Other airports of comparable size would have had a drift of light aircraft on the apron, but in the far north, the weather was hard on airframes. Instead, there was a row of hangars, each one big enough to hold a wide-bodied jet.

He contacted the tower for permission to land. It was a formality: they weren’t going to say no, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Everything was converging on this point: none of them had any room for manoeuvre. He almost felt sorry for the spooks, consigned to the near-perpetual darkness. He was guessing that most of them had no idea why they were up in the frozen north. The more of them that knew, the more likely there’d be a leak that’d get picked up by the Freezone’s data miners.

The required permission came, nevertheless, along with a hangar assignment. Petrovitch dropped the plane on to its wheels and steered it towards the opening doors. Inside the hangar, it was bright and full. There were only a couple of bays that were still vacant, all the others taken by functional light transports bearing the ARCO livery.

He applied the brakes when he was within the yellow lines, and cut the power. As the turbines wound down, the heavy gears that closed the external doors cranked into life.

Still Petrovitch sat there, staring at the blank wall in front of him.

Newcomen unbuckled his harness, but Petrovitch wanted to wait for a moment, to savour the tension in the air.

“Can you feel it?” he asked. “It’s here. Everything’s just fallen into place – us, them, Lucy. The game’s ready to begin.”

“This isn’t a game.”

“Yeah, yeah, it is. Just because we’re all going to die doesn’t mean that we’re not playing. Your lot have the advantage: you hold all the cards bar one. But I’ve gambled more on less.”

“At least I’ll die clean and fed, then. But not warm.”

“Don’t be petulant. Perhaps it does suit you, but I don’t have to listen to it.” Petrovitch hit his own buckle and shrugged the straps away. “Believe it or not, it’s actually warmer outside than when we were in Canada. Snow’s due in the next twenty-four hours.”

He called for the door to open and the steps to lower. On the way, he scooped up his bag. He was half expecting a welcoming committee: cold-hearted killers, bright-eyed analysts, pipe-wielding heavies. Waiting to impress on him the importance of his mission, the urgency of it all. Find her, they’d say, you know you want to.

And he did.

But there was no one. They were alone in the hangar, with nothing but cold still air to greet them.

“Isn’t it about now someone says that it’s too quiet?” asked Newcomen. He was fastening his parka unbidden, and Petrovitch thought that there might be some hope for the man.

“Only if they’re in a bad detective movie.”

“And we’re not?”

“Different kind of movie altogether.” Petrovitch’s mouth twitched. “We have to check in, then we’ll do a tour of the sights.” He reached out and patted the fuselage. “Need some more fuel for the bird.”

He trotted to the bottom of the steps, and strode out across the hangar, looking back briefly. His borrowed plane was like a swan compared with the bulky ARCO service models. It was going to be a shame to lose it.

There was a human-sized door inset into the main motoroperated door. He opened it up and stepped outside. It might have been a few degrees warmer, but it was still double-digit cold.

Newcomen closed the door behind him, and they walked together towards the distant buildings. Somewhere under the ice were roads, and maybe they could have arranged a transfer to the hotel, but Petrovitch wanted the time to talk.

“This place will be wired, completely. Anything you say or do will be recorded in half a dozen different ways, right down to the volume, velocity and composition of your farts. Almost everyone you meet – who’s not an Inuit – will be a plant, and then some of them, too. There’s been a wholesale rerostering of ARCO employees: ringers with fake resumés straight out of central casting are in, regular Arctic workers out.”

“Won’t the company’s profits suffer for that?”

“The chairman of ARCO is so thoroughly Reconstructionist, I doubt he’d think twice about making the whole outfit a CIA front.”

“So, what? The whole town’s populated by secret agents?”

“I wouldn’t call it a town, but yeah. That gives us a surprising degree of latitude.”

“How so?”

“Ever seen Westworld?”

Newcomen frowned. “Don’t think so.”

“Made in the seventies. It’s about a special theme park, populated by robots, that rich people can visit to fulfil all their wanton, hedonistic desires. Fight, kill, have orgies, the lot. End of the day, the staff just clean the robots up and get them ready for the next bunch of tourists.”

“That sounds horrible! Gross, perverted.”

“And it is. The story does have a happy ending: the robots rise up and slaughter the humans.”

“That’s just as bad.”

“This is not a pointless anecdote,” said Petrovitch. “We’re in our own personal Westworld. We can do, more or less, anything we like, and it’s all consequence-free. They might decide to take our guns away if we kill too many of them, but that’s about it. As long as we find Lucy for them, they don’t care.”

Newcomen stared at him from underneath the fringe of his hood. He was aghast.

“We’re not going to do that, though. Right?”

“No one’s going to stop us. If I want to shoot someone in the head, then that’s okay by whoever’s in charge.” Petrovitch shrugged inside his heavy coat. “You’re not the only expendable agent here. Take a look at the eyes of everyone we meet: see if you can spot the fear in them. But us? We’re in a state of grace. We can commit no sin.”

They walked down the middle of what passed for a main street. The buildings – far apart, all raised clear of the permafrost by stilts – were functional and nothing else, and often little more than prefab sheds surrounded by discarded and partcannibalised equipment.

As the darkness drew about them, the day shorter still, he spotted the blinking neon sign for the Caribou.

“Take the receptionist at the hotel,” said Petrovitch. “He’s not the regular guy. He’s not even one of the occasionals. I’m guessing that last week he was working out of an office in DC, or New York. They’ve dragged him up north, no experience of Arctic conditions, little idea of why he’s here: he’s got a script, like they all do, all the ringers and replacements.”

He was at the bottom of the steps up to the hotel’s front door. He blinked away some ice crystals and wondered about adding antifreeze, or at least extra salt, to his tears.

“You’re going to try and make him go off-message, aren’t you?” said Newcomen.

“Chyort, yeah.” Petrovitch tramped up the steps and shouldered his way into the foyer.

It was simple enough: a desk, a chair behind it, and a slightly pudgy, slightly balding man rubbing his sweaty palms nervously on his trousers. He cleared his throat, once, then again, because the first time hadn’t quite got rid of the dry, prickling hoarseness he felt.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said.

“Dobre outro,” said Petrovitch. “We have reservations. Lots of them, but we’ve also got a couple of rooms booked. Petrovitch and Newcomen.”

“I’ve got your keys here.” The faux-receptionist slid two plastic cards across the desk at them. “I’ll need to, ah, see some ID.”

Petrovitch eyed the sign behind the desk, telling him he wasn’t allowed either firearms or alcohol in his room. The corner of his mouth twitched. “ID? Sure.” His hand dipped into his pocket and retrieved a plastic eyeball, which he buffed against his sleeve.

When it was shiny, he rolled it towards the man, who stopped it with his fingertips and looked up at Petrovitch, then Newcomen, and back to Petrovitch again.

“Maybe we should waive the formalities this once.” He held out the eye and dropped it into Petrovitch’s waiting palm. “Your rooms are through that door, second and third on the left.”