The Curve of The Earth (17 page)

Outside, there was a taxi rank, a car park, a bus stop. Petrovitch ignored them all, concentrating really hard on the pavement in front of him.

“What are you doing?”

“Just keep walking. This is temporarily difficult.”

They had the bay on their left, the rise of West Seattle on their right with its trees and houses. The tsunami damage was only partly repaired here, and there were still vacant lots scattered through the white new-build apartments.

The two spooks were almost on their heels. Maybe they figured something was up, but didn’t know what. Their targets were due at SeaTac airport in an hour, and here they were, miles away, just strolling along, Newcomen without his luggage, Petrovitch seemingly without a care in the world.

“Ooh, seafood,” said Petrovitch. They were coming up to the first of several restaurants.

“You had breakfast two hours ago.” Newcomen shivered again, bending over against the wind. “Though I could do with a coffee.”

“Come on then. I’ll buy.” Petrovitch turned and walked backwards for a moment. “How about you guys? Coffee?”

They looked at each other and then back at Petrovitch. They said nothing.

“Suit yourselves.” He took a left and headed for the entrance, holding the door for Newcomen and letting it swing shut behind him.

The restaurant was just opening. A woman with a mop was busy swabbing the floor, and a couple of men joked in Spanish at the counter.

“Any table you want is fine,” said the woman as Petrovitch wandered in. She made a figure of eight with the mophead on the chequered lino floor, right next to the “please wait here to be seated” sign.

“I’m really sorry about this,” said Petrovitch. “None of this is your fault and you’re in no way to blame.”

He took the mop from her unresisting fingers and deftly threaded it through the handles of the double doors. The men outside suddenly realised what he was doing: their hands made the draw sign and the guns flipped out of their wrist holsters.

“Run,” said Petrovitch. He took a moment to kick the wheeled bucket over, sending soapy water spilling across the floor in a wave, before heading to the back of the restaurant as fast as he could.

Newcomen was just ahead of him, shouldering the kitchen swing door aside. The glass in the front doors shattered, taken out with gunfire. It’d take the spooks another few moments to wrestle the mop handle free.

“There’s nowhere to go,” said Newcomen.

“Fire exit.” Petrovitch darted in front, rushing past the stainless-steel counters and the big fridges. He planted the sole of his boot on the push bar: the door banged back against the outside wall, letting the cold north air spill in.

The view of Seattle was obscured by the flank of a gull-grey sports plane, the smooth curves of its aerodynamic outriggers hovering barely a metre above the waves and its high engine cowlings humming with potential.

“How did that…”

“
Past’ zebej
.”

The fuselage door was open, and a narrow target to hit at speed. The wooden quay hammered like a hollow drum as they kept on running. Petrovitch launched himself off the end of the pier, over the lapping waves, and crashed against the far bulkhead inside the plane. He rolled out of the way just before Newcomen landed like a sack of Iowa potatoes in the same spot.

“Hang on to something.” Petrovitch levered himself to his elbows. The plane was already moving, the big turbofans pushing them away from the shoreline and turning them to face the bay at the same time.

The engines roared: twin blasts of salt spray battered the quay just as the first of the following spooks made it to the fire exit. Before the agent could see again, the plane was a highspeed blur flying low enough to create its own wake.

Petrovitch dragged himself into the cockpit and concerned himself with making sure they didn’t hit any other shipping, islands, buoys or broaching whales. He ordered the external door to close, and when it had fought its way back against the gale caused by their speed, the interior of the plane was suddenly quiet enough to permit coherent thought.

Newcomen appeared behind him, still crawling on the floor.

“Whoever the pilot is must be mad.” The agent clung to the back of the co-pilot’s seat, and found only Petrovitch. “Oh.”

“Yeah, yeah. Do you know how hard this is? Everything comes at you really, really quickly.”

Newcomen looked down at the display, and turned even whiter when he spotted the right dial.

“You need to slow down.”

“You need to shut up, but I can’t see either of those things happening soon.”

