Саймон Морден - Degrees of Freedom

The great circular sweep of the windows provided a complete view of the Freezone, and Petrovitch could understand why Sonja had placed the Freezone bureaucracy here: it had given her the illusion of control and, for those who worked for her, the illusion of being constantly watched.

He walked around quite slowly, not so much as to delay the meeting with Sonja but to put it in its proper context. Here was the city laid out beneath him: he’d saved it twice, and he’d be damned if he was going to have to do it a third time. It shouldn’t need saving from its friends, only its enemies.

As her desk became visible from behind the inner curve of the room, he could see her. She was upright, hands folded in her lap, dressed in a smart white blouse and dark jacket. Quite the image of Madam President Oshicora, when all she was was Sonja, only surviving child of a dead refugee, washed up on the shore like flotsam. The clothes, the title, meant nothing now. She’d inherited a business empire, and she was left with what she wore and nothing else.

He was almost sorry for her, but she and she alone was the reason he was carrying quantum destruction on his shattered arm and there was no food in his belly.

She didn’t look at him as he approached, not even when he pulled up a spare chair and parked himself down in front of her. He had no such qualms, and stared at her until she finally stole a glance at him from under her fringe.

“Yeah, so you are in there.” He drank the rest of his water, and engaged in a futile search for a steaming mug or a pot of coal-black brew. “Anything to say about this? Anything at all?”

“I did it for you,” she said.

“You’re going to have to explain that, because I’m not grateful.”

She pressed her lips together and reached up to scratch at the corner of one eye. Her whole body was tense, and when she lowered her hand again, it made a claw before it disappeared back onto her knees.

Then she dropped her chin onto her chest and sighed. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s over, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much. You can still make some decisions that are important, like getting your crew to put their guns down, and telling them I still need them. Which I do.”

“I can do all that, but it won’t make a difference.”

“It will to me.”

“No. Because you’ll be dead soon enough.” She caught his gaze and held it. “I can’t protect you any longer. Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve tried to do: it’s come unraveled because you’re too stubborn, too independent, too good at getting out of the trap I set for you. I thought I’d thought of, if not everything, enough. I was wrong.”

Petrovitch blinked in surprise. “What have you done?”

“I’ve been keeping the Americans from killing you. They told me that if I didn’t do something about you, they would.” She looked up at the ceiling. “So I said I’d, well, emasculate you. Ruin your life, your reputation, your support. Isolate you, run you down, capture you and make sure you’d never be a threat to them again. I promised I’d do all that because I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”

“Ah, chyort. ” He leaned forward and put his head on the desk.

“I found the Prophet of the New Machine Jihad in the Metrozone and kept him and his crazies safe until I needed them, I set up Container Zero, I used mercenaries to take the bomb from you and give it to the Jihad. I made sure that no one could connect me to any of the separate parts of the overall plan, and I made sure by getting rid of anyone who was involved. The number of ways you can lose inconvenient bodies when you’re in charge of waste disposal are almost limitless.” She sighed. “Then you decided that you weren’t going to roll over after all. You decided you were going to fight back—had already decided months ago that you were going to fight back against every and any thing that stood in your way—and it all fell apart.”

He slowly sat up and rubbed the crease in his forehead caused by the edge of the desk. “You, you,” and he struggled for the right word, one that would convey the utter futility of her scheme and his complete contempt for it. “You muppet.”

“I lost control. Of you, of the Jihad, of my own people. I couldn’t keep it together any longer. Now, you’re going to die, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” She slumped back in her chair, finally relieved of the burden she’d been carrying. She even smiled. “Sorry doesn’t really cut it, though.”

“No,” said Petrovitch quietly. “No, it doesn’t. How long’s this been in play?”

“Ten months. Someone came to see me, early on. My seat was barely warm. I thought he was here for one thing, turned out he was here for something completely different. You know how they work now: no electronic communications, everything done in person, records written down on paper. He convinced me that you were a hair-trigger away from being assassinated, but the U.S. wanted to avoid another showdown with the EU, so soon after the last one.”

“You know what you should have done, don’t you? Right there and then? Held him at gunpoint and called security. We could have won that battle diplomatically, and no one would have had to die. You know who that man was?”

“He was CIA…”

“He was the controller, the top dog, the big man. Tina and Tabletop have been trying to find him forever. And he was here in your office. That was when you fucked up, not yesterday.”

“Either I did what he said, or he’d kill you.” She shrugged. “I did what I thought was best. For you. I really did do it for you. I know you’re going to hate me now. I know you’re going to tell the whole world what I’ve done. It won’t save you. In fact, they’re probably going to kill us both now.”

Petrovitch stood up, the back of his legs pushing hard against the chair seat and shoving it across the floor. He dragged his fingers through his greasy hair and scratched at his scalp. He picked up his empty water bottle and crinkled it with his fingers before throwing it ineffectually at the line of windows. He watched it fall short, and scowled at it for not producing the satisfying sound he felt he needed.

“Even if you hadn’t shopped him straightaway, imagine what we could have done. We could have stitched up his whole cell and paraded them handcuffed in front of the world; a farewell gift from the Freezone. But no. You decided—you, just you—to bend over and take it as deep as they wanted.” He wrestled his chair back in front of her again. “You should have told me. At the very beginning.”

“He said if I did that, they’d kill you anyway.”

“And just how was he going to find out? If he was bugging you, I could have stopped him without him even noticing. If he was watching you, there are a thousand different ways of losing a tail. If he had someone on your staff, all you had to do was be alone for five minutes. There was no need for any of this.” Petrovitch threw himself down in the chair and wheeled it right up to the desk. “He didn’t have the resources to do anything. I was too well protected, and using you was the only way he could get to me. And you fell for his smoke and mirrors, when you should have told him to shove it up his zhopu. ”

“I wasn’t willing to take the risk. They’re not amateurs, Sam.” Now she was sitting forward, wanting him to understand even if he didn’t agree. “Look what happened last time—they did everything they set out to do and you couldn’t stop them then. They brought the Oshicora Tower down, they trapped Michael…”

“They didn’t get me. They didn’t get Maddy. They didn’t get you.”

“That was just luck. All three of us had agents working next to us, day in, day out. None of us noticed.”