The Curve of the Earth

15




They walked in together, side by side, no thought that Petrovitch really ought to be a step ahead where he could be seen, guided, stopped if he got out of line.

There were agents and support staff in the foyer, doing whatever it was they were supposed to do: talking about the game, discussing a case or arranging to meet up, going home, clocking on. There were plenty of them, too: no shortage of manpower. Certainly no shortage of people to break off their conversations and watch Petrovitch pause briefly before he walked through the security screen.

The absence of alarms was deafening.

The two uniformed guards on duty pointed to the X-ray machine.

“You’ll have to put your bag through,” said the Moustache.

“I disagree,” said Petrovitch. “Neither do I have to submit to any search, physical or electromagnetic, whichever frequency you choose, including visible light.”

“Then the bag stays here. Since we don’t allow unaccompanied luggage in the building, you’ll have to stay too.”

“Don’t tell me, you’ve been reading Joseph Heller. Agent Newcomen knows all about Heller’s satirical work, Catch-22, because he studied American literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Right, Agent?”

“Uh, Petrovitch, this isn’t helping.”

“Oh come on. All the time is learning time. We can’t go in because of me, but we have to go in, because of me.”

The senior man rested his hand on his colleague’s shoulder. It was just like customs at JFK. A word from a higher authority, and the rules could be not just bent, but stamped on and broken into little pieces.

“You can carry on,” said the guard. The corners of his mouth turned down.

“Of course we can,” said Petrovitch cheerily. “There was never any doubt of that.”

The pair of them made their way to the front desk.

“Just keep walking,” said Newcomen, leaning in. “Don’t let them intimidate you.”

“Yeah, you really don’t know me at all, do you?”

“Well enough to know a lot of you is just hot air.” He reached into his pocket for his badge, and flipped it open.

Petrovitch squinted at it, then moved Newcomen’s arm for a better look.

“Pfft.”

“What?”

“I thought I looked like govno on my ID.” He rummaged around in half a dozen pockets before he found his visa.

“Just let me do this, okay?” Newcomen eyeballed a receptionist. “I need my pass, and one for my guest.”

She was so dazzled, she automatically started to reach into a drawer. Her supervisor, an older woman with formidable hair, interrupted with a touch on her arm.

“I’ll deal with these gentlemen, Lenora.”

“Oof. And you thought it was cold outside,” said Petrovitch. He rested his carpet bag, now inexpertly repaired with ragged strips of wide silver tape, on the desk. The woman gave it a hard stare, as if she could make it disappear by willpower alone.

“Agent Newcomen. This is yours.” She gave him a lanyard attached to a holographic card. “And this, Dr Petrovitch, is yours. You have to wear it visibly at all times, and return it to me when you leave. Do you understand?”

She dangled a visitor’s pass towards him, with its bright red text face out.

“Well,” said Petrovitch, and Newcomen kicked him.

“Yes. He understands, and I’ll make sure he complies.” He took the tag and hung it over Petrovitch’s head. “Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll behave.”

Newcomen led them to the lifts, where Petrovitch had the novelty of waiting. Making sure there was a car ready for them would have been a little too obvious. Even as he tapped his toe, he could see out of the corner of his eye one of the security guys passing a variety of objects through the screen to see if it was still working.

The lift door opened, and two men were inside, talking animatedly. They stepped out together, and suddenly noticed who was standing in their way.

“Newcomen.”

“Baxter. Gowan.”

“How was, er, how was Europe?” said Baxter. Maybe it was something about deliberately engineering for tall, muscular, blond-haired men, but the Bureau had more than its fair share of them.

“Big,” said Newcomen, and showed no sign of moving. “Noisy. Where were you last night?”

“I’m a suspect in one of your cases?” Baxter pressed his palm to his chest in mock surprise.

“You know exactly what I mean. The pair of you should have been at the Hilton with him,” and he pointed at Petrovitch with a rigid, trembling finger, “last night.”

“Him?” said Gowan. “This the cyborg?”

He leaned in for a closer look, checking Petrovitch’s face for an access hatch or a data port. Petrovitch considered his options, the chief of which, and the one he personally favoured, was bringing his forehead smartly into contact with the bridge of Gowan’s nose. Instead, he made his eyes glow a charnel red, and blinked slowly.

Gowan recoiled.

Petrovitch looked up at Gowan and his partner. They were so far down the food chain as to be the equivalent of krill. Even Newcomen was more important. They certainly weren’t worth having an international incident over.

“Real people have work to do,” said Petrovitch, “so why don’t you two just f*ck off? That would be brilliant.”

Baxter stiffened. “That’s…”

“And we’re keeping the Assistant Director waiting,” said Newcomen. “I’ll be happy to tell him why we’re late.”

