The Curve of The Earth (21 page)

“That’s way too much for a satellite.” Petrovitch frowned and looked at the blue line described in the air in front of him, which arced down from space and terminated above the North Slope. “Or way too much for a regular satellite. What the hell did they have in there?”

[Barring a matter – antimatter collision, the conclusion is that only a nuclear explosion could provide such prompt energy.]

“A nuclear power plant won’t blow up just because you hit it.”

[Again, it is more likely that the explosion was a deliberate fail-safe against the re-entry and recovery of identifiable debris.]

“So, to summarise: someone put a satellite into orbit, carrying something so secret that they put a nuclear bomb on board too. The Americans got wind of it and took it out. The satellite starts to drop from the sky, and the bomb goes off before it hits the ground. Is that about right?”

[With the usual caveats, yes.]

“Then why the
huy
haven’t we heard anything about this before now? We’re supposed to be the planet’s most sophisticated information-gathering system, working every minute of every day, yet we miss something like this?
Yobany stos
, this is not just
pizdets
, this is a whole new category of
pizdets
.”

[We now know where to look and what to look for. This situation may yet yield results. We are checking the orbits of
all known satellites, and attempting to locate visually those no longer in contact with their base stations, to confirm we have not missed a single one. This will take time.]

“And recent launches.” Petrovitch swung the map around until he was looking up from underneath it, as if he was in Lucy’s position, in a series of snow-covered huts under the dark sky. “Do you think it’s the Chinese?”

[That possibility has been raised. They possess both the lift capacity and the required level of secrecy. It is also known that the Americans have active agents within the Chinese National Space Administration: perhaps one of them has leaked information about this project.]

“There aren’t supposed to be nukes in space.”

[No. China have signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996, putting them in the same position as the United States of America. What this means in practice is, I believe, moot.]

Petrovitch played the simulation again. The SkyShield component blazed away with its rail gun, sending a cloud of tungsten flechettes into the path of the oncoming satellite. The object deorbited rapidly, and as it came down, exploded.

“Everything is wrong.”

[Please explain.]

“We’re trying to fit the facts to the scenario: it should be the other way around. There’s a whole stack of things that don’t wash. The chief of which is why they left it so late to press the self-destruct button. Surely, once you know you’re hit and out of control, that’s when you do it – not when it’s about to crash into the ground. And how did it get so far without breaking up? It had to have a re-entry shield. But why? What was in it?”

[We will have answers, Sasha. Soon.]

“If you can work out what this has to do with Lucy while you’re at it, I’d be grateful.”

Michael loved Lucy. She was the second person he’d ever talked to. He was her big brother, and her absence caused him something akin to pain.

[Do not be ill-tempered,] he said. [We are working – all of us – at our capacity. The resources of almost the entire Freezone are being dedicated to this.]

“Okay, sorry. We’re missing something, though. Something big. Something
yebani
enormous.”

[Your wife and the FBI agent wish to speak to you. They have seen the same simulation, with commentaries suitable to their level of comprehension. Joseph Newcomen has very little grasp of the technicalities of orbital mechanics, and therefore I cannot say how much he understood.]

“For once, it really is rocket science. Keep going. Let me know as soon as anything significant turns up.” He smiled ruefully. “And thanks.”

He kicked himself out of the virtual world and was once again sitting in the cargo hold of a small aircraft, with his wife and Newcomen. He looked at their faces to judge their reactions: Madeleine was watching him for the same reason, while Newcomen was sitting on a crate with his mouth open.

“The Chinese?” he said. “Nobody said anything about the Chinese being involved.”

“We don’t know that for certain.” Madeleine put her reader away inside her coat. “There’s a lot we don’t know for certain.”

“But what if the Chinese want what’s left of their satellite back?”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” said Madeleine. She extended herself to her full height and stretched. Her hands
pressed against the cargo hold’s roof. “After an explosion of that size?”

“There’s one way to find out,” said Petrovitch, “and that’s ask them.”

