He’d barely pushed the last digit into the line before the connection was made.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” Hanratty’s comb-over was flapping in a Spanish breeze. He looked like he hadn’t slept for two days, and he’d probably been drinking the whole time.

“We’re going early, Mr. Hanratty. That’s what’s going on.”

“Christ on a bike, man. The last news we had out of the Freezone is that you’ve got your own nuke and you’re threatening to set it off: I need more explanation than ‘early.’ ”

“Al Jazeera is interviewing me in five minutes. It’s going out live, and it’ll answer all the questions you and your colleagues have. Now shut up and listen, because I’ve had a piss-awful day and it’s not over yet. I received your package. Are you ready to receive mine?”

Hanratty tried to calm his hair, but his face was still ruddy. He looked like a Galway farmer—unsurprising, since that was what he had been once, thirty years ago.

“I’m not sure I’m ready to do this, Petrovitch. Before, it looked like a good idea. Now, I don’t know.”

“Do you want your yebani country back or not?” Petrovitch’s avatar leaned forward, growing on Hanratty’s screen until he filled it edge to edge. “Or do you want to leave it a byword for a contaminated wasteland and let it fade from memory like Japan surely will?”

“You know I do. You know I’ve staked everything on this. I just don’t know whether you’re the right man anymore.”

“I appreciate that you’ve got last-minute jitters, but everything is as it was before. I’m the same person you made that deal with six months ago, Hanratty. You knew who I was then, warts and all.”

“Ah, Jesus. I don’t like the changes, Petrovitch. I don’t like them at all.”

“I’ve got enough money just to buy you out. You know that, don’t you? I’ve got billions in the bank I can use to lever billions more, and you’ve lost your precious land. Tell me what the point is of being Taoiseach in name only, leading a people who can never go home?”

“Ah, c’mon.” And Petrovitch knew that Hanratty was just bluster now, even though at that moment he needed Hanratty far more than Hanratty needed him. The trick was not to show fear.

“I don’t want to keep Ireland permanently, but I’ll keep it out of your reach for as long as your grandkids live.” He paused for effect. “Tell me you’re ready and we’ll do it.”

Hanratty gritted his teeth. “We’re ready.”

“Show me the address.”

Hanratty held up a scrap of paper: a bill for tapas going one way, and eight groups of four characters separated from each other by a colon. “I have no idea what the hell this means.”

Petrovitch captured the image and reviewed it so he knew he could reread the code. “Eat it.”

Hanratty reluctantly pushed the paper into his mouth, chewed for a bit, then upended a bottle of golden beer between his lips. He didn’t come up for air until there was nothing but the last cascades of foam clinging to the inside of the glass. He burped roundly behind his fist. “Now I suppose you want me to release what’s in the diplomatic bag, don’t you?”

“I could hack it. I’ve got a friendly AI who’s very good at that. But I’d rather you were completely entangled in our sordid little affair.”

Hanratty pulled a keyboard toward him and started pecking out keys using one finger and with his tongue caught at the corner of his mouth. “There. And may God have mercy on our souls.”

“Your confidence in me knows no bounds, Hanratty. But congratulations: you just bought yourself and everyone you represent a stake in the future. I’ll be in touch.”

He cut the connection, and immediately sent Michael the screen-captured code.

[An IP address.]

“Go. It’s a quantum computer. A gift from the Irish government. Get yourself out of that yebani tomb and tell me when you’ve done it. We have bandwidth to spare, so don’t hold back.” Petrovitch delved into his courier bag for the diplomatic pouch at the very bottom.

The lock had sprung on the envelope-sized bag, and he shook the contents out into his hand: a series of plastic cards, all with different photographs holographed on.

Lucy was the closest, sitting behind him, watching the monitors that showed other news networks.

“This is yours. Don’t lose it.” Petrovitch shuffled the cards until he found Lucy’s unsmiling face.

“What, what is this? And where did you find that picture?” She looked at the card, and turned it to every angle.

“It’s your new passport. If you’ve noticed, it means that not only are you a citizen of the Irish Republic, but you’re also a diplomatic agent as defined by the Vienna Convention. It grants you immunity from prosecution for pretty much everything, though you can be expelled from the host country.” He shuffled the cards again. “So try and keep your nose clean, or I’ll kick you out.”

She looked at him, then at the laminated card in her hands, then at the stack of similar plastic rectangles trapped between Petrovitch’s dirty fingers.

“There’s one for everyone.”

“Yeah.” He turned the cards so they faced him. He found his own, and barely recognized his picture. “I said I’d take care of you. And Tabletop, and Tina, and look, here’s Maddy’s. And this, this would have been Sonja’s. But I don’t think we’ll be needing that anymore.”

It was hard to destroy, but eventually his manic folding backward and forward along the same line over and over again yielded the start of a fracture line. He tore the card in two and flicked the pieces out into the road.

The effort had left him breathless.

“Feel better?” asked Lucy.

“Chyort, yeah.” He handed the remaining cards to her. “Pass these around. I need to get ready for my fifteen minutes of fame.”

“Sure.” She hopped off her chair and squeezed past him. “Sam. What does it mean, though? Why Irish? Why not, I don’t know, Finland?”

“Because the Irish government in exile have asked me to set up a Freezone over there, try and clean up enough of it that people are going to want to move back. And rather than do it all on my own, I thought I could do with a bit of company.” He smiled at her. “You’re all invited. It’ll be a bit like here, but with less city and more rain. We’re working on a longer timescale, too.”

Lucy jumped to the ground. “How long?”

“A hundred years.”

“That’s…”

“It’ll do. Barely any time at all, really, to do everything I want to.” It was all starting to catch up with him. He’d stopped, and it wasn’t just his batteries that were drained. “Lucy, I’m tired of this. Tired of trying to fix things that shouldn’t be broken in the first place. I want to make something new that doesn’t have to be squeezed into an earlier pattern.”

“Somewhere you can get breakfast without getting shot at.”

“Damn right. That’s going to be the first clause in the constitution. No gunplay without a full fry-up.” He snorted. “Frying pans, not fragmentation grenades. Preach it, sister.”

She moved closer, reached her arms up and around him. “Thanks, Dad.”

He pushed her away, “Go. Go now, before I embarrass myself in front of a global audience.”

She trotted off toward Tabletop, brandishing the passports, and he turned back to the screen in front of him, catching sight of his reflection in the momentarily blank surface.

He looked like crap, and no amount of stage make-up was going to cover it.

[I have transferred myself to the new location. Thank you.]

“My first and last thought every day were for you. I let you down and wanted to make up for that. You’re safe for the moment, at any rate. But look, I want to try something different now: there’s a bunch of guys from the Vatican who’d love to have a word with you. If we want to stop running and start living, you’re going to need to convince them that you’re not just intelligent, capable of creative independent thought and have a unique personality. You need to convince them that you’re alive.”