“What are you going to do now, Doctor Petrovitch?”

He leaned his head against the side of the door. “Sorry, what?”

Surur repeated the question, and he frowned.

“I’m tired, hungry, I’ve got half a ton of metalwork hanging off me. I’ve been shot at repeatedly, I’ve been run all over town, I’ve defused a big fu… a big bomb, I’ve led a popular uprising against a corrupt government and I’ve freed my friend from his prison. What I’d like to do now is have something to eat, preferably involving bacon—not a popular choice, I know—and a lake of black coffee. I’d make sure that no one was going to come and kill us all, then I’d go to sleep until morning. Frankly, I’ve had enough of today, Miss Surur.”

“You won’t get the chance to do that, though, will you?”

“I won’t get much of a chance to do anything. I’m here for a week, that’s all. The Freezone is designed to pretty much run itself. I’m happy for that to happen. I’d ask all our contractors and suppliers to do whatever it is they’re supposed to do, without taking advantage of the situation to squeeze a few extra euros out of the budget. I’ll come down hard on that. If you’ve got any problems, I’ll try and sort them out, though you’d probably prefer it if I didn’t. Feel free to find a solution yourselves.”

“What will you do about Sonja Oshicora?”

“Do I have to do anything? No one’s taking her orders. She doesn’t have the authority anymore to propose, vote on or sign anything on behalf of the Freezone. She can sit in her tower and paint herself purple for all I care. Sure, I might get around to throwing her sorry arse out onto the street at some point, but I’ve got better things to do, and so have the people who make up the Freezone. Perhaps I should just leave her up there and let the Metrozone deal with her. After all, it’s their contracts she was trying to screw with.”

“Doctor Petrovitch, the one thing you do seem reluctant to say is why you think your former friend turned against you. You must have an opinion on that.”

“I’m reluctant because I’m embarrassed. No one wants their private life dragged out into the open; no one who’s sane, anyway. Sonja always wanted to be more than a friend, and I’m as married as you can get. You’re a smart woman, Miss Surur. Go figure it out yourself.”

Then there was the sound of distant gunfire, echoing across the rooftops. It would have been easy to mistake it for something else, unless those hearing it hadn’t already been intimately acquainted with it.

Petrovitch stood up sharply. “Chyort. Where’s that coming from?”

Surur’s head turned to look down Piccadilly, but the way the echoes worked, it could be almost anywhere.

“Sorry. I’m needed.” He grabbed his bag, and started to run to where Lucy and Tabletop were standing, Valentina already going to get the car. The cables that attached him to the van stretched, and with a little more effort, broke. He trailed the ends behind him.

He glanced around, and the camera was still tracking him. “Michael? I’m interrupting. There’s small arms fire and I can’t tell where.”

[One moment.] That moment stretched to breaking point. Valentina screeched the tires of the car, and the three of them piled in, Petrovitch in the front, the other two behind. He pulled out his automatic and checked the magazine. He hadn’t reloaded since the school.

“Michael?”

[Regent’s Park. There is a confrontation between Oshicora Corporation staff and the demolition crews. The situation is unclear, but there are reports of casualties.]

“Yebany v’rot. There’s no need for this. No need at all.” He slammed his hand down on the plastic fascia. “Container Zero. Go.”

26

It was almost like the first time, the ride through the dark on the back of Madeleine’s motorbike, nearly dying on every corner because they were taking it too fast. Valentina made the heavy four-wheel-drive vehicle turn so hard the passengers waited for the inevitable roll and splintering of glass with rictus grins, but disaster never came.

They pulled up outside Regent’s Park, and the blue haze of smoke from the tires hadn’t started to drift before she was out, AK loaded and the safety off.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” said Lucy.

Petrovitch couldn’t find the seat belt release at first, despite repeatedly stabbing at where he thought it should be. Finally he hit it and fell out into the road, disorientated and not a little nauseous himself.

“Chyort.” He looked up from his hands-and-knees position and saw a crowd of dirty-overalled workers on either side of the entrance to the site, taking cover behind wood panels, empty skips, flat-bed trucks and anything else that might provide shelter.

Most of them seemed to have already escaped, though more came darting out between the remaining domiks, running from one container wall to the next until they could join their colleagues.

Valentina dragged him up, and he staggered to the left. He kept going until he banged up against the chain-link fence that surrounded the park.

“Will someone tell me what the huy is going on?”

A man, crouched by the gate, pushed his hard hat up and said, “You bullet proof?”

“Not the last time I looked.”

“Then get down here with me.”

There was an uneasy silence: no shots since he’d arrived, but maybe the sound of voices in the distance, shouting to each other. It was difficult to tell.

“What happened?” Petrovitch lowered himself down to the man’s level.

“We went to work, like you said.” The man sounded Spanish, like his old research student, or Portuguese. “I was over by the crusher—my job to drop the containers in—when I see Oshicora men. I know it means trouble straightaway, because we’re listening to your broadcast, all of us by then. They all got guns, and we got just our hands, but we take no shit from them. We tell them to vamos!, that they have no right to be here. We start to push them out: there are eight of them, but eighty of us.”

“Don’t tell me, they started shooting you.”

“Man, it was like… we ran. They killed a guy, right in front of me.” The man put his hand on the front of his shirt, and showed Petrovitch his palm. It was speckled with still-wet blood.

“Yeah, I know what that’s like, too.” He straightened up. “Eight, right?”

“Maybe nine.”

“It’s kind of important.” He raised his voice. “Eight or nine, people? I need to know.”

On a hurried show of hands, the consensus was eight. He wasn’t taking it as gospel. By now, Lucy was out of the car, leaning up against a dumper truck tire as tall as she was. Tabletop was staring into what was left of the domik pile, trying to remember the lay of the land.

“We can do better than this,” said Petrovitch. “Michael? Interrupting again. I need an up-to-date aerial map of Regent’s Park, and I’d like to speak to the Oshicora squad inside.”

[If you wait two minutes, a U.S. imint satellite will be in range. I can decrypt the feed for you in real-time. Also, there are nine blocked mobile phone transmitters within Regent’s Park, concentrated in one location.]

Michael pushed the identities of the signals over to him, and Petrovitch called them all.

“Hi. My name’s Samuil Petrovitch, and I now run this show. If someone wants to own up to being in charge, speak now, because what you say will have a dramatic effect on your life expectancy.”

“Hello, Petrovitch-san.”

“Iguro. Tell me you haven’t just killed several people.”

“There was… an unfortunate event, Petrovitch-san. I have my orders.”

“What the huy is that supposed to mean? Your orders come from me, and I’m telling you that you and your crew need to put down your guns and come out, hands on your head.”