An ocean-going yacht, single mast high and in full sail, appeared in the gap between Kingston and Edmonds. Newcomen stiffened, but Petrovitch howled by at God’s own speed, missing it easily.

“You’re not even touching the controls!”

“Because hacking the autopilot is a hell of lot easier, especially if I have real-time satellite data to warn me what’s coming up. A human couldn’t do this, and that’s what I’m counting on.” The throttle stick automatically eased further forward.

“Did we steal this? Don’t tell me we stole this.”

“Newcomen, sit down, there or in the back. Just stop talking. When we’re in Canada, we’ll have all the time we need.”

The aircraft slewed to put Hansville on its left and Whidbey Island to the right.

[Air traffic control has just shut down the airspace over the whole of Washington State.]

The corner of Petrovitch’s mouth twitched.

“Does that mean they have no idea where I am?”

[Western Air Defence Sector is mobilised and operational. National Guard interceptors are being scrambled from both McChord and Fairchild.]

“Forget Fairchild, too far away. Tell me about McChord.”

[Three F-15s are held in combat readiness at McChord, and whilst almost museum pieces, they have look-down radar and air-to-air all-aspect missiles. They are more than capable of destroying this craft, and will be airborne in ten minutes.]

“Okay. That puts me just short of Canada. If I go straight, they can’t catch up before I cross the border. Doesn’t mean they won’t chance their arm, though.”

[I have already informed the Canadians that a possible incursion is imminent. They are making pre-emptive representations to the Pentagon.]

“I can’t get any lower without turning this thing into a submarine, and if those F-15s are the only thing I have to worry about, I’ll take her up another twenty metres and crank the engines up to eleven. Anything else?”

[The Naval Airbase on Whidbey is on alert, though it will take them longer to mobilise.]

“If I had the time, I’d give them a fly-by.”

He rounded the last headland. The foundations of the houses long since swept away flashed by at incredible speed. Vancouver Island was in sight, and there was nothing but clear sky behind him.

He blinked, and became aware of Newcomen sitting next to him, rigid with fear, barely daring to look.

“It’s all information hitting the back of your eyeball. It’s just a question of how fast it happens.” Petrovitch leaned back and flexed his fingers, ready to take the controls when he switched to manual. “We’ll get this executive penis-extension down safely somewhere, and we can take a look at what Buchannan gave you.”

Petrovitch set the plane down in a clearing, dropping from treetop to forest floor quickly as they were no longer under power: he had as much control over the vessel as he would a hot air balloon, and he’d rather not scrape the paintwork – or one of the antigravity outriggers – on a trunk.

He folded the undercarriage out, and it made uneven contact with the ground. They were listing slightly to port, but he was satisfied he could correct for that on take-off.

The instrument panel glowed with a soft pink electroluminescence for a moment after landing. Then it winked out.

Petrovitch blew out a thin stream of air between his pursed lips. “We seem to be still in one piece. Good.”

Newcomen peeled himself off the co-pilot’s chair. His armpits were dark with sweat. “That was terrifying.”

“You thought so? I quite enjoyed it. I lived mainly on adrenalin when I was younger, though, so maybe that has something to do with it.”

“Did we steal this?”

“No. I hired it. Technically, someone else hired it, because if I’d hired it under my own name, the computer would have flagged it up to the authorities. But it amounts to the same thing. I hired it, got it fuelled, filed an entirely bogus flight plan – which is a low-grade federal offence – and then took remote control of it after knocking out its automatic locator beacon, which is another one.”

Petrovitch looked around the cockpit and frowned.

“What?” asked Newcomen.

“It’s always worried me how wildly complicated these things are, when they should grow simpler the more advanced they get. All the pilot does is choose the direction, altitude and speed. That’s it, really. You might be interested in how fast the engines are turning and how much fuel you’ve got, but if you’re running hot or going to be out of juice before you reach your destination, the computer should tell you first.”

“Do you actually have a pilot’s licence?” asked Newcomen, “Or are you insane?”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive. And in the Freezone, we don’t do the licence thing. We concentrate on whether the man or woman at the controls is competent to make the flight.” Petrovitch slipped from his seat and started towards the small cabin. “Rely on a piece of paper to tell us if someone can fly? No thanks.”