Newcomen baulked. “What? Dear Comrade President, have you lost some space hardware that just happened to contain an atomic bomb?”

“Something like that, except you address him as Chairman. You might not know how Chinese bureaucracy works, but I do. You find some low-level functionary that’ll take your call. They clearly don’t have the authority to deal with such a question, but they’ll issue a blank denial as a matter of course. Meanwhile, the note gets passed up the food chain until someone decides that someone below them should look into the matter.” He shrugged. “It takes time. I’ll get a call from a middle-ranking civil servant, who will ask me obliquely what I know. I’ll tell him what I think he needs to know. It can go on like that for weeks.”

“And you’re happy with that?” Newcomen seemed both outraged and relieved.

“My happiness or otherwise doesn’t make them move any faster. But they might tell me something useful I can’t find out any other way. If it helps, I’ll take it.” Petrovitch looked up at Madeleine, and she down at him. “Newcomen?”

“Yes.”

“For reasons that should be self-explanatory, even to a naïf like you, I’d like some time alone with my wife.” He raised his eyebrows and waited.

“Oh. Yes. Okay. I’ll just go back to our plane.”

“Thank you.”

Madeleine opened the door for him, and closed it again after.

“Hey,” said Petrovitch again.

It was four hundred kilometres to Fairbanks, and Petrovitch flew them at zero altitude all the way. The terrain was a maze of valleys and hills, with the occasional mountain to worry about, and all of it, except for the snow-capped peaks, forest. In the dark.

He had to continually change either height or direction, and sometimes both at the same time. It was a technical challenge to keep between the high ground, so as not to expose the aircraft to radar, and still not crash. Newcomen went first white, then green, then ran to the cabin to find something to puke his guts up in.

They crossed the border into Alaska. They weren’t shot down.

Newcomen eventually came back to the co-pilot’s seat, pale and shaking.

“Can you talk?” he asked.

“As long as you don’t ask me anything that requires more than a moment’s thought. This isn’t a car, and it doesn’t fly
itself.” The whole brief for the plane’s design was fast and straight. Petrovitch was making it do things it was never intended to.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Newcomen.

“Careful now.”

“Will you just listen?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“They don’t want you to find out what happened to Lucy, right?”

“Let’s just say they don’t want me to find Lucy, and leave it at that.”

“Sure. But they’re also gearing up for a fight. With the Chinese.”

“Maybe.”

“Can’t we just tell them what we know? That everything Lucy could have found out we’ve worked out for ourselves, so there’s no point in us not finding her. It’ll make no difference. We could even promise them we wouldn’t say anything in return for her.”

“I’m sure someone, somewhere, has already suggested that. I’ll check, but so could you. You’ve got a link. Use it. But look, you’ve already heard me cursing Chinese bureaucracy: your political mindset is such that you cover up first, then ask why later. By which time, too many important people have got too much to lose by coming clean. Some junior functionary on the ground orders evidence to be conveniently lost, he tells his boss, his boss makes up a story and tells his boss. So then he makes a couple of decisions based on layers of lies and misinformation, and when he finds out, he’s not going to go public with the fact he’s a
mudak
.” He stopped talking long enough to hurl the plane around one valley spur and through a col. “So tell me
what happens when we let Washington know that we’ve spotted SkyShield is taking potshots at foreign satellites?”

Newcomen shifted uneasily in his seat as their acceleration surged. “They try to get rid of us too?”

“There reaches a point where even the most dedicated conspiracy theorist has to admit defeat. We are nowhere near that point. My life, your life, Lucy’s life are not as important as some guy’s career advancement in military intelligence. You remember that.”

“Oh.”

“Nice try, though.”

The plane’s tail swung around and the jets roared for a second, then dropped to idling speed. There were bright lights in the distance, and the ground they had to cover was more or less flat.

“Fairbanks?”

“We’ll take the last twenty k dead slow. No one should hear us, let alone see us.”

Petrovitch nudged them forward at a speed that didn’t generate too much wind noise – no more than the gusted, snowladen branches made – and eventually cut the power altogether.

