situation.”

“Sam, the situation is happening whether we like it or not, and I’m sending you a squad of my guards. They’ll be discreet.”

“Maddy won’t like that.”

“She there with you?”

“Not at the moment. I sent her to assemble a bomb disposal kit.”

A beat, then her voice dropped an octave. “Sam…”

“What? Sonja, this thing is live. I don’t know what’ll set it off, but I know I can make sure it won’t go critical.”

“It’s been sitting there for years. Another day won’t make a difference.”

Petrovitch closed his hand around his forehead and scraped his fingers back through his hair. “Yes. Yes, it will. For one thing, we’ve opened the container. There was a dead man’s switch that failed to work—I’ve made that temporarily safe—but there could be light-sensitive triggers, trickle-charging cells, old-fashioned mechanical booby traps. If this blows, we’ve wasted the year we’ve spent rebuilding and the next ten trying to decontaminate the Metrozone.”

“We need an expert.”

“ Yobany stos, you sound just like her! Listen: this is a jerry-built gun-type assembly. It’s not something you buy off the shelf. The people who made this are dead, Sonja, and no one can pick their brains. The design is simple and stupid and inefficient and unstable. It relies on nothing more sophisticated than bringing two subcritical masses together. That could happen if you so much as drop it. If you want to leave something like that sitting in the middle of the Freezone, then hey, you’re the boss. You get to carry the can.”

Sonja pushed back from her desk. The Freezone authority had co-opted the old Post Office Tower. The views from the top were commanding, and Petrovitch could see tiny points of light through the windows behind her.

“Can it be moved?” she asked.

“Without disarming it? Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Would you move it?”

“ Chyort. No.”

She stood up and looked out over the city, as she must have done from the Oshicora building. The difference was now she really did run it all. At least for the next two weeks.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t screw up.”

His mouth twisted into a grin. “Have I ever let you down?”

“No,” she conceded. “But you let Michael down. He’s been gone a year, and you still owe him.”

“I’m working on it.”

“I know: one brick at a time. I’ve been meaning to ask you: what happened this morning?”

“With the priest? The Pope wants to know if Michael has a soul.”

“Does he?”

“I told him it didn’t matter. I told him Michael was my friend and I was going to rescue him anyway.”

“Good for you, Sam. Keeping an eye on the oil prices?”

“Not particularly.”

“Down eighty dollars a barrel since lunchtime. OPEC are squealing.”

“Which is stupid. Oil’s too valuable to just burn it. They should be pleased.”

“So now I have the Saudi secret service to worry about, too. Thanks.” She sat back down, almost falling into the chair. “I miss these chats. We’ve been so busy, haven’t we?”

“Time’s coming—soon—when we won’t be.”

“You know that Madeleine’s not the only woman in the world, don’t you? If she doesn’t want you, there might be someone else who does.”

Petrovitch scratched at his nose, even though that wasn’t where the itch was. “You know me. You know I keep my promises.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “If only you were more corruptible.”

“Yeah.” He could hear the sound of an engine outside. “Better go. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

When he’d closed the connection, he frowned. It wasn’t a motorbike engine he was hearing. The noise ramped up suddenly, and a shower of sparks washed across the floor of the container from the welded-shut doors.

The edge of a cutting disc emerged through the steel and started to carve its way upward. The air vibrated and filled with smoke.

“ Ahueyet! ” Petrovitch reattached himself to Sonja’s computer. “If you’ve sent your crew already, send more. Now.” Then to Valentina: “What the huy are you doing in Enfield? I need you here!” And finally to Madeleine, and he had to wait for her to pick up: “Come.”

By which time the sparks were almost to the top of the door, and he could barely see through the acrid, metal-tasting fog. The smoke caught in the back of his throat and made him cough. It was irritating his eyelids, too, but he could ignore that.

The flickering sparks died away, and so did the roar of the cutter. The ends of two crowbars hammered through the opening, probing and twisting, and after a few seconds the doors screeched open, the howl of ancient hinges being forced reverberating across the remains of the domik pile.

The sudden outflow of air sucked much of the smoke with it. It billowed into the darkening sky, and half a dozen figures stepped into the container.

“Doctor Petrovitch, please stand aside. We have no wish to harm you.”