Саймон Морден - Equations of Life

“Too late. As in me.”

“You’ve got an uncomfortable week ahead, Petrovitch.” Chain slurped at his coffee. “Bugger. Hot.”

While Chain dabbed at his scalded lip, Petrovitch pushed his glasses up his nose and made a little ticking noise with his tongue. “How did they get on to me so fast? I mean, I went from the church, to the hospital, to the church, to the university, and suddenly I’m a target.”

“Two unpalatable options, each equally likely. First, that your face has been lifted from a CCTV file, run through facial recognition software, and your government file rifled for information on where you live, where you work, everything official about you.”

“A krisha .”

“As you say, a bent copper. More likely, you’ve been bugged. At the hospital, I would guess.”

Petrovitch looked down. Now even his own clothes were betraying him. “So for all I know, they’re lining up outside to have a go at me.”

“They’d have to know roughly where you are first.” Chain went behind his desk and pulled out a magic wand from his top drawer. “Abracadabra.”

He waved the wand mystically over Petrovitch, top to toe, and gradually zeroed in on his right boot.

“I’m not taking it off for you,” said Chain, looking up from the floor.

Petrovitch unlaced the boot and pulled it off his foot. Chain wrinkled his nose.

“Sorry,” said Petrovitch.

“I’m guessing girls don’t feature much in your life.” Chain ran the wand around the boot, then inside. He plunged his hand in after it, and after a few moments of pulling faces, retrieved a sticky label. “There.”

Petrovitch took the wand from the detective and inspected it. A line of lights ran up one side, the bottom four already lit. When he brought it close to the label stuck to the end of Chain’s fingers, all the lights flickered on.

He peeled the label off Chain, and as he held it up to the window, he could see shadows of circuitry inside. “What do I do with it?”

“Tear it in half. But if they have access to the CCTV network, they can still track you with cameras, and they know where you live. Anywhere you can hole up safe for a few days?” Chain dragged his coffee closer, and warily tried to drink it.

“I’m a physicist, not a spy.”

“A holiday in Russia?”

“Yeah. That really isn’t a good idea.”

Chain raised his eyebrows. “How so?”

“It just isn’t. Okay?” Petrovitch stared up at the detective, who eventually shrugged and muttered something under his breath.

“Look,” said Chain, “let me explain something to you. I can’t stop you from being killed. I don’t have the resources. I can make it difficult for them, but not impossible. I might even be able to catch your murderer, but I’m sure that’s not going to be of much comfort to you. You’re going to have to help yourself. Any good at that?”

Petrovitch nodded slowly. “Yeah. Not bad.”

“Good. So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet. Chain, what is it with you and the Oshicoras?”

The detective slid off his desk and paced the floor. When he spoke, it was with messianic zeal. “I was here. Here for everything. Armageddon: the shock of the first explosions—Dublin, Belfast, Sellafield, the emptying of the countryside, the radioactive rain, the streets choked with refugees, kids—so many kids without their parents—everywhere. We could have lost control in so many different ways, torn apart from the inside, swamped from the outside, or just one of those fucking heretics with their holy nuclear bombs getting across the M25: but we didn’t. We kept it together. We took everybody in. Housed them. Fed them. Found something for them to do.”

Petrovitch sighed, and Chain made a rumbling cough.

“Am I boring you?” he asked.

“Just get on with it, Inspector.”

“What we did was a miracle. Then Oshicora turned up, eight years ago, unseen amongst all the other refugees that were washing around the world. Marchenkho’s organitskaya and every other criminal gang in the Metrozone has been losing ground to Oshicora’s yakuza ever since.”

“He’s not yakuza ,” said Petrovitch. “His men have got too many fingers.”

“Neo-yakuza, then. Corporate samurai, whatever you want to call them. They prey on us, suck us dry—virus and host. And if the infection was in just one place, it wouldn’t matter, but Oshicora runs his organization like a franchise, each outlet selling his specific brand of criminality to the masses. They’re turning up everywhere, and what we’ve worked for, what I’ve worked for, will have been for nothing. This city brought to its knees by a…” Words finally failed him. He threw up his hands and dropped heavily into his seat.

Petrovitch scratched his chin and pushed his glasses up his nose. “All that must make him very rich.”

“Most people don’t get it. They don’t understand why the police just can’t do something about it. I’m guessing that you get it perfectly.”

“Better than you could possibly imagine.” His coffee at a drinkable temperature, Petrovitch gulped at it until it was gone. “Thanks for the lecture, but I think I should be going.”

His abruptness startled Chain. “You said you had nowhere to go.”

“That’s because I hadn’t. Now I do.” He was halfway to the door, when he realized he’d forgotten what he’d originally come for. “You still have something of mine.”

“Ah, yes: your Remote Access Terminal. Half-gigabyte bandwidth, two-fifty-six-bit encryption, satellite connectivity and a touch interface. Chinese kit, top of the range, does pretty much everything. Just how does a kid like you afford something like that? More to the point, what would you need one for?”

“You’re the detective. You figure it out.” Petrovitch’s jaw jutted out. “Just get it for me, okay?”

Chain patted his pockets, and ended up using the hardwired desk phone. He said a few words, listened to the response, and a faint smile raised the corners of his mouth.

He put the phone down. “Hard luck.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m afraid not. Someone’s swiped it from the evidence room. I’ll be making inquiries, don’t worry. You’ll get it back, eventually.” Chain looked almost happy. “So where are you going, Petrovitch?”

“Do you honestly think I’d tell you? You can’t even keep evidence locked up. What good would you be with a secret?” Petrovitch wrestled with the unfamiliar door handle. “Just leave me alone.”

“You know my number. Call me when you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?” He finally got the door open.

“Ready for when you tell me why you saved Sonja Oshicora.”

“ Potselui mou zhopy, Chain.”

Petrovitch fumed all the way down to the ground floor. He still had the sticky bug on the end of his fingers. He made a face at it, then carefully pasted it on the inside of his police-issue wrist tag. When he passed the front desk, he ripped the tag off and slapped it face-up on the counter in a carefully calculated act of rage.

Outside, he looked at the buildings around him and headed north. Toward Green Park.

The Oshicora Tower was constructed in the phallocentric style: tall, narrow at the base before flaring out to a maximum girth halfway up. Silvered triangles of glass wrapped like a staircase around its circumference, making it impossible to see any of the internal structure.

He’d soon have an opportunity. He was going in. He wasn’t sure it was the wisest course to take, but he gauged that the short-term benefits of staying alive outweighed any potential downside. He stood almost exactly where he’d been that morning, watching Sonja Oshicora striding toward him—then hesitating, as if she couldn’t quite remember what it was she planned to do next.