“He trusts me,” he muttered into the ground. “He trusts me like you trust me.”

“Touché.” She coiled the rope around her arm and flung the end of it through the hole, down to where Tabletop was waiting.

23

Petrovitch was pushed out of the second tunnel by Madeleine, and he was back in the underground car park, shrouded by blue plastic. He looped his good hand through the center of the reel of cable and started spooling it out, passing it awkwardly to himself through the gates made by the scaffolding poles.

“Would it be easier if I did that?” Madeleine splashed through the standing water and held the sheeting aside for him.

“Probably,” said Petrovitch, “but then I’d feel completely and utterly yebani useless, so I’m going to do it anyway.”

Rather than turning toward the rusting door set into the concrete wall, he started up the slope to where daylight flooded in, stark and bright after the darkness. The white cable trailed behind him through the mud like a worm. As before, he felt a shiver of fear as he looked at how much cable he had left, and how far he had to walk. He’d measured everything a dozen times, and even now wondered if he’d made a mistake.

The reel grew lighter as he got closer to the outside.

“Are you…?” asked Tabletop.

“Past’ zabej. I’m not going to run out.”

The marks on the plastic reel were turning faster, and the length left was shortening all the time. But he was at the barriers, weaving around them, and blue sky was only a few more steps away. He had hoped that Lucy and Valentina would be there already, waiting for him with some slim piece of technology he could hook up to, but the only thing in evidence was the Al Jazeera news van parked lengthways across the access ramp to the carpark.

“What the huy are this lot doing here?” he blurted. He had ten meters of cable left to play with. He’d calculated it right, but his sense of satisfaction shriveled at the thought of journalists getting in the way.

“I’ll get rid of them,” said Madeleine, and broke into a run.

Tabletop stood next to Petrovitch and finally relieved him of the almost-empty drum. “What exactly did you tell Lucy and Tina to do?”

“Ah, vsyo govno, krome mochee.”

His worst fears were confirmed when Madeleine banged on the side of the van with her fist, and the door slid open to reveal Lucy sitting inside, a set of headphones slung around her neck.

“At least that satellite dish should be big enough even for you.” Tabletop indicated the top of the van.

“What would really make my day the full pizdets would be if Tina hadn’t ordered the journos off at gunpoint and had instead asked them along for the ride.”

“You mean like those two?”

A man in an open-necked check shirt appeared from around the back, and a woman in a purple kurta. The man looked unshaven and harassed, a high-definition giro-stabilized camera harnessed to his torso, and enough good sense to keep the lens pointed at the ground. She looked glossy and bright in a way Petrovitch never felt. She strode out to meet him, full of confidence and entitlement.

“Yebat’-kopat’.”

Madeleine glared at Lucy, who shrugged, and called out to the reporter with weary familiarity. “Surur. What the hell is going on?”

The woman stopped advancing on Petrovitch at the sound of Madeleine’s voice and visibly stiffened. “I might ask you the same question, Mrs. Petrovitch. In fact, I’m surprised to see you here at all, in this company.”

“We’re full of surprises today. In fact, I think I’m all surprised out, so unless you can explain to me what you’re doing here—and really quickly—I’m going to start breaking things.” Madeleine towered over the other woman in a way that made the cameraman break out in a sweat.

The driver’s door slammed, and Valentina strolled around the high hood, slinging her AK nonchalantly over her shoulder.

“Does that clear everything up, Mrs. Petrovitch? Your husband’s attack dog told me she was taking my studio, and she didn’t care if I came with it or not. I am the accredited press, and I will be objecting to this treatment most strongly.”

“Duly noted,” said Petrovitch. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met, though I’ve seen you often enough putting difficult questions to my wife.”

The reporter looked at Petrovitch, and for the first time looked through the aura of barely contained fury and frustration at the shattered man behind.

“Yasmina Surur, Al Jazeera. I assume you know something about the interruption in the communications network.” She held out her hand.

Petrovitch looked at his own. “Maybe, maybe not,” he said, wiping his palm against his trouser leg. On the spur of the moment, he decided that if it wasn’t going to come clean, he may as well. “Okay, as of an hour ago, everything changed, Miss Surur. So if you want to complain to anyone, complain to us. Le Freezone, c’est moi.”

She switched her gaze from Petrovitch to Madeleine to Tabletop, then round at Valentina and Lucy behind her. They were all familiar sights to her, but it wasn’t just Petrovitch she was looking at in a new light.

“Doctor Petrovitch, can I have an interview?”

“Yeah. If you must. There’s a couple of things we have to do first, so I’d appreciate it if you just got the huy out of our way while we do it. If you want to film, go ahead, but don’t talk to us, and you’re not broadcasting anything until I say so. Vrubatsa?”

She’d heard him often enough to know what he meant. She nodded and urged her colleague to start recording.

Petrovitch turned his back on the pair and beckoned Valentina over.

“Yobany stos, woman. This is such a bad idea I don’t know where to begin.”

“Hmm. You ask for fast, for big bandwidth, and here is fast and bandwidth bigger than Moon.” She narrowed her eyes. “You are in charge now. You need to stamp authority on Freezone. Your people need to see you, world needs to see you. Make good impression, make right impression, da?”

“Yeah. In Russia, impression makes you.” He groaned. “Right, let’s make the best of this. Tabletop, get that cable plugged in and find me a satellite. Lucy, stop mucking around and… just stop twirling on that yebani seat. No, I need to make sure that Mickey and Minnie out there don’t try and pull a fast one on me: monitor everything that goes to that dish. If they start to send a second too early, kill the feed. Tina? Really, what the huy were you thinking? Make sure no one else films us. If the CIA get wind of what we’re doing before we’re finished, we’re really finished.”

“And what do I do?” asked Madeleine, upset at being left until last.

“You get to do the most important job of all. Go and tell His Excellency I’m ready to deal. He and his bunch of sky pilots get uninterrupted access to Michael for the next hour or two—but I want a definitive decision on his animus, or whatever the huy they want to call it, after that. No weasel words, no recommendations pending on the Holy Father’s prayerful deliberations. They go public with whatever they decide by, what, three o’clock. Final offer, no negotiation.” He scratched the bridge of his nose. “And if they even think about ratting me out, tell them I have enough cee-four to put them all in orbit and every reason to want to do so.”

She put her hands on her hips and he knew she was going to argue with him. So he pre-empted it, jabbing his finger up in her face.

“This—this is your idea. You want to make sure that Michael isn’t plotting humanity’s downfall? Who better to find out than a bunch of Jesuits trained to do nothing but pick holes in the most carefully crafted story. I’m not going to try to influence them one way or another: you’re going to have to leave them to it too. Okay?”