The Curve of The Earth (4 page)

He unlocked the doors when he was still a good distance away, making the American jump. Newcomen’s phone was built into his tie: tucked down beside his now-sweat-stained collar was the earpiece. If it had been put together better, it would have been a poor imitation of Freezone tech. As it was, it was just a phone.

Petrovitch tagged it and made it ring.

“Hello?”

“Get in the car. You’ll catch a cold, and I’m not having you sneezing on me all the way across the Atlantic tomorrow.”

Newcomen crawled in, next to his luggage. “Doctor?”

“Yeah, we’re going to have to sort this out now. I only use the title when I want something, or you’ve pissed me off so much I won’t answer to anything else. Call me Petrovitch and have done with it.”

“That would be disrespectful, si… Doc… I can’t call you just ‘Petrovitch’. What would people think?”

“Oh, fuck off, Newcomen. Call me whatever you want. I don’t care. We’re going to find some dinner.”

It was getting dark, and the less salubrious side of the Metrozone was asserting itself. The authorities had reverted to the municipal model of government after the years’ hiatus of the Freezone. Petrovitch thought that his way of doing things was demonstrably better – an AI-administered co-operative had its own particular problems, but scaring off three desperate-looking men from robbing him wasn’t one of them.

He got closer to the car as they circled it. One of them had a half-brick, which wasn’t a surprise as they weren’t exactly in short supply. Knives, too. Perhaps they hadn’t spotted him, or maybe they had and thought that they could take this slight, short guy as well as the one crouched on the back seat. Petrovitch wasn’t armed, except for his weed-cutter, and Newcomen wouldn’t be allowed to carry outside his jurisdiction – unless Auden had slipped him a piece. Which would be typical of the man.

All three would-be thieves had phones. He tagged them and chased down their numbers, call histories, came up with a few
houses over Wembley way where most of the calls geolocated. From there it was a short step to dragging identities off a database, bundling it all up with video footage of the current scene and posting it to the police.

They’d all be gone by the time anyone turned up, but he had an affection for the Metrozone that never went away. It was still his city, mean streets and all.

One of the men hefted the brick, circling the car with its terrified occupant.

“Don’t throw that,” Petrovitch called when he was within earshot. “Because then I’ll get pissed with you and you wouldn’t like it.”

There were no street lights outside the cemetery, and he switched to active infrared. Everything became so much clearer. He could see their hot bodies swaddled in thick clothes against the cold, could see their blood run bright. Meatsacks. So easily damaged.

He kept on walking: not a moment of falter or hesitation. Even when the brick was thrown at his head. He’d calculated the entire trajectory of the missile almost before it had left the man’s hand, and he didn’t need to so much as duck.

Petrovitch was beside the car. He rested his palm on its dusty roof and started it up, though he deliberately kept the headlights off. It was tempting to try the “don’t you know who I am?” line, but it was clear that in their in-between state of drugged joy and dragging withdrawal, they had no idea. The dull red glow coming from his eyes didn’t appear to jog their memories either.

“I’m happy to run you over. I’m equally happy for you to disappear. Your call.”

The one who came for him had obscured his face with a scarf
and pulled his hood tight around his head. Petrovitch knew enough about him already to know he wasn’t a kid doing something stupid for the first time, but a really not-very-nice man who hurt people and made their lives a misery.

After the first missed swing and before the second milling arm could reach him, Petrovitch casually pushed out his left hand against the bigger man’s sternum. He used enough force to crack ribs, momentarily stop the heart and send the body hurtling to the far side of the road.

“You can go home if you want,” he said to the other two, then ignored them. He opened the door and got behind the wheel. “You okay, Newcomen?”

“How…?”

“This file on me the FBI gave you: what did it actually say?” The car’s engine whined, and they drove off. After a while, another car passed theirs, and he remembered to put the lights on.

“I can’t tell you. It’s classified.”

“Yeah, course it is, though to be honest, I think so little of it I haven’t bothered hacking it. But judging from your reaction, I’m guessing it didn’t mention either the automatic car thing, or that I’ve got extensive cybernetic replacements.” He turned off the infrared before looking directly at Newcomen. “I can do these things because I’m a
yebani
cyborg.
Vrubatsa
?”

