“Why are you doing this?” Madeleine kicked her heel against the road and stood her ground. “You think he might be rogue?”

“No. No, I don’t. But because I love you and I know you have my best interests at heart, I’m agreeing to something that I don’t want to do, only because you want me to do it. I kind of figured that was what we promised when we made all those vows in front of that lying shit of a priest.”

She stared down at him. “Sam…”

“Yeah, I know. The first fuck in a year and I fold like a pack of cards.”

Then she hit him, as gently as she could manage, cuffing him around the ear before dragging him into her embrace and lifting him off the ground.

“Chyort, put me down while I’ve still got some ribs in one piece.”

She did. “You’re impossible.”

“No. Just highly improbable, but no one ever said it was easy being married to a statistical outlier.” He straightened the metalwork surrounding his arm. “Go. Tell them we go live in a matter of minutes.”

Tabletop called from inside the van. “Sam, we’ve got him.”

Petrovitch glanced back around, and watched Madeleine’s leather-clad body running up Park Lane.

“Sam?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m listening.”

“Sam!”

He finally turned his attention to Lucy’s console, where a familiar face was peering out at them, then to the series of empty power sockets screwed to the bulkhead next to her. “If you can find the right adaptor, I’ll have some of that.”

“Your courier bag’s still in the car,” said Lucy, sliding the headphones from her neck and onto her chair.

“Thank you.” He took her place and pressed one of the cans against his ear.

[I have linked with a satellite], said Michael, [and am beginning to access the Freezone network.]

“Good work.” Petrovitch maneuvered the lip mic to somewhere approaching close. “Bring it all back online, then we can pick and choose which bits to shut back down.”

[The virus you activated: not bad, for a human.] The face on the screen lowered, as if bowing.

“I had help. Even though the poor kid ended up in the slammer, he still thinks it was worth it.” He took the courier bag from a breathless Lucy, and pulled out a nest of wires. “Huy, I don’t know.”

[We have power, even though the virus is trying to re-migrate back into the nodes I have cleared. Holding it at bay is requiring considerable resources.]

“Yeah, it does that. It makes it very effective if you don’t quarantine the clean system from the infected. Just strip it out: we won’t need it again. There’ll be isolated machines that’ll come on later, and they’ll still carry the virus, but I’m figuring you can inoculate the live network against that.”

[It will take some time. As I said, not bad for a human.]

He had the first tickle from the palmtop strapped to his side: it had found a signal.

“Result.”

Between them, Lucy and Tabletop had disentangled the power adaptors from each other. One went in on his left, into his computer, and one on the right, into the batteries.

[We have control.] Michael seemed to turn away briefly before staring back out at Petrovitch. [We also have several problems that require urgent attention.]

“No shit, Sherlock.” He could move his left arm again, and he was happy. “Tell me what Sonja Oshicora’s mob are doing.”

[The picture is hard to establish. One moment.] Michael paused, listening, seeing, tracking. [They have mostly regrouped at the Telecom Tower. Now they are able to communicate with distant units, there may be coordinated action.]

“Some of those won’t be following Sonja’s orders anymore, and after I’ve had my say, all she’ll be left with is a hard core of Oshicora idealists.”

[Sasha, why did she turn on you? I had every indication that she would do almost anything for you, and you only had to ask. People are unreliable and inconstant.] Michael made himself blink. [Except for you.]

“Yeah, that’s me. Consistent to the point of predictable. And that’s exactly the exploit Sonja used. I’m going to talk to her now, and see what she has to say for herself.”

Petrovitch knew her mobile number. He could tell where the phone was by chasing it across the network until he’d pin-pointed the location, on the ground floor of the tower. She wasn’t alone: the area was thick with signals and other traffic, calls coming in and out at a furious rate. He could hear her, shouting orders with a voice that rang with rising panic. He could have interrupted her conversation at any time by hijacking the handset, but he noticed that she had another phone on her, live but dormant.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone that had been wired to the bomb. There’d been only one number in the call history. He took the headphones off and sat back in the chair, holding the phone to his ear.

Sonja stopped talking. The sound of muffled ringing came over the open connection. The call timed out when she didn’t answer, but he was absolutely certain he had her attention.

He dialed again. The call was picked up, and he could hear the sound of chaos in the background. Close up was the trembling of her breath.

“Hello, Sonja.”

“Sam. I can explain.”

“You don’t need to. The mere fact I’ve reached you on this number is pretty much all the explanation I can stomach at the moment. I trusted you, and you betrayed me. More than that, though. You abused your position of authority and used resources meant for building up the Freezone to bring it to its knees. So let’s forget what you tried to do to me and Maddy for a moment, and concentrate on that.” He took a deep breath, and adjusted his grip on the phone which was threatening to slip out from between his sweat-slicked fingers.

“Please…”

He lost it. He was standing, shouting down the phone, oblivious to everything else. “Past’ zabej, suka derganaya. Do you know what you’ve done? The whole of civilization is hanging by a yebani thread and you’re hacking at it with a pair of rusty scissors. So you just shut up and listen to me. You are relieved of your duties. You are under arrest. You will surrender all weapons and you will place your private army under the control of the interim Freezone authority, which just happens to be me. You will stay in your tower until someone comes to read you your rights and put you in front of a court. Which is a huy sight more mercy than the idiot followers of the New Machine Jihad ever got. You are now irrelevant to the running of the Freezone. No one will follow your orders. You have no right to act on behalf of or represent the Freezone in any matter. You are deposed, Madam ex-President.”

At that moment, the first pile-driver started off in Hyde Park, filling the air with its rhythmic thump. It sounded like victory.

“Hear that? That’s what we think of your state of emergency. The Freezone is back at work, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. The future’s coming through, Sonja, and you’re not on board.”

He stabbed his thumb down on the phone, and held the device in his hand, looking for somewhere to throw it. Cool fingers curled over his.

“Sam,” said Lucy, “evidence?”

“Do pizdy. If she was here, I’d shove it up her zhopu.” He let her take it, though, and picked up the headphones again. “Michael, shut Sonja down. Her whole operation. I’ll talk to them in a minute when I’ve calmed down.”

He closed his eyes.

[Done. What next?]

“Hanratty. I need to talk to Hanratty.”

24

Petrovitch had memorized the number a long time ago, and had never called it. He’d never needed to. He kept his promises, and if Hanratty couldn’t, then Hanratty would be history.

A token of their agreement had arrived by courier: it had told Petrovitch that all was well and as it should be. That, though, had been two days ago, and he couldn’t be certain of anything anymore, least of all the reception he’d get from Hanratty. He steeled himself as he placed the call. Either Hanratty would answer and everything would be ready, or he would be ignored and he’d be left to scrabble a last-minute plan together out of the tatters of earlier, better ones.