The Curve of The Earth (26 page)

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

The plane’s door popped open, and Petrovitch scaled the ladder. He glanced around at the top: Josie was still standing there by the pile of snow he’d dug, wondering what had just happened.

He’d call his handlers for certain. Whether he’d pass on the message to his North Slope friends and family remained to be seen.

Petrovitch climbed inside and threw his furry hat on to one of the seats. He started to take his parka off, and remembered to grab the gun perched uncertainly inside. He laid that on the seat next to his hat.

Newcomen stamped snow off on the top step and stood at the door, looking out.

“He’s just watching us.”

“That was his job. It probably still is.”

“So they know we’re coming. Or will do before we get there.”

“They always knew that.” The frost that had collected at his collar had turned to beads of moisture that was starting to soak in. Petrovitch gave the parka a shake, and tossed it aside to dry. He picked up the gun, and headed for the cockpit, starting the turbines spinning as he slid into the pilot’s chair. “The only variable was when we got there.”

“They could always have stopped you,” said Newcomen from
behind him, still trying to squeeze the toggles of his coat through the loops with cold-heavy fingers.

“That was never going to happen.” Petrovitch engaged the antigravity, and the plane pulled itself free of the road in a shower of ice crystals that tumbled away in white streamers. He let the direction change freely, the nose taking in a full circle of Alaskan vista before he applied any throttle.

“They could have.” Newcomen finished wrestling with his coat fastenings and sat in the seat next to him. “Stopped you, I mean.”

“Of course they could. Killing someone is easy. As they proved with Fyfe. If they’d really, really wanted me dead, they’d have put a bomb on the plane from the Metrozone, and you, me, and a couple of hundred other people would be propping up the Mid-Atlantic Ridge by now. Problem solved.”

“Then… hang on. What are you saying?” Newcomen blinked, staring out through the windscreen. They were starting to climb over the mountain range ahead, the peaks shrouded in low cloud that wasn’t low at all. The pipeline was a grey snake off to the left, and the road a white line underneath.

“I’ve been – we’ve all been – working on the assumption that the US government doesn’t want me sticking my nose into this, that they want to keep me as far away as possible from the North Slope, and absolutely, definitely don’t want me to find Lucy.” The corner of Petrovitch’s mouth twitched. “What if I’m wrong?”

Newcomen shifted uneasily in his seat. “I thought you were never wrong.”

“Let’s pretend for a moment, then, that we live in a universe where such things are possible. The first people to look for Lucy were the university, who had to rely on the military to get to
the research station. They didn’t find Lucy because she wasn’t there any more. They didn’t have the resources to search for her themselves, so they called in the FBI. You started slowly, stupidly slowly, like you weren’t that bothered – an act guaranteed to enrage me. You put a couple of field agents into Fairbanks when we complained, but you were warned off: the agents were recalled and Buchannan was told to look the other way.

“But what about Jason Fyfe? He’s a wild card. He’s not a US citizen, and he wasn’t going to take kindly to anyone telling him not to rescue Lucy, not when she clearly needed rescuing. So he was killed: quickly, cleanly, and with a minimum of fuss. Then the body displayed to us like a hunting trophy.”

“But they haven’t killed you,” said Newcomen. “They haven’t even tried to kill you.”

“No. Not yet. Why do you think that is?”

“Because you’re too important?”

“I’d like to think so, but that’d just be the ego talking. Come on, time to work that atrophied walnut you call a brain. Why haven’t they killed me?”

“Because they need you alive?”

“Yeah. They do.” Petrovitch looked Newcomen square in the face. “Why do they need me, Samuil Petrovitch, the Antichrist, the tyrant of the Freezone, the slaughterer of thousands, the humiliator of the holy United States of America, continual thorn in the flesh, alive?”

“Because they want you to find Lucy,” said Newcomen, mounting horror in his voice. “Because only you can find her.”

“That’s right. That’s absolutely right. They can’t find Lucy on their own, and not just because they’d draw attention both to the search and to whatever it is they’re trying to hide. They
can’t find her because she’s deliberately and actively hiding from them. They don’t want the FBI looking for her, and they certainly didn’t want Fyfe blundering around up there. So they make it difficult enough for me to think they don’t want her found, but not so difficult that they’ll actually stop me from finding her.”

