“He is the cops,” murmured Petrovitch. “So are they. Don’t sweat it. We were followed on the way from JFK, too, just more artfully.”

The taxi man pulled his hand back. “As long as you’re sure. You guys in some sort of trouble, then?”

“I didn’t think so,” said Petrovitch, “but now I’m not so sure.”

11

They were over Nebraska, doing five hundred k and climbing to get over the Rockies.

Petrovitch had been sitting quietly, hands folded in his lap, seemingly asleep. Newcomen was next to him, watching the clock and growing increasingly fretful.

“There’s plenty of time,” said Petrovitch, his voice barely louder than the hum of the air scrubbers.

“I thought you were…”

“You were wrong. Again. I’m working.” Only his lips moved.

“On what?”

“Who might have taken Lucy. Working my way through all her contacts, cross-referencing phone calls, debit payments, key uses, CCTV captures, computer logins, canteen swipe cards. It’s a complicated four-dimensional map, but it’s the easiest way to spot patterns.”

Newcomen looked around the cabin, at the stewards and stewardesses moving quietly among the passengers. Different to the flight across the Atlantic: not one had called on them, even once.

There was a different pair of NSA agents with them, too, sitting apart from each other and at least making an attempt to blend in. Petrovitch had pointed them out as soon as they’d taken their seats. He’d identified the account used to pay for their seats as being the same as for the flight from Heathrow.

“Found anything?”

“Yeah.” He opened his eyes and pushed himself up slightly using the arms of the chair. He reached out and pulled the screen from Newcomen’s pocket. “This man: recognise him?”

Newcomen put his palm behind the screen and waited for the image to brighten. “No. Should I?” A tousle-haired, ruddyfaced youth with a lopsided grin stared out at him.

“Jason Fyfe. Canadian citizen, twenty-three years old, degree in meteorology, studying for a doctorate in ionospheric interactions at McGill. Should be at Fairbanks, whereabouts currently unknown. Last seen a week last Saturday.”

“Last seen, as in, he’s disappeared too?”

“No one’s reported him missing, if that’s what you mean. He hired an all-terrain vehicle and headed off into the wilderness. No communications with him since.”

“But you can track the RV through its locator, right?”

“I would if I could. He’s gone off the radar completely. I don’t know what that means yet.” Petrovitch looked down at the geometric patchwork of fields swept with blown snow, thousands of metres below. “The university has ATVs of its own, and he’s not doing field work. The timing of this unscheduled trip is making my spidey senses tingle.”

“Anyone else?” Newcomen rolled the screen back up.

“I can, with varying degrees of accuracy, place everyone in the physics faculty. I’m widening the search across the whole of the university, and eventually, everyone in Fairbanks. But let’s start with Fyfe.”

“I’ll talk to the Assistant Director. We’ve two agents in Fairbanks: they can interview his friends, see if he and Lucy were…” he paused. “Close.”

“Don’t be so yebani coy, Newcomen.” Petrovitch turned and focused on him. “That’d be a really good idea, except Buchannan’s withdrawn those agents. There’s now no FBI presence in the whole of northern Alaska. Fancy that.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Presumably because he’s been ordered to do so by someone well above an Assistant Director’s pay grade. Doesn’t this sound at all suspicious to you yet? Ignore the fact that it’s me – I’m never going to be invited to the White House for a kaffeeklatsch – and concentrate on Lucy. A foreign national with diplomatic credentials goes missing in a remote area of Alaska in what turns out to be less-than-straightforward circumstances, and the FBI pull the only two agents they have on the ground? If you can make sense of that scenario, you’re smarter than you look.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

“Seriously. Is this standard Bureau operating procedure?”

“I’m sure the AD has his reasons.”

“Yeah, he’s being leant on by someone further up the food chain.” Petrovitch clenched his teeth. “When we finally see him, I’ve a mind to tell him that if my presence here is standing between him and being able to deploy the people he needs to, then I’ll take the first plane out of here.”

“But you don’t think it is.”

“No. No, I don’t. I have to be certain, though. I don’t think you appreciate just how much your security services hate me. I tricked the National Security Council into giving me your nuclear launch codes and forced the resignation of President Mackensie. They’re never going to forgive me, and they’re certainly never going to forget.”

“I’m sorry,” said Newcomen. “You did what?”

“That’s the subject of chapter eighteen in Samuil Petrovitch: an unlife. I don’t think you’ve got to it yet, and what’s there is pretty much all wrong. What actually happened was that I faked an attack and stole the gold codes. Mackensie didn’t really have anywhere to go after that.”

“That’s not what I remember.”

“Of course it’s not: your news is little more than wholly transparent propaganda, and has been for over three decades – but you swallow up every last lie because the guy in the suit tells you to.”

Newcomen was breathing hard. “That is not true.”

“Yeah, it is. Your generation knows less about the world than even your parents did, and most of them knew jack. Ignorance offends me, Newcomen. As a nation you’ve bought into a massive consensual hallucination: that you’re the chosen people, that your country has a God-given right to stride the globe like a demented colossus, and anything, anything at all that you do is justifiable because it’s you doing it. When Mackensie was president, he authorised assassinations, drone strikes, blackmail, the wholesale slaughter of a civilian population and the use of a nuclear weapon in the middle of a city – all of that aimed against me and the world’s only artificial intelligence, who just happened to be my friend.” Petrovitch leaned closer and growled. “And he never even apologised. Why would he? He still doesn’t think he did anything wrong.”

He became aware that the rest of the cabin was listening, that they couldn’t help but listen, because he wasn’t exactly trying to keep it down.

He took a deep breath. The NSA men, one to his left, one behind, seemed to be resting their hands on their pistols, ready to fire aircraft-safe plastic rounds if necessary.

“You know what?” Petrovitch said, easing himself back into his seat. “I think I ought to stop there.” He raised his hand to attract the attention of one of the stewards – not difficult since they were all looking at him anyway.

“Sir?”

“Can we have a couple of Jack Daniel’s, please? I think they’ll settle the nerves.”

“Yessir. Coming right up, sir.” The steward almost fell over in his hurry to complete the order.

“Is that okay with you, Newcomen? I know it’s what you drink on the few occasions you do break your wholly unnecessary temperance.”

“I think, in the circumstances, that liquor might be justified.”

“It’s pretty much mandatory where I come from. I am right, though.”

“Are you? I don’t hear many of these good people agreeing with you.”

“I don’t need them to: my rightness is entirely independent of their opinion. Information wants to be free, to be known by as many minds as possible and achieve meaning. It’s a revolution – the emancipation of data.”

The steward brought them their whiskey in two tiny bottles, set on a tray with paper coasters and glasses pre-filled with ice. A bigger bottle of still water sat between the glasses. The man’s hands were shaking.