“Have I ever let you down?”

“No. I’d rather not have to stab or shoot anyone, though. Or have them stab or shoot me.”

Petrovitch looked down at his arm again. “We’re dealing with people who are comfortable with nuclear terrorism. Stabby, shooty stuff might be the least of our worries.”

She sat down next to him, in the seat recently vacated by Valentina. “Are you sure about the bomb? Not being a real bomb, I mean.”

“There is a scenario I might not have considered.” He pursed his lips, then smiled when he saw her expression change. “Still a fake bomb. But what if the Jihad don’t know that? What if they’ve been set up just like we have? You see, I know the prophet—when I say know, I mean he tried to kill me once—and despite him being a weapons-grade certifiable ebanashka, he’s not a liar. He wouldn’t be involved in this if he knew there was no bomb.”

“Who’s done this to us? Who’s gone to so much trouble when… you know?” Lucy leaned in and tried to rest her head on his shoulder. She ended up getting an earful of metal strut, and shifted uncomfortably.

“Yeah. They could have killed us in half a dozen different ways, and hey, some have tried. Madeleine’s always been on top of any assassination attempt, no matter how ill-formed or ill-thought out. Yet she seems to have missed this completely.” Petrovitch swigged at his coffee, made on a machine which still had the traces of the manufacturer’s oil in its pipework. “Don’t sweat it. Just because they’re good doesn’t mean we’re not better.”

They sat for a while, him swirling the gritty dregs of his coffee in tight circles at the bottom of his mug, she curled up in the seat next to him, knees drawn up in her arms and her chin resting on her knees: a young girl’s posture.

“You still got that gun Tina gave you?” he asked.

Lucy nodded.

“She show you how to shoot straight?”

She shook her head.

“We can’t fire off live rounds in here in case someone overhears. But we can go through the basics. Give it here.”

She reached into her pocket and held out the automatic.

“Okay. First lesson.” He reached over with his right hand and turned the barrel away from his face. “Never point it at anyone you’re not prepared to shoot. Never shoot anyone you’re not prepared to kill.”

She looked at the gun, and placed it butt first in his hand.

“Good girl.”

He showed her how to make the gun safe, to eject a round still in the chamber, how to unload, and reload. He got her to stand and assume a two-handed grip, leaning forward against the inevitable recoil. He checked her dominant eye, and told her that she may as well throw the yebani thing at her attacker if she was going to shake as much as that. He also said that if he ever caught her holding the gun sideways, gangster-style, he’d tear up her adoption certificate.

After she’d done everything often enough that he was confident she wouldn’t put a round through her own foot, he asked her if she was ready.

“Ready? For what?”

Petrovitch started to unplug his battery packs from their chargers. “I’ve found the original upload of the New Machine Jihad video. The copy on ENN was clean, but the one on the Ukrainian server still has all its exif metadata attached.”

She flicked the safety on the gun with studied care. “The…”

“It’s a bit on the front of the file you don’t get to see, but it tells you when the file was made, what the original resolution was, the camera model. Stuff like that. On GPS-enabled capture devices, it even records where it was taken, so you don’t have the arguments where you swear blind it was Beijing and your girlfriend says it was Shanghai.”

“Okay.” Lucy pocketed her automatic and waited for the payoff.

“Come on. You’re smarter than that.”

She screwed her eyes up and muttered. “GPS, GPS, GPS.” Then they opened wide. “You know where the Jihad are.”

“Were. Chances are they’re still there, but they might have shifted.” Petrovitch had gathered up all his wires and closed the flap on his bag on them.

She was suddenly agitated, eager to go and do something: activity against idleness. “You should have said as soon as you knew! Why did you waste… oh.”

“I don’t want to get you killed. But leaving you behind isn’t going to work, either.” He looked around the waiting room. Apart from the used mug and the crinkled plastic where they’d sat, it was just as they’d found it.

15

Valentina drove them toward Cricklewood, aiming at the coordinates that Petrovitch had supplied.

“We have plan, da?”

He equivocated, then finally admitted the truth. “Not really. A lot of it depends on whether the Jihad thinks we’re on the same side as each other. I didn’t exactly leave the prophet on good terms.”

“He tried to kill Sam,” said Lucy from the back seat.

“It was a misunderstanding. I’m sure we can talk it over like civilized men.”

“If you can get close enough to him,” said Valentina.

“Well, that’s not actually necessary.” Petrovitch twisted in his seat. Tabletop was playing with Valentina’s plastic explosive, making little creatures out of the putty and sticking them on the door. “I know it’s stable, but yobany stos, woman!”

She smiled and presented him with a shape that could have been either a dog or a horse.

“We might need that later.” He stared at the animal before attaching it to the dashboard. “Anyway. Back to the Jihad: the prophet expects the AI to speak to him through his mobile phone. A quick scan of the area tells me that there are a stack of phones active in the cell where the GPS signal came from. I can fake the Jihad better than whoever’s faking it already. All I have to do is ring round till I find the right one, and the prophet will be expecting us.”

Valentina turned left onto the North Circular. She didn’t bother to indicate, just hauled the wheel around and waited for all four tires to regain contact with the tarmac before accelerating away. “So, we just walk up to door and knock?”

“Pretty much.”

“And then…”

“It’s up to them. You know how good my negotiation skills are.”

“Hmm,” she said. “And you propose we leave talking to you?”

Petrovitch shrugged apologetically. “I did say I didn’t have much of a plan.”

The empty road lent itself to speed, and Valentina took full advantage. She only braked to avoid a traffic island and a roundabout. “Is here?”

“Pretty much.”

She knew when stealth was required, too. She turned off the engine and they rolled silently down the access road toward a pair of high metal gates.

“It’s a school,” said Lucy.

The gates were half-open. A big white-and-rust van sat sideways across the parking bays outside the main entrance, sitting in a sea of broken glass and shell cases. There were broken windows all up the front of the foyer. Bodies had been bagged and tagged here: spray-painted numbers were fading in the winter sun.

“Not marked for repair, then.”

They came to a halt in the furthest reaches of the car park, well away from the building.

Valentina cranked the handbrake. “Are you sure about this?”

“No surprises. Everything out in the open. There are more of them than us, and we don’t know if they’re armed.” Petrovitch popped the door open and felt the cold air bite at his ankles. “We’ll be fine.”

They walked, four abreast, across the empty space to the entrance.

“First floor. They’re watching us,” said Tabletop, conversationally. “So, these New Machine Jihad people. Crazy?”

“Mad as a bag of spanners. The Jihad is their god, who they believe wants to usher in an age of plenty and ease under its benign all-seeing eye. Less stupid than some belief systems I can think of: this one is at least credible.” He pursed his lips. “If it wasn’t for the fact that their god was insane and I killed it.”