“She knows you’re coming, surely?”

“She knows it. She believes it in her soul. And don’t call me Shirley.”

Newcomen growled his annoyance. “What do they do when you find her?”

“I imagine that our first hello will be our last goodbye.”

“That’s… awful. If that’s what’s going to happen, you can’t carry on.”

“Of course I can. I’m going to find my daughter.”

“But you’ll kill her!”

“No. Your side will kill her. It’s not an insignificant difference.”

“There’s no difference at all. She’ll still wind up dead.” Newcomen slapped the console in front of him. “And so will you. You’re going to have to turn around and find another way to do this.”

“I can’t.” Petrovitch’s voice was calm, his mind clear. “If I stop now, Lucy’s going to die anyway: time’s their luxury, not ours. Every day that passes is a day closer to when she has to break cover. If I ever want to see her again, then I’m going to have to give away where she’s hiding.” He shrugged. “They understand me much better than you do. They know that even if I managed to unravel it this far, I’d still press on, though it means both our deaths.”

“But she’s your daughter. You can’t do this to her.”

“Your lot could have saved a lot of fucking around by
explaining all this to me right at the start. I’d still be here, doing exactly what I’m doing now.”

“You make it sound like it’s already been decided. It hasn’t. You have to fight. You have to think of something.” Newcomen grew agitated, desperate even. “You can’t die.”

“I’m not going to sell myself cheap. I’ll make it as messy and uncomfortable as I can. But I know how much firepower you’ve got stacking up on the North Slope. It looks like there’s something out there worth starting a war for, and Lucy knows what it is.”

“No. You have to listen, you, you selfish pig. You’re going to live. And so am I.”

Petrovitch raised his eyebrows. “You make it sound like either of us has another option.”

“I haven’t come this far to fail now. If you die, I die, and you’re not going to throw my life away in your grand gesture. I don’t care how much you hate America. I don’t care how much you love your Lucy. I want to live. I want to live, Dr Samuil bloody Petrovitch of the Freezone collective, and if that means hauling your metal ass across a freaking ice flow, I will do it. We will find your daughter and we will get her to safety and you will take out this bomb in my chest and I will live happily ever after and for God’s sake pull up!”

The cloud that had enveloped them cleared for a moment. In that moment, the ground came rushing towards them. Either side of the cockpit were towering black splinters of rock. The saddle of land between reared upwards like the crest of a breaking wave, intent on smashing them to pieces.

The turbines howled and the plane pitched nose up.

Certain they were going to hit, were hitting, had already hit and had lost the rear half of the fuselage, Newcomen clutched at his head and pulled his feet clear of the floor.

When he opened his eyes again, they were still flying. The ground was receding below the plane, and was losing its solidity in the mountain fog.

“Oh, dear Lord, oh, my sweet Jesus. Oh thank you.”

“The antigravity would have pushed us over,” said Petrovitch, less convincingly than he would have liked. “Perhaps you ought not to distract me, at least until we get on the ground again.”

Newcomen put his head between his knees and prayed so hard the tears squeezed out.

[Sasha?]

“Yeah. I’m paying attention.”

[No mountains?]

“Not at the moment. Not until the Urals at least, and they’re an ocean away.”

[Do you have the time to talk to the First Vice Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China?]

Petrovitch sat bolt upright in his seat. “
Yobany stos
.”

[They asked specifically for you.]

“Me? Why me?”

[Most likely they are wedded to outmoded models of governmental organisation, and still have great difficulty believing that the Freezone does not have a vertical power structure where a single individual has ultimate authority.]

“So they pick the guy they’ve actually heard of and pretend?”

[Essentially, yes. They are waiting for you.]

“And are we happy with that? I’m not a good spokesman for
anyone but myself, and even then I’m not so sure.” He resisted the urge to flatten his hair and scrub the soot from his cheeks. He swallowed hard. “Okay. We’re secure, right?”

[Secure from our end, yes. Everything you say will be as closely scrutinised by their analysts as it will be by ours.]