Newcomen wasn’t confirming or denying whether he understood. He was busy trying to push himself backwards through the upholstery, intent on putting as much distance as possible between him and the aberration before him.

Petrovitch faced the windscreen again and watched the Metrozone glide by. “We’ve fallen right into Uncanny Valley there, haven’t we? Don’t worry, Newcomen. You’ll get used to me.”

Petrovitch put his shoulder to an anonymous door on Brixton High Street, and led the way up a set of bare wooden stairs. Cooking smells grew stronger the further he climbed – signature smells he recognised from earlier days when he was new in town.

“Hungry yet, Newcomen?”

“No, not really,” said the agent. He looked like he was already eating some particularly sour lemons. Particularly he wasn’t enjoying trying to squeeze his suitcase up the narrow staircase.

“I’ve ordered for both of us. It’s probably safer that way.” He got to the top of the stairs, where a massive slab of a man blocked entry to the dining room. Infoshades hid his oriental eyes, but the wireless earpiece was clearly visible: no hair at all on the man’s shaved, scarred head. “Wong’s expecting us,” said Petrovitch.

The bouncer sneered down at him, and on seeing Newcomen half-hidden behind his luggage, spat on the floor.

“Yeah, I get to choose the company I keep, not some neckless
svinya
.” Petrovitch flexed his fingers. “I could throw you down the stairs and the nerve impulses won’t have travelled to your walnut-sized brain by the time you hit the bottom. You can choose that, or get the
huy
out of the way.”

The man started chuckling to himself, and his great belly shuddered in waves. “You’re him.” He had a grin of black and silver teeth. “You’re Petrovitch all right. Go right in.”

“Thanks.” The door opened with a burst of noise and steam. “
Mudak
.”

A dozen tables were already full of diners, talking, laughing, shouting and singing. C-pop cranked tinnily through inadequate speakers in the ceiling, and the air was almost opaquely blue with burnt cooking oil.

Moving through the fug towards Petrovitch was a thin figure wearing a stained white apron. “Hey! Bad man!”

“Hey, Wong. Your sign outside still isn’t working.”

Wong folded his scrawny arms. “You fix it for me?”

“Kind of busy at the moment. Maybe when I get back.”

Wong nodded slowly. “Pay me back for all those free cups of coffee, yes?”

“Free? From you? How is the coffee, anyway?”

Then they were hugging, slapping each other’s backs and cackling like loons. “Coffee hot and strong today!” they chorused.

“Where that wife of yours?” asked Wong after they’d separated.

“Taking care of business. She sends her apologies.”

“Okay. Next time, bring her, not this thing. She much prettier.” Wong peered at Newcomen. “Case out back. No room in here. No room!.”

“He treats it like it’s got the
yebani
crown jewels inside. Let him stick it in a corner somewhere.”

“Who this? Makes place look untidy.”

Petrovitch peered through the chemical fog. Tidiness had never been a hallmark of Wong’s establishments. Or cleanliness, for that matter.

“This is Agent Joseph Newcomen, FBI. He’s going to help me find Lucy. Isn’t that right, Newcomen?”

“Yessir… yes,” he corrected himself.

“American, huh?’ Wong stalked around him like he was viewing a grotesque artwork. “This one end up dead too?”

“Yeah, maybe. I seem to have a bit of a record for that.”

“What? What do you mean?” Newcomen looked startled.

“First American?” Wong snorted. “Bang. Bullet in head.”

“And the next?”

“Bang. Bullet in head.”

“Pretty much tells you everything you need to know, Newcomen.” Petrovitch scratched at his nose. “You got a table for us, or are we going to have to eat standing up?”

“This one, here?” Wong pointed to a table in the middle of the floor.

“Yeah, how about that one over there, behind the pillar, where no one will be able to overhear everything we say to each other?”

Wong’s eyes narrowed. “You organising crime again?”

“No, not with Joe Friday here, anyway. I just want to sit somewhere we’re not going be disturbed. We can do drunken revelry later.”

“Okay.” Wong persuaded the two Rastafari out of their seats and carried their half-eaten egg fu yongs to the table he’d tried to foist on Petrovitch. They grumbled about Babylon, but then saw who it was they were making space for. The men both slid their palms across Petrovitch’s white hand and seemed content.