Newcomen unbuckled his harness. Having struggled into it mid-flight, he now had to wrestle his way out. Petrovitch moved up the passageway, collected his carpet bag, and opened up the external door.

The scent of cold and pine burst in, and he breathed deeply, ridding his nose of the smell of his passenger’s fear. The forest
seemed quiet enough: snow slipped off branches and birds called to each other through the dense green foliage. Apart from that, the most sound came from the cooling engines, ticking and clicking as the cowlings contracted.

A ladder unwound from underneath the opening in the fuselage. Petrovitch dumped his bag on the top step and collected it again when he was one foot from the ground.

He jumped. The undisturbed snow crunched and the leaf mould underneath gave. After their frantic escape, such stillness was welcome.

Newcomen appeared, blinking in the white reflected light. “Why are we going outside?”

“Because it’s nice out, and trees are opaque to infrared. Come on.”

Petrovitch tramped across the clearing and under the canopy of green. The forest was mature, and the trunks far apart, although they had to manhandle the overlapping branches in order to push through. When they were thoroughly embedded, and as far as Newcomen was concerned, completely lost, Petrovitch stopped and settled down on a mossy rock protruding from the carpet of soft brown needles.

Newcomen realised he wouldn’t be able to sit anywhere he wasn’t going to get his suit stained. So he stood instead, trying to shake the melting snow out of his shoes.

“Why did we run? I mean, we both know we’re going to end up in Deadhorse sooner or later. They’ll be waiting for us, despite this.”

Petrovitch opened his bag and started to sort through the equipment inside. “I hate being watched. I hate being controlled. Most of all, I hate being at the end of such unmitigated spite
and obstruction. My girl is still out there, and I’m having to deal with all this
govno
.”

He found what he was looking for: a slim box with several slots in each side. He powered it up and gestured for Buchannan’s data card.

Newcomen reluctantly handed it over, and Petrovitch peered at it, checking it for spyware. It was clean, literally a dime-adozen standard data card that could be bought from any electronics chop-shop across America.

Petrovitch located the right hole in his card reader. A yellow light winked away on the box to show it was busy. While they were waiting for the data to upload, he closed his eyes and tilted his head back.

When Newcomen cleared his throat, Petrovitch tutted. “Shush.”

The yellow light was replaced by green.

“It’s done.”

Without opening his eyes, Petrovitch said: “There can be terabytes of data on each card. It all needs to be sorted and checked.”

“By you?”

“By a committee. It’s private information. If I need to know any of it, they’ll pass the relevant files to me.” He sighed and put the card reader next to him on the rock. “We value privacy much more than you do.”

“You have an all-seeing artificial intelligence monitoring everything you do and everywhere you go.”

“That’s because Michael is an infovore. That’s what he does. It doesn’t follow that he passes that information on to everybody else. Or even anyone at all.”

“So you’re happy that this machine knows everything about you?”

“Are you happy that your God knows everything about you?”

Newcomen took a sharp breath in. “That’s not…”

“Not the same?” Petrovitch smiled. “No. Michael can’t send me to Hell if he thinks I’ve been bad.”

“Doesn’t mean that God won’t.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Yeah, I’m an arrogant little shit, but I pay for it. Who on your side is going to pay for abandoning a twenty-four-year-old to the Alaskan winter? You going to go home and hand out the indictments?” He mimed the scene. “One for you, Mr Director. Here’s yours, General. Don’t worry, Mr Secretary of State, I haven’t forgotten you.”

“You’re just mocking me now.”

“I would much rather see justice done in this life than wait until the next. Mainly because I think the idea’s a pile of
govno
, but also because justice delayed is justice denied. Waiting till some of these wily old bastards die is just plain wrong.” The light on the reader flicked back to yellow. “Interesting.”

[The Secrets committee has met. There are files on the data card that would be detrimental to the personal security of several individuals should they be read by agents of the United States government. They have therefore requested that those files are deleted locally, while I retain secure copies.]