Саймон Морден - The Petrovitch Trilogy

Petrovitch kept walking, and turned his good eye to the skyline, where smoke and dust hung in a low pall. There was masonry to navigate, and cracks in the road. Pools of water and piles of glass.

“You showed everyone who you really are today, Mackensie. Not the great president, the architect of Reconstruction and protector of the American people. It turns out that you’re really an insane old man with an Armageddon fetish who’d rather nuke the planet than admit you were wrong—and I’ve got it all on file. If you think these streets look bad, this city: it can be rebuilt, which is more than can be said for your reputation. I had a very illuminating chat with Paul Dalton a couple of days ago, who told me of Reconstruction’s dark heart; that if you looked like you were out of step with the project, different in some way, maybe even just weak, it would turn on you and tear you apart without hesitation or mercy. That’s what’s going to happen to you, and I’m going to enjoy watching it played out. Look at the faces around you. Look at them closely. They’re your executioners, not me. Goodbye Mackensie.”

There was more to do, but Petrovitch was content to let others do it. Once he’d matched jobs to people, he saw no reason to fret about their competence. He’d done enough for one day—enough, it felt, for a lifetime—and it was true what he’d told Mackensie; he was tired.

He’d talked to presidents and prime ministers, he’d talked to ambassadors and representatives. He’d had a very poignant conversation with the Secretary General of the United Nations, who inexplicably reminded him of his mother, and he’d choked up completely.

His mother: now that was a situation he was probably going to have to deal with at some point. Just not yet.

A mere cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church didn’t really rank at all compared with the rest of the great and the good. Still, there he was, sitting on the steps of a bizarre Italianate building that had somehow squeezed itself between a town house and a pizza restaurant, sadly closed for the duration.

Carillo had found an unbroken bottle of bourbon in the wreckage of the Mount Street church and had brought it out to share. He lowered himself onto the cold marble and arranged two glasses on the step next to him.

Petrovitch picked up the bottle by its neck and read the label.

“Proof that there’s at least something American you’ll appreciate,” said the cardinal.

“I’m not that knee-jerk.” Petrovitch passed the bottle back, and the cardinal cracked the seal. “Am I?”

“I think that’s a whole different conversation to the one I planned on having.” Carillo bent low over the glasses, pouring carefully so he didn’t spill a drop. “If this was any stronger, I wouldn’t be able to carry it on commercial flights. As it is, it shouldn’t dissolve your guts if you take it in moderation.”

“And all this on an empty stomach. You’d think being a multi-billionaire and leader of what’s left of one of the world’s great cities would mean lunch at some point.”

Carillo passed Petrovitch his drink and looked out from under the porch at the darkening sky. “Can’t help you there. I brought the booze.”

“At least I’m a cheap date.” Corn whiskey wasn’t his usual, but he’d make the exception, just this once. He twisted his wrist and emptied the contents of the glass into his mouth. He held the liquid there for a moment, then swallowed.

He let out a puff of air, and screwed up his remaining eye.

“Stagg’s a decent drop. The bottle’s yours to keep, by way of an apology.” Carillo sipped his bourbon and drew his knees up against the cold. “You’ll be getting a letter from the Pope at some point, too.”

“Yeah, well. You didn’t know. And it’s only your God that’s supposed to be omniscient, not his followers.” Petrovitch hefted the bottle again, and worked the stopper free. He poured himself another two fingers and stared at the light through the dark oak whiskey. “This is self-medication. I’m due in surgery.”

“The eye?”

Petrovitch touched his pirate’s eyepatch: Lucy’s idea. “I don’t even need a local for that, just plug and play. It’s the arm. It bled inside, and it’s… easier if they amputate.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. You going organic?”

“Probably not. My flight from this meat-sack continues, Tetsuo- stylee.”

“What does Madeleine say about that?”

“I’m paraphrasing, but it was something like ‘at least the next time someone tries to break your arm, you can break theirs right back’.” Petrovitch drank half the bourbon in his glass. “She understands me. I don’t know if that’s good or scary.”

“She is your wife.”

“Yeah. We’re still just a couple of kids, though. We have no role models: both our fathers are dead, her mother was an alcoholic and, when she sobered up, she became an Outie and tried to kill Maddy. I abandoned my family back in St. Petersburg. I don’t even know what marriage is supposed to look like, let alone the rest of it.”

Carillo sipped and contemplated. “So why did you get married?”

“Apparently it was the only way we could get to bang each other’s brains out without incurring God’s wrath.”

After they’d both stopped laughing, Petrovitch felt he should explain.

“The whole living together, being with each other thing. I didn’t need a piece of paper for that. She did: she has this irrational belief that it means something extra. So that’s why I agreed.” He drank more, poured more. “I don’t want to be with anybody else. She’s…”

“What?” said Carillo after a suitable wait.

“Did I ever tell you about how fantastic her breasts are? They’re just breathtaking, amazing, a work of art from a Renaissance master. They’re the sort of breasts Leonardo would have drawn.” He looked sideways at the cardinal. “There is a point to this.”

“I was wondering.”

“When she takes her top off, I’m like a kid in a sweet shop. I know it’s a function of biochemistry, my age and my complete lack of experience in these things, and mostly I’m just pathetically grateful she wants to be with me. But it wasn’t her breasts that I missed while we weren’t together. It was her.”

“What you’re saying is that you love her.” Carillo made a half-smile. “Which is right and proper. I know a lot of my colleagues don’t approve, but I do.”

“You’ve talked about me and Maddy?”

“At a surprisingly high level. She is, as I’m sure you realize, an extraordinary young woman. A great loss to the Order, and some have agitated this past year for your marriage to be annulled.”

Petrovitch’s fingers tightened around his glass. “So Father John didn’t act on his own.”

“So it would seem. You’ve already caused two revolutions today, why not a third?” Carillo hunched over further. “Maybe I will have some more of Kentucky’s finest.”

Petrovitch slid the bottle across the gap between them. “Strange days for both of us, then. I take it you’re not going to name names.”

“Having seen what you do to people who cross you, no. There’ll be an inquiry, held in curia, and the results will not be divulged. I’m sure you can create some pattern-recognition software that’ll track appointments and retirements, but I’d rather you didn’t.” Carillo held the bourbon bottle up and frowned at the amount already missing. Then he shrugged and dealt himself another shot. “We might move slowly, but we are very thorough.”

“Like the Americans.”

“You keep forgetting I am one.”

“You keep having to remember you are one. I’d hardly call what’s happening over there a revolution, though. It’s still Reconstruction to the core.”