They drifted over a part of the forest that had been clear cut long ago, and was now an undisturbed sheet of shining white. The plane dropped swiftly, then hovered just above the surface of the snow. The ice on top cracked as it was pierced by the undercarriage, then crunched as it was pushed aside.

They were at rest. No sound of dogs, of voices, no sign of swinging flashlights or armed militias.

“The nearest houses are two hundred metres away, so once we’re outside, you can’t talk. I can speak to you through your
link, but all you can do is shut up and follow me. Get your coat on.”

Standing at the bottom of the ladder, Petrovitch closed the door and powered the plane down. It became no more than a dark shadow against the trees behind it. If someone was looking for it, they’d see it: that couldn’t be helped. But it was out of the way, and wouldn’t be there long.

It would have to do. There was a risk in everything he did.

He set off across the snow, guided by the map in his head and the light from his eyes. Every step, he sank in up to his knees. Back in St Petersburg, they had days like this, before the traffic and the soot turned the ice black and churned it up into semi-solid sculptures: days when the kids would pour out of their blank-faced apartment blocks and play. Some of them wouldn’t be properly dressed, and they’d get wet and cold, they’d get a fever and for the want of a few roubles’ worth of medicine, they’d die.

The snow would last for months, all through to spring, and it’d be all everyone could do just to make it through to the first warm sun of the year.

But for one day, one perfect day, everything that was horrible about living in a basket case of a city with a corrupt government, crooked police, hyperinflationary prices and radioactive death from the sky was all blanketed under a layer of bright white snow.

The lights of the houses shone through the gaps in the trees, and in the dark, a chain-link fence reared up. He followed it, and the shape of a roof formed against the clouds.

He unlatched the gate, silently waved Newcomen through, and closed it behind him, then stepped up to the wooden porch. He rested his hand on the door handle and pressed
down. It opened, and before entering, he kicked the snow off his boots.

Both inside, Petrovitch shut the door again.

“If you move, you’ll trip over everything. I’ll get the lights working, and we can sort ourselves out.”

“Whose house is this?”

“Mine, temporarily.” Petrovitch found the cupboard hiding the power switch, and flicked it on, remembering to close his eyes and adjust his vision back to normal.

A single dim bulb flickered into life above Newcomen’s head. It was enough to temporarily blind him to the several large boxes that lined the hallway.

“Yours?”

“Yeah. It’s not in my name, obviously – that would be stupid. I needed a drop-off point for these.” He kicked the cardboard side of one of the boxes.

Newcomen read the shipping label of the one closest to him, but it gave him no clues. “So, what’s in them?”

Petrovitch used a fingernail to break the tape seal, and ripped it away. He dug deep and came out with a pair of heavy-soled boots. “Twelve and a half. They’re yours. And these socks. And these. The thin pair go on first, the thick pair afterwards, in case there’s any confusion. And don’t buckle up too tight: you’ll restrict the blood supply and be more likely to get frostbite.”

Newcomen glanced down at his soaked shoes, soaked socks, wet trousers. He looked very sorry.

The other boxes contained thermal underwear, comfy-looking jumpers, thin gloves and thick mittens, hats, goggles, scarves – none of it with a single heating circuit or thermostat, all of it old-school Arctic survival gear.

“Meet you back here in five.” Petrovitch gathered up his kit and headed to one of the bedrooms.

“What do I do with my suit?”

“I could make some suggestions, but none of them would be constructive. Now get a move on. It’ll be closing time soon, and I need to find a bar.”

“What? You’re serious.”

“I never joke about drinking. Four minutes forty.”

Petrovitch stripped off, then dressed again. He spent the last thirty seconds transferring equipment from his trouser pockets into his coat, and one last delve into his carpet bag.

He kicked the bag under the bed and stepped out into the hall.

Newcomen was already there, buttoned up and ready to go. Petrovitch raised an eyebrow and turned the man around, checking he’d done everything properly. He was almost impressed.