“Hang on.” He blinked. “Newcomen?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ve got the Chinese on the line. Tell Michael if we lose an engine or the plane cracks in two. He’ll kick me out: otherwise, you won’t get a response from me for a bit.”

Newcomen stopped worrying at his nails. “Are they going to admit it’s one of theirs?”

“They’ll never say it straight. They’ll hint at it obliquely, and expect me to be just as oblique back.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Yeah. Like that’s going to happen.”

[First Vice Premier Zhao Zhenwang is still waiting, Sasha.]

“Okay, let’s do it.”

Petrovitch saw an office: it could have been anywhere, but the feed was geolocating to Beijing. The only splash of colour to the bland decor was the furled red flag attached to the wall behind the desk. Everything else was monochrome, even the skin of the man in the centre of the screen.

Zhao had short cropped black hair – maybe he dyed it to cover the grey – and wore a black suit. He had his hands clasped on the desk in front of him, and his outsized glasses framed his too-large eyes. Michael helpfully popped his short-form biography up beside the man.

Petrovitch scanned it: a scientist by trade, electronics degree followed by a successful business career and a swift rise through the party ranks. He was an interesting choice of representative for the Chinese to make.

“Dr Petrovitch.” Zhao bowed slightly.

Petrovitch’s image – the one he chose to project – was on a big screen facing the vice premier. He kept it simple: photorealistically him, set against a neutral background. In the labyrinthine government that ruled the People’s Republic, Zhao weighed in somewhere between the seventh and eighth most powerful official in the land, depending on whose analysis could be believed.

Plenty power enough, Petrovitch reckoned. “First Vice Premier Zhao, a pleasure to talk to you.”

“You are too kind, Dr Petrovitch. How are you today?”

“How… I’m surprisingly fine, considering the circumstances.”

[He will expect you to enquire about his health in return.]

Petrovitch gave a little nod. “And First Vice Premier, how are you?”

Zhao took a moment before responding. “I am very well, thank you for asking. My sincerest condolences on your missing daughter. I hope she will be returned to you soon.”

“I appreciate your concern, First Vice Premier. The Freezone collective is anxious to have her back.”

[Zhao Zhenwang is wearing an earpiece. I can attempt to access the datafeed if you wish.]

“Give it a miss for now,” Petrovitch said to Michael. “We don’t want to piss them off.”

Zhao stared at Petrovitch’s feet across the room, across the thousands of kilometres that separated them. Petrovitch stared back.

“You wish to discuss something with me?” he finally asked when his patience ran out. It had only taken a few seconds.

“There is a situation we might examine further.” Zhao
indicated his willingness to continue with a tilt of his head. “I would like to hear your thoughts on the matter.”

“And would that situation involve a certain American antiballistic missile system?” Having his teeth pulled without anaesthetic would be kinder.

“It might well do so, Doctor. There have been recent activities that have concerned the People’s Republic, and we are seeking reassurance that these activities are not detrimental to us.”

Petrovitch imagined Michael standing next to him, just off screen. “He’s a wordy bastard and no mistaking. His English is probably better than mine, but he doesn’t have to show it.”

[Expect these circumlocutions to continue for a while, Sasha.]

“Yeah, well. I hate it already. He’d be better off talking to Marcus: he loves this diplomatic
kon govno
.” Petrovitch forced his image to affect a concerned nod, and made sure his hands were well under control. “First Vice Premier, the Freezone also has much to lose if SkyShield has begun to malfunction.”

Zhao pursed his lips. “Your previous experience with the system would be useful in our deliberations.”

“You mean, when I hijacked it and forced Mackensie to quit over giving me the nuclear launch codes? In which case, yes: I’ve got experience of SkyShield.”

“Indeed, Doctor. In your opinion, is it likely that the government of the United States of America is fully in control of all the SkyShield assets?”

[Careful.]

“I’m there already.” He posed his best slightly hurt expression on his face and looked at the floor. “I can assure the President that neither myself nor anyone belonging to the Freezone collective has attempted to interfere with any part of SkyShield.”
Then he gave up. “Look, bluntly put, it’s not us. You probably know as much as we do: a SkyShield platform opened fire on something in orbit, brought it down over Alaska, where it exploded about ten k from the ground. Beyond that, we’re pretty much in the dark.”