He held his hand up and turned it vertically so he could slice his way between the men, pushing first one then the other aside to make a gap big enough for him to fit through. He walked between them into the lift car and put his foot against the door to prevent it from closing.

Petrovitch joined him, and faced outwards. He extended his middle finger in the direction of travel and kept it there as the doors shushed shut.

“They have no idea what’s going on, do they?” said Petrovitch.

“None. None at all. To be fair, neither do we.”

“Let’s hope your Buchannan can be a bit more forthcoming, then. I want some answers.” He tapped his visitor’s pass so that it bounced against his chest. “Is there anything you don’t bug?”

Newcomen glanced down. “Doesn’t look that way. Can you deal with it?”

“Sure.”

They travelled up to executive country, where the important people were. The staff they met in the corridor moved aside for them. Perhaps they could smell the frustration and anger. Perhaps they didn’t want to touch the eldritch foreigner, and perhaps they knew that Newcomen was a dead man walking, and there was no reason to catch that infection.

They passed a kitchen area. Someone was inside, making coffee, and Petrovitch heard the sound of the clinking spoon.

“Hang on a second.” He stuck his head around the corner and spied the microwave. “Yeah, that’ll do.”

The woman in the pencil skirt busied herself with putting cups on a tray, and only turned around when she heard the beep of the cooker’s timer.

“What? What are you doing?”

Petrovitch looked up from peering at his FBI tag going around on the revolving plate inside.

“Just, you know. Fixing stuff.” He gave it thirty seconds and sprung the door. The tag was warm, and had a couple of burn marks where the electronics inside had arced. He dropped the lanyard over his head again.

Newcomen, propping up the door frame, shrugged uselessly, before standing aside for Petrovitch, who marched past and carried on down the corridor like he hadn’t just destroyed federal property.

They reached the door marked with Buchannan’s nameplate. Newcomen knocked, and a breezy voice told them to enter.

In days past, Buchannan would have been half invisible through air hazy blue with cigarette smoke, while the two of them were invited to sit in the slanting light coming through the nearly closed blinds on the window. They would have all worn hats – a trilby, a fedora: something dangerous – and they’d have talked over glasses of whiskey poured from a bottle hidden in the back of a filing cabinet. There’d have been trench coats hanging from the bentwood stand by the frosted-glass door, and the shadows of people walking by would have made them drop their voices and speak in short, clipped sentences.

As it was, Petrovitch missed the trappings. They would have reminded him of what was at stake, and made the whole proceedings less clinical and anodyne. At least the glass walls of the Assistant Director’s office could be dialled opaque. There were bookshelves, with real books; photographs of friends and family; mementoes gained from thirty-five years of faithful service. Buchannan’s first day as an FBI agent was the day before Armageddon. All his working life had been spent working against, and yet fearing, the actinic flash of a nuclear bomb.

Petrovitch had best remember that. He took the leftmost seat and placed his bag on his lap. Newcomen waited for Buchannan to indicate he could sit, which he did with an open gesture at the chair to Petrovitch’s right.

“Dr Petrovitch? Welcome to America.”

“No thanks, I’ve had enough already.” He pressed the lock on his bag and unzipped it. “Do you mind if I check for bugs?”

“The whole building is regularly swept, Doctor.”

“But not by me.” He picked out a variety of devices and dumped the bag on the floor.

It was inevitable that he found five different radio transmitters within the confines of the four walls, and in trying to trace a sixth, he tabbed the motor on the window blinds to reveal a palm-sized mosquito drone hovering just outside, eight floors up.

Buchannan had the decency to look embarrassed. “Such matters seem to be out of my control, Dr Petrovitch.”

“Maybe we should go for a walk,” suggested Newcomen.

It wasn’t a bad idea, but Petrovitch had a better one. “Your boss isn’t going to tell us anything in private that he’s not going to in public. Firstly, he’s part of the machine; he’s not going offmessage for us, for you, or he would already have done so. Secondly, he knows I’m one big recording device, and he’s probably already seen footage of our little incident back at the hotel. Let’s save ourselves the biting cold and let him make his carefully rehearsed speech here, where at least it’s warm and there’s the possibility of a decent cup of coffee.”

“I guess so.”

They waited in silence for a secretary to bring them drinks. Buchannan, too old to have been gengineered, too squeamish to stand the smell of his own corneas cooking by going under a laser, wore small, round glasses. Like Petrovitch used to have. He took them off and polished them with a cloth handkerchief.

Newcomen fidgeted incessantly, playing with his fingers, pulling faces, scratching. Petrovitch just sat and closed his eyes, feeling for the electronic equipment secreted around the room, for the operator of the drone, who was two floors down in a cupboard marked on the floor plan as janitorial supplies.

The delay meant that when the secretary and her tray arrived, he had a good idea of how to disable them all.

“Do you take milk, Doctor?” asked Buchannan.

Petrovitch shook his head. “Just sugar.”