The table was cleaned with a damp rag smelling strongly of bleach. Petrovitch shrugged off his coat and threw it across the back of his chair before falling into the seat.

Newcomen hovered nervously, looking around him in wonder and fear. His shoulders finally slumped, as if he’d accepted his fate, and he dragged his suitcase into the space next to the red-hot radiator.

“You don’t honestly think I’m going to eat anything here, do you?” he sat down opposite Petrovitch and leaned across to hiss at him. “What are you trying to do to me?”

“I’m trying,” said Petrovitch, “to talk to you. Find out what you’re like. Find out whether I can trust you to do your job or not. I know all the facts about your life: what I don’t know is you: how you react, your own particular strengths and weaknesses. The files I’ve read don’t tell me that sort of stuff. Now, do you want coffee?”

“We could talk at my hotel. Have dinner in the restaurant. With food that isn’t going to poison me.”

“Hmm.” Petrovitch flipped open an imaginary notebook and started to write. “Freaks out when removed from comfort zone.”

“I do not do that.”

“Unable to cope with novelty.”

“Shut up.”

“Scared of absolutely everything.” Petrovitch flipped the note-book shut and tossed it away over his shoulder. “That’s about right, isn’t it?”

“Don’t make fun of me, Petrovitch.”

“Or what, vat-boy?”

“That’s not an insult.”

“Is where I come from. Hell, at least my upgrades took.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Okay. This isn’t going well. Some of that is my fault.” Petrovitch placed his palms on the table. “Let me ask you a question: do you actually care that my daughter’s missing?”

Newcomen worked his jaw. “It’s my job to help find her.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Petrovitch stared across at the American. “Let’s try another. When they tweaked your genes, did they throw out the code for your soul?”

“Are you trying to get a reaction from me? Provoke me? Get me into a fight that’ll land me in front of the Assistant Director’s desk on a disciplinary matter? You won’t be able to do that. You want to know what was in your file? You don’t need to warn me about your behaviour. I know about it already.”

“Okay, okay.” Petrovitch held his hands up. “I know what you care about now. Your position within the Bureau. That’s what’s important to you, I understand that now. Let’s get a coffee each and calm down.”

Right on cue, two mugs appeared. It was almost as if Wong was waiting for a gap in the conversation.

“He takes it white,” said Petrovitch, dragging his own drink towards him.

Wong sniffed, and came back a moment later with a jug half-filled with something resembling milk. “Ready for food?”

“Yeah.”

“We haven’t even seen a menu yet,” objected Newcomen.

Petrovitch pointedly ignored the interruption. “What I said earlier will be fine.” After Wong had left, he said: “You know when you go round someone’s house for dinner? You don’t ask for a menu then, do you? No. So don’t be an idiot.”

“This is a public diner….”

“You don’t know anything about Wong, and you don’t get
to say what this is or isn’t. Especially when your government killed most of his old customers with a cruise missile.”

Newcomen chewed cud for a while, and ignored his coffee. Petrovitch didn’t, and welcomed it like an old friend. Hot and strong, just how he liked it.

“Look,” said Newcomen suddenly, putting his forearms on the table and crowding close. “Can we agree on a truce?”

“And why would I want something like that?” Petrovitch centred his mug down in the brown ring of liquid already on the wooden surface. “But go on, I’m listening.”

“We’ve been thrown together by circumstances beyond our control. I don’t have a choice about being sent, and you don’t get to choose who escorts you around.”

“Someone chose. Don’t you want to know who? And why?”

“I know why they sent me. It’s because they thought I was the right man for this job.”

“That begs so many questions.” Petrovitch held up two fingers. “Mainly, what’s the job and why are you right? You see, I was expecting some high-level State Department official, not some junior G-man. What did Buchannan tell you the job was?”

“Stick with you. Show you around. Keep you up to date with the investigation. Wait until you were satisfied we’d done everything we could, and then,” Newcomen sat back, “get you out of the country.”

Petrovitch’s eyes narrowed. “You have remembered my daughter’s missing, haven’t you?”

“Petrovitch. Dr Petrovitch, you have to realise that the chances of find—” His words finished in a choking sound, because Petrovitch had lunged across the table and had him by the throat.