“How much?”

“About four of those little sachets will be fine. Defenestrating spooks before breakfast always takes it out of me.”

“And Joseph?”

“Milk, please.”

“Can we stop being polite to each other? None of us really mean it.” Petrovitch watched while the Assistant Director ripped open the paper sachets and emptied their contents into a cup of black brew. “We’re all grown-ups.”

“Quite so, Doctor.” Buchannan stirred the coffee with a metal spoon and slid the saucer towards Petrovitch. “Why don’t you start?”

“Yeah, you don’t want me to start. But I’ll ask the first question: why are you going along with this charade? It must offend every instinct you have as a law-enforcement officer.”

“I would deny that there is a charade I’m going along with.”

“Meaning either there isn’t a charade, or you’re not going along with it? You look pretty well neck-deep in things from where I’m sitting.”

“That’s a matter of interpretation. Things look different depending where you stand.” Buchannan slipped on his glasses and blinked in the bright light.

“I was never much one for moral relativism.” Petrovitch got a raised eyebrow from across the desk. “Well, if I’m being a shit, even for a good reason, I’ll always put my hand up to it: I don’t hide behind the national interest or the greater good. Call it what it is.”

“And what do you think it is, Dr Petrovitch?”

“Difficult to tell. Something has happened, but we can’t tell what. Pretty certain that Lucy saw it. Equally certain that she shouldn’t have done. After that? We might have a lead: one I don’t think I’ll share with you.”

“But you’ve already shared it with Joseph.” The Assistant Director steepled his fingers and stared across the desk at Newcomen.

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you going to tell me what this new lead is?”

Newcomen chewed at his lip, and eventually looked down at the floor. “No, sir.”

“Interesting.”

Newcomen’s head came up again. “Why me, sir? You told me that I was the right man for this assignment. In a good way. I… is it true that Edward Logan pushed for me to get it so that he could split me and Christine up?”

“The whole idea is ridiculous, Joseph. Mr Logan is entirely separate from the Bureau, and has no influence over which cases get given to my agents.”

“Except,” said Petrovitch, “he’s very high up in Reconstruction.”

“All the same, Doctor, there is no possible link…”

“That photograph there.” Petrovitch pointed at the bookshelf, then went to retrieve the photo frame. He inspected the buttons, and scrolled through the images until he found the one he was looking for. “Fund-raiser for the Party. Charity dinner, seats going for a thousand dollars a pop. I didn’t realise you could afford that sort of thing, even on an AD’s salary. Unless you’re really enthusiastic about Reconstruction, of course.”

“I was given the tickets, so I could be there in my professional capacity.”

“You and your wife. Remind me who the keynote speaker was?”

Buchannan’s lips went tight, so Petrovitch reminded him.

“Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s a big deal, right? And as honorary treasurer of the Washington State Reconstruction Party, Logan would have been on the top table. But they know each other anyway, don’t they? Same Greek-letter fraternity at Yale? Logan grouses about his beautiful daughter being in danger of losing her virginity to some hick from Iowa. Two weeks later, this lands on his desk, and they need a fall guy in a hurry. Someone expendable.” Petrovitch shrugged. “The dots join up. Can’t prove it, but you were clearly told by someone to make Newcomen the patsy. I mean, why not someone from Anchorage? It’s their patch. Except none of them is going out with the daughter of a mean sooksin like Logan.”

He put the frame back on the shelf, and set it cycling through its stored scenes again.

Newcomen straightened up. “I think I deserve an answer, sir. I think we both do.”

Buchannan touched his teeth with the tip of his tongue. “I have no answer to give you, Joseph.”

“What about Dr Petrovitch?”

“I have no answer for him either. However regrettable that might be.”

Petrovitch narrowed his eyes. Every word had taken on a significance beyond itself: it was all code, all meaningful, if only he could decipher it.

“I think we’re done here,” he said, and grabbed his bag.

The power went off: lights, computers, everything died at once. Then the emergency lighting flickered.

“You have thirty seconds to say whatever it is you have to say to each other without anyone overhearing. I’ll be outside, and at the end of that thirty seconds, you’d better be standing outside too, Newcomen. Got that? Twenty-five seconds left.”

He stepped into the corridor and pulled at the lapels of his jacket, as if adjusting himself for the outside. Heads had appeared from other offices, wondering what was happening, and what the cause was.

If they saw Petrovitch standing alone, it wasn’t for long. Newcomen was there behind him, and then the power came back. The overhead fluorescents clicked and hummed, bathing everything in their cold blue light.

“Okay?” asked Petrovitch.

Newcomen was strapping on his wrist holster, the gun it usually held dangling from its tensioning cable below his arm.

“Yes,” he said, keeping his voice entirely neutral.

“Good,” said Petrovitch. “Why don’t we go somewhere quiet and talk about what we’re going to do next?”